paying college athletes
Maurice Clarett is Back on the Field
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, The Coalition for Black Male Athletes, Syracuse University Scholarship in Action
Maurice Clarrett, the embattled former superstar of the Ohio State Buckeyes, is getting another chance to play football. Clarett just signed a one-year deal to play for the Omaha Nighthawks in the United Football League. This is the first time Clarett has put on a football uniform since spending three and a half years in prison for having a hidden gun and holding up a couple outside a night club.
"I am humbled by the opportunity the Omaha Nighthawks have given me and will dedicate myself on and off the field to prove that I can be a valuable member of the team and the Omaha community," Clarett said. "I am committed to working hard to earn the right for a second chance in football and more importantly in life."
Clarett is now 6-feet tall, 220 pounds, which makes him 10 pounds lighter than he was when he played at Ohio State. The coaches were astonished at his physical shape, giving him credit for keeping himself prepared. He is allowed to be out of the state for 30 days at a time, but his attorneys are hoping that a judge will rule that Clarett can leave the state for the entire football season. He is now 26-years old, meaning that he is at his physical peak.
Nigel Carr, Florida State and Felonies Galore
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Scholarship in Action Resident at the Institute for Black Public Policy
Nigel Carr was expected to start for the Florida State Seminoles at linebacker this season. Those plans are probably going to be altered, now that Carr faces a slew of felonies related to burglaries he allegedly committed this week.
According to Tallahassee police, Carr burglarized a parked SUV, stealing the victim’s book bag that contained her purse and other valuables. Carr allegedly dumped the items into a nearby trash can and police say they found the victim’s credit card on the floor board of a vehicle being driven by Carr.
Surprisingly, Carr is also a suspect in another car burglary on campus and faces charges from alleged marijuana possession. His career is in serious jeopardy and may likely be coming to an end.
I am not sure what the reasoning might be behind this alleged incident, assuming that the police version of the facts are accurate. Nearly any crime involving a college athlete on the weekend or at night makes me wonder if alcohol or drugs were involved. Carr’s charges for marijuana possession lead me to suspect that this is a strong possibility. For some reason, we’ve fed our young people a set of beliefs that create a culture of substance abuse as a fundamental part of college life. As my daughter prepares for college, I make it clear to her that she should be strong enough to not follow the crowd. I am not one to tell her to refrain from alcohol consumption, but I let her know that college can be a blast without risking rape, illness, incarceration or death, which occurs each year in alcohol-related incidents across the country. While we can’t say that substance abuse played a role in the Carr case, this point should be made nonetheless.
Nick Saban: Are You Really Calling SOMEONE ELSE a Pimp?
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, The Institute for Black Public Policy
University of Alabama coach Nick Saban has made a serious mistake in terminology. During a recent press conference, Saban was asked to respond to NCAA investigations involving one of his players, Marcell Dareus. Dareus allegedly attended a party that was sponsored by a sports agent, which would be an NCAA violation.
Saban then referred to sports agents as "pimps," complaining about how they are determined to undermine the sanctity of college sports by giving the athletes money or expensive gifts. In light of the fact that Saban felt the need to use such harsh language, I thought I might help him to assess what it truly means to be a pimp.
A pimp is someone who does the following:
A Case for NCAA Reform: Dr. Boyce Watkins, Billy Hawkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins - The Institute of Black Public Policy
I wrote about a new book regarding the NCAA’s alleged exploitation of black athletes, written by University of Georgia Professor Billy Hawkins. In his recently-released book, “The New Plantation,” Hawkins goes out of his way to help us understand that the method by which the NCAA does business is not much different from the mindset of plantation owners of the old south.
The analogies used by Professor Hawkins are thought-provoking and appear to be alarmist at first glance. After all, citizens are commonly comparing nearly every modern-day injustice to slavery in order to make a dramatic point. But in this case, the analogies are appropriate, in large part because slavery is not a dichotomy. Instead, it is actually a continuum, with complete freedom on one end and total servitude on the other. One could even argue that slaves themselves were not completely devoid of freedom, since they could have always chosen to run away, buy their freedom, maim themselves or even commit suicide as a way to escape their condition. The point of this very grim example is not to say that slavery was not entirely horrific; rather, it is to say that something does not have to be entirely horrific to be compared to slavery.
NBA Gets Good Marks on Diversity
To view the entire report card for the NBA on race and gender, Please click here
Highlights from the Report (released by the press representative for the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport):
· In the NBA, 82 percent of the players were people of color, remaining constant from last year’s totals. This ties the highest percentage of players of color since the 1994-95 season. The percentage of African-American players also remained constant from last year’s report at 77 percent. The percentage of Latinos and Asians remained constant, at three and one percent respectively. The percentage of international players stayed steady as well at 18 percent.
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Your News: NCAA Gets Another 11 billion off athletes’ families
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is expanding, starting next season, but not on the large scale once expected.
The sport’s signature event will grow to 68 teams from 65 in conjunction with a new 14-year, nearly $11 billion television agreement with CBS and Turner Sports announced Thursday. That gives the NCAA a 41% hike in annual media and marketing rights connected to the tournament — and "financial stability through the first quarter of this century," interim President Jim Isch said — without the controversy of a more dramatic move to a 96-team bracket.
Negotiations with CBS/Turner, ESPN and Fox Sports initially had targeted a 96-team field, drawing concern and criticism from traditