Trump Actually Has Some Interesting Ideas... Except...

Curmie was scrolling through the “Memories” function on Facebook earlier this week and came across a post from last year, discussing (OK, bragging about) having a very accurate bracket for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  What’s relevant, however, is the end of that post: “Interestingly, I watched far fewer games than usual. Mercenaries don't interest me as much as students do.”

It’s certainly true that the game is fundamentally different now than it was even a few years ago.  All five starters on this year’s champion Michigan Wolverines were transfers.  Two starters for Curmie’s beloved Kansas Jayhawks were playing for their fourth different college team.  As of this writing, still early in the transfer window, only three players from the dozen Jayhawks players who logged the most minutes this season have not either lost eligibility or entered the transfer portal.  One of them is a certain lottery pick in the NBA draft, so he won’t be back.  The other two totaled a little under 400 minutes in the 2025-26 season between them; seven individual players had over 600.  [EDIT: now one of those two has also entered the portal.]  At least three of the five players in the portal are almost certainly gone.  It’s certainly time to stop pretending that there’s anything “amateur” about any of this.

The first and most obvious of the things that have changed of late is that now it’s all (as opposed to just “mostly”) about money.  Fans can complain all they want how players now care more about the name on the back of the jersey than the name on the front, but if you’re a 20-year-old kid, especially one from a poor family, who gets offered hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars more to play for Spider Breath Ag & Tech than you were getting at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople… aren’t you going to take the money and run?  After all, you know you’re one serious ACL injury away from never making any money as a player, and chances are you weren’t in college to get an education in the first place.

The system certainly privileges teams with lots of money, generally in the form of boosters.  This was already true to some degree—there aren’t a lot of universities that can offer luxury accommodations for athletes or spend several million dollars a year for a head coach—but the brave new world is far worse.  You could hire a half dozen full professors for what some universities are paying for a single good but not even Honorable Mention All-League basketball player.  (This is where you, Gentle Reader, say “and football is even worse,” and Curmie glances skyward and nods ruefully.)

Finally, the development of players is no longer a priority.  Back in the dark ages (the 2010s), teams would recruit a player, help him get better, and reap the rewards in his junior and senior years.  That doesn’t happen anymore.  There are exceptions—Purdue’s Braden Smith became the NCAA’s all-time assist leader this season in large part by also setting the record for most games played in a Boilermaker uniform—but most of the top players will transfer elsewhere or enter the NBA draft.  Getting a player up to the level where he can really help a good team be better is now simply allowing other teams to offer a little more money, or immediate playing time, or whatever.

NIL and the portal may be a considerable short-term benefit to players, but they’re not good for the game, and they’re awful for fans.  At least in the sports leagues that admit to being professional—the NBA, NFL, etc.—players sign long-term contracts, so they’ll stay with the team for a few years; some even insist on no-trade contracts.  The NCAA allows unlimited free agency every year.  It’s insane.

Curmie, of course, is not the only one to notice all this.  Many, if not most, fans agree that the status quo is absurd.  One such person is a guy named Donald J. Trump, and he’s in a position to do something about it.  Or he thinks he, at least.  Curmie acknowledges that Trump’s Executive Order on championship weekend was a). timed to get maximum exposure and b). an opportunity to distract from any story that includes the words “Epstein,” “Iran,” or “inflation.”  Curmie further stipulates that the EO will certainly be challenged in court; even Jack Marshall, who has defended some pretty outrageous activity by Dear Leader, says this one is “flat-out unconstitutional.”

Still, to quote The Athletic’s Ralph D. Russo and Justin Williams, “multiple sources who have contributed to the document told The Athletic before the order was released that its goal was to spur legislative action,” presumably rather than going into effect per se. There is at least one bill, the so-called SCORE Act (that’s the cutesy acronym for the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act… somebody spent weeks coming up with that title, no doubt) which does some of the things the administration wants, but it’s not assured of passing the House and apparently stands no chance in the Senate.

The major problem, of course, is that the NCAA can’t really function without some level of antitrust exemption, but, to be frank, the NCAA can’t be trusted to operate in the best interests of anyone but, well, the NCAA: not the athletes, not the universities, not the sports, and certainly not the fans. 

OK, but let’s look at what the EO says.  The introduction includes the following argument, about which there is little dispute:

The convergence of enormous pressure to win in football and basketball and the loosening, both by litigation and by State legislation, of consistent rules or limits concerning eligibility, transfers, and pay-for-play schemes has created an out-of-control financial arms race in these sports that is driving universities into debt, threatening to siphon resources from other sports, and damaging student-athletes’ educational and graduation opportunities.  The athletics-related financial threats these crucial universities face are substantial: Already, one major athletic program closed fiscal year 2025 with $535 million in athletics-related debt, and another has $437 million in such debt, while others face enormous annual athletics-related deficits.  These financial perils will inevitably siphon funds from universities’ educational and research purposes, which could impact their capabilities and responsibilities as Federal contractors and grantees.  

It’s worth noting in this regard that only a handful of universities were actually making money from their athletics programs even prior to the surge in NIL spending.  Yes, they make pots of money from TV contracts and the like, but the costs are enormous: salaries for coaches, trainers, and other staff; facilities, including absurdly lavish living facilities for athletes; travel—not just to games, but to bring prospects to campus and to send coaches to scout high school players; training meals; the list goes on and on.  And whereas it’s true that athletics programs often generate donations, more often than not such largesse is bestowed only on athletics: the wealthy alum who might otherwise have funded much-needed renovations to the library or the chemistry lab decides to buy a fancy new scoreboard for the basketball court instead.

Revenons à nos moutons…  The highlights of the Executive Order are as follows:

    Outlawing payments to athletes above “fair market value” for “goods and services” provided by the athlete.  If Curmie is reading this correctly, it means that a fat-cat booster can’t pay a star player $5 million for doing a radio ad.  The intention is great, but this is almost impossible to enforce without putting a dollar limit on NIL, and that’s problematic both ethically and, one suspects, constitutionally.

    Age-based eligibility limits.  It’s difficult to determine the rationale here.  Preventing young girls from entering college early to help the gymnastics team?  Preventing more physically mature players in their mid-20s from playing sports where bulk matters?  (There were a half dozen college football players aged 25 or older last year; Kansas hoopster Gee Ngala was 26, and was, if Curmie remembers correctly, the second-oldest player this season.)

    “Participation in college athletics is permitted for no more than a five-year period, with limited exceptions for military service, missionary service, and other periods of absence from participation that are in the public interest.”  What’s noteworthy here is that whereas voluntary missionary service qualifies for an exemption, injury doesn’t.  This is especially significant in light of the ruling by a state court judge that Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss should be granted an extra year of eligibility because the NCAA improperly denied his petition for a medical redshirt.  (Guess where that judge’s law degree is from… oh, and he got his law degree before septuagenarian Curmie graduated from high school.)

    “Professional athletes cannot return to college athletics.”  A couple of questions here.  First, what’s meant by “professional”?  There are a number of foreign-born basketball players who played professionally in their homelands.  Baylor’s James Nnagi not only played professionally in Europe, he was drafted by the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and played for their summer league team.  The second question is whether the key word here is “return.”  (Curmie’s mind wanders to the ancient Greek word ἀποδίδωμι, which sometimes but not always means “return.”  He won’t bore you with the relevance to theatre history, Gentle Reader.)  Nnagi didn’t return to college because he’d never been there, and he never signed a NBA contract per se.  Oh, and guess what… he’s now in the transfer portal. 

    Allowing only one transfer within that five-year window per athlete with immediate eligibility, with a second available if the athlete earns a four-year degree.  This is a reasonable restriction if it applies only to future transfers, and players who have already transferred more than once retain their eligibility.  Ex post facto, and all that…

    “A national student-athlete agent registry and reasonable protections for student-athletes from excessive  agent commissions.”  A little creepily Big Brother-ish, but perhaps sufficiently warranted so as not as to be bad as Curmie fears.

    And a bunch of logistical stuff.

On the whole, not a bad set of proposals.  A place to start, at least.  If only it were… you know… legal, and stuff.

The Players Era Tournament: An Ominous View of the Future

 

On top of everything else, the championship trophy
is so tacky it looks like it was designed
by Donald Trump

Curmie is of a mixed mind about the Geico Players Era “Festival” (i.e., basketball tournament).  On the one hand, there were some really good games between some of the best college teams in the country, with the added bonus for Curmie that, even without their star player, his beloved Kansas Jayhawks went 3-0, including a big comeback win against a ranked team in the third-place game.  On the other hand, the event epitomizes everything (well, perhaps not everything) that is wrong with college sports.

First off, it’s all about NIL money.  If you’re not into sportsball, Gentle Reader, that’s money paid to players as a bribe an incentive to attend a particular university.  That’s in addition to the euphemistically termed “scholarships” they receive.  And we’re not talking about enough to buy a pizza on Saturday night.  Some of these guys actually make more to “go to school” than the NBA minimum salary, which exceeds one and a quarter million dollars for rookies (and higher than that for more veteran players).  It’s no longer uncommon for players to play for four different universities.  The NCAA can talk about “student athletes” all they want; the fact is that elite players aren’t students at all.  They’re mercenaries, largely if not completely uninterested in education, ready to sell their services for the best (short-term) offer.

It could be argued, one supposes, that star players really do generate income for the school: ticket prices, television deals, apparel licensing, and so on.  But even pedestrian players, guys who have no more chance of a professional career in sports than Curmie does, are making more to sit on the bench of a college basketball team than they’ll likely see in the real world for years to come.  Wouldn’t it be nice if universities were as interested in attracting the top chemists or sociologists or journalists or violinists (or…) as they are in making sure that guy who plays a few garbage-time minutes a year for the basketball team is handsomely rewarded?

Yes, Curmie is old and perhaps old-fashioned, but he remembers fondly when athletes actually went to classes and interacted with other students.  They even graduated after attending the same school for four years.  Now, at the top level, it’s rare for a player to return to the roster.  At Kansas, for example, no starters returned from last year, and only one player who got more than mop-up minutes is back… and he entered the transfer portal before re-negotiating an NIL deal already worth over a half a million dollars.

Remember, too, that the very best players are likely to leave for the NBA after even a single season, and foreign players can have played in a professional league in their home country and still be eligible to play collegiate ball here. It’s an absolute mess.

But the structure makes this event even more problematic than others of the type.  Most of these early-season tournaments consist of eight teams, with no two from the same conference.  There’s a standard bracket: if you win your first-round game, you next play someone else who did, too.  Ultimately, the champion wins three games in a row; the second-place team won two, then lost one; third place won, then lost, then won, etc. 

But there were 18 (count ‘em!) teams in the Players Era event, and there were three teams that won all three of their games: eventual champion Michigan; third-place Kansas; and Iowa State, who didn’t even get a chance to play for the extra cash despite winning their first two games, one of them against ranked St. John’s.  We’re talking real money here: $1 million, $500K, $300K, and $200K for first through fourth, respectively: all to go to a school’s NIL budget.  That’s in addition to the $1 million all 18 teams collected.

The first problem is that the first two games for each team were pre-determined, meaning that there was no power-matching until the third round, and you could get to a potential additional payoff without having to beat any of the eight ranked teams in the tournament.  (Kansas did; there were two first-round games between ranked teams.)

But it’s how you get to the third game that matters.  The process of selecting the “4 Kings,” i.e., the four teams who were guaranteed at least an extra $200K in NIL funds, relied ultimately on point differential.  There were, as noted above, five teams that had 2-0 records after the second round.  Michigan destroyed their first two opponents, so they went to the championship game with Gonzaga; Tennessee and Kansas rounded out the top four, with Iowa State fifth.

This system presents several problems, one of which is obvious: there’s an incentive to engage in unsportsmanlike conduct.  Normally, if you’re up by a comfortable margin as time is expiring, you get the ball over midcourt and make no attempt to score.  Now, however, winning the game may not be enough, and you never know whether that one extra score could be worth $200K, the difference between losing the third-place game and not getting to play in it, and between winning that game and losing in the championship round.

A few years ago, a Kansas player dunked the ball when the outcome was no longer in doubt, and he could have just dribbled out the clock.  KU coach Bill Self ripped him a new one and apologized to the opposing team.  In last Tuesday’s game against Syracuse, a Kansas player dunked the ball when the outcome was no longer in doubt, and he could have just dribbled out the clock.  Self was thrilled.  As it happened, those two points were what got Kansas instead of Iowa State into the third-place game, as it gave KU a +21 differential to Iowa State’s +19 (Iowa State would have won the next tie-breaker had both teams finished at +19.  You can’t blame Kansas for doing what they could within the rules to advance, but if Curmie had gone to grad school in Ames instead of Lawrence, he’d be plenty pissed, especially since ISU’s Milan Momcilovic (a very good shooter, by the way) apparently passed up a shot in the final seconds of their second game.

The silly rule also provided an advantage to teams that played later in the day on Tuesday.  In college football, teams want to play defense first if a game goes to overtime because they know what they need to do.  Similarly, teams that played later Tuesday had a better idea whether it would be to their advantage to leave their starters in, slow the game down, etc. 

Perhaps most problematic, although it doesn’t come quite as easily to mind, is what has been suggested about the Houston/Tennessee game.  Quoting Sports Illustrated’s Kevin Sweeney: “as the game came down to the wire, it became increasingly obvious that only Tennessee was playing for a spot in the event’s championship game Wednesday. And even the Vols’ spot was very much up in the air.” 

That’s because although Houston won their first game, it was by a narrow margin, and unless they completely destroyed the Vols, they weren’t going to make it to even the third-place game.  When it became clear that the best they could do was a narrow victory, their mental energy inevitably declined.  Sure, there should still be plenty of incentive to win, and in one sense there’s no excuse, but it’s human nature to let down a little if there isn’t a lot of difference between winning and losing.

And… since the tournament went out of its way not to schedule games between teams from the same conference, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario in which either that rule had to be abandoned, or a team that earned a higher seeding would be dropped.  For example, Kansas and Iowa State were ranked fourth and fifth after the second round.  If Tennessee had won their first-round game more narrowly, the Jayhawks and Cyclones could have been third and fourth… would they play each other, contrary to what happened in the first two rounds, or would one of them be closed out of the third-place game?  Indeed, it’s hypothetically possible that the top four teams could all have been from either the Big 10 or Big 12.  Luckily (I guess), we didn’t need to find out how such a scenario would play out.

But there’s yet one more complication: because of the bizarre scheduling, teams didn’t find out who or when they were playing on Wednesday until 10:00 Tuesday night.  In a traditional bracket, you’d at least know it was one of two teams; here, it could be any of a dozen or more teams, and you’d have maybe a couple of hours to prepare for that particular opponent, thereby devaluing coaching.  That’s not the way to get the best possible game; it’s how to highlight individual skills over teamwork.  That might work for the casual fan, but not for those who actually know something about the game.

Tournament co-founder Seth Berger claims the goal of this idiocy was to create a format in which “every shot matters, every basket matters, every minute matters.”  That didn’t happen.  And it’s rather predictable that when people pointed out the manifold inanities of the Players Era format, the response was that it was the messaging, not the structure, that’s the problem: “one of the things we have to do is continue educating about why our format is unique and it’s exciting.”  There are mumbles about “work[ing] very quickly to get to a better format,” but it’s clear that the centerpiece of the stupidity, privileging point differential, will remain in an expanded 32-team extravaganza.

What’s sad is that teams will continue to chase the almighty dollar, abandoning the less lucrative but competently managed tournaments in actual destination venues like Hawai’i or the Bahamas.  (Sorry, Las Vegas is not such a destination.  Curmie has been there once, and would have to be held at gunpoint to return.)  College athletic programs have long since abandoned even the pretense of being about students.  This is just one more nail in the coffin.

Dartmouth's Basketball Team Embarrasses This Alum, But Not as Much as the NLRB Does

The men’s basketball team at Curmie’s undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, is an embarrassment.  No, not because they’re terrible, although they are: they have secured last place, alone, in the not-exactly-elite (in basketball terms) Ivy League.  They didn’t win a road game all year.  As of this writing, they’re 337^th (of 362) in the NET and 339^th on KenPom.  They haven’t had a winning record in 15 years, and currently sport the longest active streak (dating back to 1959) of not participating in the NCAA tournament.  They weren’t very good back when Curmie was a student there; they’re worse now.

But “disappointing” isn’t the same as “embarrassing.”  Not being very good basketball players is one thing; being narcissistic little assholes is something else again.  The reason the Big Green’s hoopsters are in the news, alas, falls into the latter category.  The players voted today (as I write this on March 5) to unionize (!), thanks to a heightened sense of self-importance by some rather mediocre athletes and a remarkably inane decision by the NLRB’s Regional Director, declaring them “employees.”  All 15 players signed the initial petition to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, and 13 of them voted to unionize.

The Regional Director in question is Laura A. Sacks of the Boston office.  (Curmie believes people who do remarkably stupid things in their professional capacities shouldn’t be able to hide behind an important-sounding title.  Walking lawyer jokes like Jake Krupski ought to be similarly disgraced.)  The decision itself is inane on its face, but the rationale is even worse.

Here’s the decision; let’s look at a couple of key points.  First off, there is no argument with the college’s position that financial aid is offered exclusively on the basis of financial need; indeed, four players on the team receive none, whereas one gets a full ride.  Athletes don’t get special housing or other such perks.  Again, no one claims otherwise.  A fall term message to players “encouraged” them not to schedule courses during potential practice times, particularly between 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. 

Conversely, that message told players they should “[F]eel free to register for courses in the following time slots: 8S/8L, 9S/9L, 10, 10A, 11, 12.”  Here’s where Curmie’s experience becomes relevant, because he knows what that means.  About 90% of all the courses I took as an undergrad were in one of those time slots.  Afternoons, certainly after 2:00, were almost always free.  One doubts that much has changed, even given the considerable interim.

Remember, too, that since Dartmouth is on a quarter system, students take only three courses at a time, so there’s less likelihood of scheduling conflicts at all; unless a particular course necessary for a player’s degree plan was offered only in the afternoon and only during basketball season, problems are rare if not altogether absent.  It’s also unclear why the team couldn’t practice in the evening, as there are multiple places on campus with basketball courts, and much of “practice” is film study or time in the weight room.

Also worthy of notice is the fact that NCAA and Ivy League regulations prohibit teams from requiring too much practice time: “In-season, student-athletes may participate in a maximum of four hours of CARA [countable athletically related activity] daily and a maximum of twenty hours of CARA weekly….  When a sport is not in-season, student-athletes may participate in a maximum of six hours of CARA each week.”

Yet, curiously, Sacks and her minions based part of the decision on the bizarre belief that athletes should be treated differently because the demands on their time exceed those required of participants in, for example, music, theatre, or journalism.  In a word, BULLSHIT.  First off, those activities are year-round; there’s no “off season,” and certainly no time cap.  Curmie was required to spend more than four hours a day and more than 20 hours a week not infrequently (especially but not exclusively during tech weeks) when he was in school, and he's certainly expected that kind of commitment from students throughout his career as a director and technical director in college and university settings. 

The other variation on this theme was that Curmie realized early on that if he was going to be an active member of the debate team, he was going to have to spend a lot more than 20 hours a week.  He opted instead for doing research to help the team when he could, administering one of the divisions of the high school invitational tournament hosted by the Forensic Union, and occasionally brainstorming with more active team members.  But those active debaters spent dozens of hours a week working for the team.  Same with the editors (at least) of the college newspaper, the directorate of the radio station… the list goes on and on. 

It’s also frankly nuts to claim that the Ivy League is taking students out of classes willy-nilly.  Virtually all league games are played on Friday night or Saturday.  Wanna guess, Gentle Reader, how many road games Dartmouth will play this year on a Monday through Thursday while classes are in session?  The answer is… wait for it… one.  Yes, one.  Another came between the end of classes and the end of finals.  Yet somehow, we get an official NLRB ruling with nonsense like “if, for example, the team is traveling on a Monday…”  Is Sacks incapable of looking at a schedule?  Furthermore, there was no rebuttal to the coach’s testimony that players sometimes missed road trips, with his blessing, because of class responsibilities.  In the Ivy League, education matters more than sports.  It really does.

So the whole “taking them out of classes” business is nonsense.  Moving on.  OK, get this: Cade Haskins, one of the students who keeps getting quoted, says that although the college makes it clear that “it is understood by both the faculty and coaching staff that class attendance takes precedence over participation in athletics,” he often prioritized basketball.  The fact that he can’t abide by the rules is an argument in his favor?

The precedent for this action is a decision a few years back when the Northwestern football team successfully convinced the NLRB that they were employees, but because they compete in a league that includes state universities (Dartmouth doesn’t), federal law apparently makes it impossible for the NLRB to make a ruling against the university in this instance.  Of course, unlike Dartmouth or indeed any other Ivy League school, Northwestern does give athletic scholarships, so, arguably, players are indeed employees, doing a job in exchange for financial considerations.  Still, it’s ironic that it would be Northwestern, a school far more noted for its academics than its athletics, that would be the target for such a unionization effort.

There are more ironies at play, too.  It would be impossible to name an athletic conference that cares more about the importance of education relative to sports than the Ivy League does, and there are few teams in any sport in the Ivy League more inept than Dartmouth men’s basketball… well, with the possible exception of Dartmouth women’s basketball.  If these folks are “employees,” Curmie would hate to see the amateurs.

Oh, but alumni contribute to the college because of the basketball team!  (Seriously, that’s an argument!)  Luckily, Curmie had put down his mug before reading that part, or coffee would’ve come out his nose.  There’s an alumni group, you see, Gentle Reader, that contributed over $300,000 to improve the basketball facilities!  Curmie got a missive from the alumni fund the other day.  That $300k for basketball would amount to about 7/10 of 1% of the unrestricted giving to the college last year (that doesn’t count the tens of millions of dollars designated for other specific uses.) 

It goes without saying that the basketball team at Dartmouth loses a lot more money than it brings in.  Don’t expect to see games televised except on ESPN+, and whereas Curmie’s other American school (his MA is from a British university), the University of Kansas, has sold out 16,300 seat Allen Field House every game for the last 22 years, Dartmouth can’t fill 2100 seat Edward Leede Arena even half full for Senior Night. 

The fact that according to the NLRB decision, “[N]o current members of Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team participate in NIL activities” sort of tells it all.  They’re eligible to do so, but local businesses don’t care enough to pay them as spokesmen.  Why?  Because they aren’t going to attract positive attention.  Curiously enough, the “whiny loser” image isn’t one that advertisers choose to foreground.  They’ll do their own ads or hire actors who know how to read a line. 

But if NIL threatens merely the idea of collegiate sports as we know them (see Curmie’s commentary here, here, and here, for example), the prospect of having to remunerate student-athletes will—nay, should—spell the end of intercollegiate sports altogether.  Many colleges are considering cutbacks to athletic programs as it is.  Curmie wrote last year that another Ivy League school, Brown, “had to cut some varsity sports a couple of years ago: losing money on athletics was one thing; losing that much money was untenable.”  

Whereas part of Curmie says “Good!”, the fact is that cheering on the home team is, or should be, very much a part of student life.  Curmie saw dozens of athletic events—football, baseball, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, ski jumping—as a student and doesn’t want future generations of students to be denied that opportunity. 

But if pampering a cohort of mediocre narcissists will cost even more time and/or money than it already does, the tipping point draws nearer.  There are some outstanding colleges and universities that don’t have athletics teams at all, or who play only in Division III or the NAIA: Brandeis, CalTech, MIT, NYU, and the University of Chicago come to mind.  Brooklyn’s St. Francis College recently eliminated all its Division I athletics programs, citing finances.  Indeed, only a handful of athletic departments break even; most lose millions of dollars a year, the shortfall made up by increased tuition and fees borne by other students, a goodly number of whom couldn’t care less about whether the basketball team is any good.

It's also probably worth mentioning that the two players quoted in the Politico article linked above are, predictably, not among the best players of even the remarkably unsuccessful team on which they play.  They’ve totaled 153 points and 50 rebounds in 26 games (let me save you the math, Gentle Reader: that’s less than 6 PPG and 2 RPG between them); both have more turnovers than assists.  They… erm… have little hope of a career in professional basketball.  Yet they seem to be at the center of the self-glorification.  Figures.

To be fair, there will be appeals after appeals, and it’s unlikely that college officials will have to negotiate for the services of hoopsters in the near future.  That doesn’t make the initial Regional NLRB ruling any less ludicrous.  Ultimately, the argument comes down to this: are athletes are treated significantly differently from participants in other extra-curricular (or co-curricular) activities?  If the answer is no, then there’s no case.  If it’s yes, then the rationale is that because jocks have been coddled in the past, they should be even more coddled in the future.  Color me unimpressed.

Curmie is loath to quote Donald Trump with anything even bordering on approbation, but on this one, he’s got it right.  If these guys want to be considered employees, the correct response is “You’re fired.”  Laura Sacks ought to hear those words as well.

NCAA Football, Part 2: Some (Sort of) Solutions

OK, Curmie recently pointed out a handful of the manifold problems with college football as it is currently structured, especially with respect to the bowl system.  There are some issues that are insoluble, either legally (apparently) or structurally.  NIL and the transfer portal aren’t going away, but some tweaks are still possible. 

Next year’s expansion of the playoffs from four to twelve teams is stupid (it potentially adds three games to some teams’ schedules—let’s just forget about all that “student-athlete” rhetoric—but it does solve one problem and mitigate another.  There won’t be an undefeated major conference champion that isn’t given at least the opportunity to win a national title.  If you’re not clearly one of the twelve best teams in the country, STFU if you get ranked 13^th. 

Plus, there will be fewer opt-outs if there’s a national title at stake instead of the rather less impressive distinction of being the champion of the Pop-Tarts Bowl.  (Yes, that’s a real bowl game.)

But these don’t begin to solve all the problems.  Let’s take the ones Curmie identified earlier and offer some possible solutions.   

NIL is becoming the principal if not sole driver of collegiate athletics.  We can’t eliminate the system altogether, but we can impose restrictions.  For example: forbid universities from marketing their players, or seeking contributions from the public (“if you want your team to keep winning, send a check”).  To give a little perspective: it is hardly a secret that Curmie is a fan of the Kansas Jayhawks; KU is the only school from which Curmie has a degree that has Division 1 football. 

Jayhawks coach Lance Leipold was heavily rumored to be a contender for the University of Washington job after their coach, Kalen DeBoer, left for Alabama.  Curmie subscribes to an email list about KU athletics.  The most recent missive manages to whine on three separate occasions about the alleged insufficiency of KU’s NIL funds as a cause for concern.  KU, by the way, is about to give Leipold a substantial raise to his meager $5.7 million salary; it appears likely he’ll soon be able to get the large Coke with his Big Mac combo if he wants it.  Collegiate sports have been mostly about money for a long time; we’re moving towards being exclusively about money.

It would be nice to impose a cap on how much a “student athlete” could make, but that’s probably not feasible.  What could certainly be done is to make all NIL contracts include a promise by the athlete to be available to play in every game, including bowl games, except when ruled medically unable to do so or there is some other reasonable excuse (death in the family, that sort of thing).  “I’m an asshole who doesn’t want to risk injury” is not such a legitimate reason.  NIL sponsors should be permitted to claw back every nickel from players who don’t adhere to this rule.

If Curmie were in a management position with an NFL team, he’d make it clear that he’s a lot more interested in players who want their team to win and do what it takes to make that happen rather than in looking out for themselves alone.  Of course, the average NFL exec is a moron who wouldn’t come to that obvious conclusion, but even curmudgeons can dream, right?

That said, players who stand to make millions as professional athletes are indeed risking their future earnings by playing in bowl games.  They will receive insurance policies based on percentage of their anticipated future income, as determined by independent authorities; the cost of these policies will be shared equally by the NCAA and the player’s university.

The transfer portal will not be open until the day after the national championship game.  Schools who contact players from other teams will be ineligible for any post-season games, including conference championships, for one year (three years for a second offense in the three year period).  Players who advertise their availability prior to that start date will be ineligible to play for anyone for one year. 

And then there are all those bowl games that nobody has ever heard of unless your team plays in it.  Here’s Curmie’s proposal: no bowl game that includes a major conference team and attracts neither 25,000 fans to the stadium nor a TV rating of 1 (i.e., 1% of television sets in the country are tuned to the game) will continue next year.  Those numbers will be halved—12,500 fans and a rating of .5—for games between Group of 5 teams. 

Games that meet only one of those criteria will be on probation: if they reach the goals next year, great.  If their numbers improve but are still below the threshold, the bowl remains on probation.  If the numbers don’t improve, they’re gone.  No new bowl game can be played within 25 miles of the venue for five years.  (A different bowl in the same city that meets the requirements would be allowed to continue.)

Using TV ratings on Sports Media Watch and attendance figures from Wikipedia, Curmie would therefore cancel the Boca Raton and Fenway Bowls immediately, and place the Birmingham, Camelia, Cure, Famous Idaho Potato, Famous Toastery, Frisco, Hawaii, Independence, Las Vegas, Mobile, Myrtle Beach, and New Mexico Bowls on probation.

Of the five current “All-Star” games, the East-West Shrine Bowl would be allowed to continue because of its charitable cause; the others would be cancelled unless they, too, adopt a recognized charity recipient of the game’s revenues.  Such a charity must not be exclusive in terms of race, sex/gender, religion, etc. 

Even if all of these ideas were to be adopted, college football will never be the same.  Curmie supposes there’s something to be said for being upfront about the corruption of the process, but that seems rather a small consolation.  “Student athletes,” especially in football, will increasingly be regarded as commodities to be bought and sold, in large part because they’re marketing themselves that way.  But until someone comes up with a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the fall, Curmie will probably continue to watch.  Alas.

 

NCAA Football, Part 1: (Some of) The Problems

The college football season ended this week with the Michigan Wolverines convincingly defeating the Washington Huskies, 34-13, in the national championship game.  Curmie admits to being a fan of the sport despite the manifold problems associated with it: corruption, injuries (both acute and chronic), etc.

And this was a particularly good year in some ways, at least for Curmie: Cortland State, the team from the town where Curmie went to high school and where he did a few shows as an actor and technician, won the national championship in Division 3.  Dartmouth, Curmie’s undergrad alma mater, tied for the Ivy League championship.  And Curmie’s PhD school, the Kansas Jayhawks, after years of being a doormat in the Big 12 and a national laughingstock, continued their improvement, finishing 9-4 with a win over traditional power Oklahoma, a bowl victory, and a top-25 ranking at the end of the season.

Ah, Gentle Reader, but the news is not all good.  Indeed, other than the success of teams Curmie cheers for, it’s a disaster.  The head coach of the national champion was suspended for literally half of the regular season for two separate violations; if Michigan keeps cheating like this, the SEC is going to sue for trademark violation.

But ultimately, that’s the least (well, among the least) of our worries.  The combination of the transfer portal and NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals have made the game all but unrecognizable.  The problem isn’t specifically related to football, of course: Curmie watched a basketball game the other night in which the total number of non-freshman “scholarship” players (for both teams combined) who were playing for the team where they started their collegiate career was two, and one of them had committed elsewhere before changing his mind before actually enrolling.

But if unlimited movement weren’t bad enough, the NIL business is worse, not even counting the way the system lends itself to abuse.  Let me count the ways.  First, NIL allows virtually unlimited funding for jocks, meaning that the schools with the most rabid and wealthy fans will always get the best athletes because they can and do offer the most money.  And by “always,” Curmie means both “universally” and “in perpetuity.” 

Second, it devalues those traits the sports are allegedly designed to inculcate: loyalty, perseverance, teamwork, and so on.  Third, it places an inordinant emphasis on so-called “revenue-producing sports,” football and men’s basketball.  We’ll leave aside the observation that for most universities, even—or perhaps especially—these sports are net drains on the school’s financial resources.  Women’s sports are especially overlooked in NIL.

Most importantly, of course, these deals exacerbate the already precipitous decline of the university into what what one quipster has called “a sporting franchise with a side hustle in tertiary education.”  The best high school physics student in the state won’t get as sweet a deal as someone destined to be the backup punter, especially if the latter is a handsome and well-spoken lad.  Even (or, again, perhaps especially) outstanding students with public-facing skillsets—journalists, actors, musicians, et al.—aren’t going to compete with the third-string linebacker.  This is because, not to put too fine a point on it, most universities have dropped even the pretense of caring about excellence within academic disciplines.  They’ll give their often wildly corrupt athletic programs whatever they want, and History, Chemistry, Philosophy, et al., are left to fight over the scraps.

If we want to see the clearest manifestation of the problems with college football, it’s the bowl games.  First off, there are far too many of them.  62% of FBS (i.e., Division 1) teams went to a bowl this year.  How’d that happen if you have to be at least 6-6, you ask?  Well, first off, there were a couple of 5-7 teams that got bowl invitations because there weren’t enough 6-win teams to play in the Ty-D-Bol in Bismarck in January.  (OK, Curmie made that one up, but a baker’s dozen bowl teams ended the season with losing records.)  More frequently, teams became eligible by beating up on the Little Sisters of the Poor.  Those games count towards the necessary six victories, even though no rational person think that a win over Chattanooga or UT-Martin means much to a major conference team.

And some of the games are played in ridiculous locations.  Memphis got a bowl game on their own field this year.  That’s absurd enough, but imagine playing for Georgia State and having a decent year.  Your reward: playing in a 2/3 empty outdoor stadium in Boise in late December.  Or you’re SMU, finish the regular season ranked in the top 25, and get to play in a 2/3 empty baseball stadium in Boston.  Against Boston College.  In late December.  In the morning, Eastern time.  Or, frankly, if you’re any team in about any bowl game that nobody has ever heard of, which is to say most of them.

The biggest problem in these terms, however, was the number of players who “opted out” of their bowl games.  This year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jayden Daniels of LSU, didn’t play.  Neither did last year’s Heisman winner, Caleb Williams of USC.  Ohio State lost their bowl game in part because their starting quarterback and their top receiver (the leading Heisman vote-getter other than quarterbacks) opted out.  Curmie’s beloved Jayhawks played without their best offensive lineman and their best defensive lineman. 

The list goes on and on.  The biggest story, though, was Florida State.  The Seminoles had a reasonable case (see below) that they should have been in the four-team playoff for the national title, but when they didn’t make the cut, players abandoned ship en masse.  Over 30 players, including their top three receivers, best running back, and backup quarterback (their starter was actually injured, so he has an excuse) opted out to enter either the NFL draft or the transfer portal.  Playing a bunch of second- and third-stringers, FSU was crushed by 60 points in the Orange Bowl (oops… sorry) the Capital One Orange Bowl by Georgia, who also had a lot of opt-outs, but nowhere near as many really important ones. 

Curmie is old enough to remember when playing for the team mattered, when a bowl victory, even if “only” a regular bowl game, especially a New Year’s Day game, mattered.  Hell, people two generations younger than Curmie can remember that.  Not anymore.  Particularly despicable are the players—including both Jayhawks mentioned above—who opted out of their team’s bowl game but will play in one of those inane all-star games that will happen over the next couple of weeks.  Guess what: you can get injured in one of them, too.

OK, so about Florida State’s plaint.  One of the big questions about how the playoff teams are chosen is whether the committee was looking for the four best teams or the four most deserving teams.  They managed to choose neither.  Two of the four best teams—Michigan and Alabama—made the cut.  The other two would be Georgia and Ohio State.  The former was the #1 team in the country before losing to Alabama by a single score in the SEC title game; the latter was relegated to #7 (!) because they lost by a single score on the road against the ultimate #1 team.  But they happen to be in the same division of the same conference as Michigan, so they didn’t even compete for the league title, even though they were one of the best four teams in the country.  And “the committee” places a ridiculous amount of emphasis on being a conference champion.  Except, of course, when they don’t care at all (see: FSU).

You want to make a case for Texas?  Curmie will listen.  After all, it took a remarkably stupid strategy by Auburn’s defensive coordinator to keep Bama from picking up a second loss, but picking the Longhorns over the Tide solely because they won a head-to-head game early in the season is downright silly.  Let’s play that game a little further.  Texas lost to Oklahoma, who lost to Kansas, who lost to Texas Tech, who lost to Wyoming… anybody wanna say Wyoming should have been in the playoff?  Texas beat Alabama before the latter had figured out their quarterback situation.  That single game should matter, but not much if the goal is getting the best teams.

More to the point, the committee’s logic is inconsistent.  They claim they want the best teams, but they went with TCU last year.  TCU was one of the four most deserving teams, but not one of the best.  Washington wasn’t one of the best teams this year, either, but they were at least deserving, since they went undefeated and won their conference title game.  Of course, so did Florida State, who beat a ranked Louisville team by double digits on a neutral site behind a third-string quarterback (the second-stringer would have been available for a playoff game).  But with the third-stringer, they “didn’t look like they could win the national title.”  In other words, what’s happening right now is what matters, unless we’re talking about Texas and Alabama, in which case what matters is what happened in early September. 

Curmie could go on, put he’ll spare you, Gentle Reader.

In Part Two: some solutions.

Athletes Are Both the Most Pampered and Most Abused Students; Both Situations Are Getting Worse

The first part of the title above ought to be self-evident. Far too many universities operate as sports franchises with a few academic courses offered on the side. This, despite the fact that most athletic departments lose money despite TV revenue, ticket sales, etc. 

Even average (by intercollegiate standards) athletes are likely to get a full ride: tuition and fees, room and board.  And that’s not counting NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals which often run well over $100,000 a year for even average players in a major sport at a Division I school. High-end programs in football and basketball get bowl games or in-season (or pre-season) trips to tournaments in exotic locales. The best student physicist at the school might get travel money to a conference in Pittsburgh or something like that, but there’s not going to be a lot of hanging out on the beach on someone else’s dime, much less a tuition waiver and a six-figure income. 

NIL also means that at least some elite athletes in football and basketball are shopping their services to the highest bidder. Every time a star player enters the transfer portal and moves to a different university, the accusations pour forth from the new school’s competitors that they’re “buying players.” Some of those allegations are simply sour grapes; many (most?) aren’t. Of course, the practice has existed under the table for decades, but NIL has certainly exacerbated the problem. 

Then, there are the tutors, the luxurious housing, and other forms of special treatment. A goodly number of athletes, of course, wouldn’t be accepted at Duke or Stanford, or even at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople (extra credit if you get that reference, Gentle Reader), if they didn’t have a jump-shot or some equivalent skill in another sport. 

Bolenciecwcz, the dim-witted football star of James Thurber’s “University Days” (1933) who finally is able to name a mode of transportation after professor and fellow students alike prompt him to say “train,” is a satirical construction, of course, but satire works only if there is the ring of truth. And I suspect the scandal at the University of North Carolina a few years back is more likely the tip of the iceberg than an anomaly. 

Curmie has had a number of students in his classes who actually were the “scholar-athletes” the NCAA pretends anyone with an athletic “scholarship” is. There was the multi-year all-conference tennis player who was also a fine student (in her second language!) and an excellent actress (she got a graduate degree and now works for one of the country’s leading regional theatres), the middle-distance runner who missed the Olympic team by a fraction of a second and did quite well in Curmie’s non-major class, the starting safety on the football team who asked for permission to miss class because he would be interviewing with one of the nation’s top med schools (he got in). 

But there are plenty of examples in the other direction, as well. There was the basketball player who couldn’t write a coherent paragraph about literally anything. There was the football player who complained about his grade in an acting course because he had nothing in common with the character I’d given him in a scene; the character was complaining to his professor about his grade. (Sigh.) Another football player whispered disgusting sexual advances to one of the women in an acting class when I was working with other students. (He came to regret that.) 

My… erm… “favorite,” though, was the star football player who missed about a half dozen more classes than department policy allowed. There were three hour-exams in the course: he got a D on one and failed the other two. He didn’t write either of the required short papers, and he got something like a 31 on the final exam. He subsequently showed up at my office, position coach in tow, to protest his failing grade because one (yes, just one) of his absences should have been excused. His excuse: he was in court… being convicted of an E felony. (Sigh.) 

All that said, it would be easy to make a case that athletes, especially those in sports other than football and basketball, are the most exploited students on campus. Unless, like LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne, what you’re selling is that you look great in a bikini or a miniskirt, you’re not going to get as good an NIL deal as the backup quarterback does. Plus, most sports require that you’ll play more than a dozen or so games; baseball and softball, for example, generally have about 50 games in a regular season. That means, among other things, more road games, and that means more travel, more time out of class, etc. 

The situation is exacerbated enormously by conference re-alignments. Back in the Dark Ages when Curmie was in college, conferences were aligned geographically: schools in the Atlantic Coast Conference were located (wait for it) along the Atlantic coast, the Southeastern Conference was in the southeast, and so on. The Big 10 was in the northern Midwest, and the Big 8 was a little further south and a little further west. 

Rivalries usually centered on proximity: Pittsburgh against West Virginia, Washington against Washington State, Oklahoma against Oklahoma State, and so on. Some rivalries were sport-specific, like Syracuse against Georgetown in basketball. As of about a year from now, none of those pairs of teams will be in the same conference. At the most personal level, this may be the greatest cost of the wholesale shuffling of conferences. Those intense rivalries are part of the fabric of intercollegiate sports. Their prospective demise saddens me. 

Schools moving from conference to conference is nothing new, of course; I can’t think of any conference other than the Ivy League that hasn’t changed at least somewhat in the time since I was an undergrad. But the last couple of years, especially the last few weeks, have been insane. Last year Oklahoma and Texas, two really big names in college athletics, announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC; fans feared for the future of the former conference, which was now down to eight schools. The league responded by adding four new teams to get back to being the Big 12. 

But a few weeks ago UCLA and USC, the two biggest names in the Pac 12, announced that they’ll be joining the Big 10 starting next fall. And then the floodgates opened. The Big 10 and Big 12 have cannibalized the Pac 12, which as of now will be down to four schools come next fall, and one would have to believe that those programs are currently considering their options. And the SEC has its eyes on the two highest profile programs in the ACC (at least in football), Clemson and Florida State. Note that the long-term excellence of Duke and North Carolina in basketball is borderline irrelevant. Nary a women’s team matters in the slightest in this calculus. 

All of this is about one sport, football, and one thing, money. This is aggravated by the fact that universities in general seem incapable of understanding that both income and expenses matter. If it’s a famous faculty member whose presence attracts a handful of tuition-paying new students a year: “look at all the money we’re spending on this guy!” If, on the other hand, it’s going to increase travel costs for sports teams by literally millions of dollars, it’s “look at this spiffy TV deal.” 

So now we turn to the University of Missouri’s head football coach, Eli Drinkwitz (that’s him in the photo), who notes that all of these decisions seem to ignore other sports than his own. He wonders aloud, “did we count the cost for the student-athletes involved in this decision?” The answer to his semi-rhetorical question is “OF COURSE NOT.” 

One of Curmie’s mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.” And the NCAA sure does tell us a lot about how much they care about “scholar-athletes.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows it’s all what my mom would call “balloon juice” (I might opt instead for a term suggesting bovine fecal matter). The NCAA has never, ever, cared about anything but itself, its self-image, and its power. Students? Fans? Who? Alas, too many universities are following their lead. 

Drinkwitz cites three really significant facts. First, an inevitable result of conference realignment is lack of sleep for the athletes, the number one cause of mental health issues. He mentions baseball and softball: “They travel commercial. They get done playing at 4:00, they gotta get to the airport, they come back, it’s 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, they gotta go to class? I mean, did we ask any of them?” 

He also points to tweets (Curmie is still going to call them that) that the reason a number of students chose their school is so their parents didn’t have to travel to see them on the road. Asks Drinkwitz, “Did we ask them if they wanted to travel from the east coast to the west coast?” Again, OF COURSE NOT. He doesn’t mention other students at their university, but that’s part of the deal, too. You just might want to see your best friend or significant other play their sport. 

Back when there were, you know, ten teams in the Big 10, the greatest distance between two conference teams was 644 miles. Next year, it will be 2686 miles, over 2000 miles more. When there was a Big 8, the longest distance between schools was 747 miles. It will soon be 2320 miles; make that 3125 if, as rumored, Oregon State also joins the Big 12. Having driven a round-trip from Texas to New Hampshire last summer (a mere 1742 miles, one-way), Curmie can attest that 2000+ miles seems like a rather long commute. 

And it’s not just the big conferences. The university where I taught for a couple of decades joined a new conference recently. It’s now 2379 miles to one of our new conference foes… in an FCS (1-AA) league. This is insane. 

Someone on social media noted also that these huge distances will make it more difficult to recruit athletes in sports other than football and (maybe) basketball. Who wants to play softball for UCLA if you’re going to have to travel to New Jersey to play Rutgers? Maybe Long Beach or San Diego State start looking more attractive. Good. 

Finally, Drinkwitz points out that the athletes most directly responsible for giving the universities the ability to get those multi-million-dollar TV contracts don’t share in the profits.  They have restrictions placed on them; “the adults in the room” can do as they please.

There is one advantage to conference re-alignment, of course. Because the University of Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC a few years ago, they are no longer the arch-rival of my beloved Kansas Jayhawks (I got my PhD at KU). I am therefore no longer duty-bound to despise all things Mizzou, and can, if I might borrow Jack Marshall’s term, declare Eli Drinkwitz an Ethics Hero.

This essay was first published in the Curmie’s Conjectures series of guest posts on Ethics Alarms.  Some minor stylistic changes have been made here, but the argument is unchanged.  As with earlier posts of this type, there are likely to be more comments there than here.  So head there... or don’t... as you will, Gentle Reader.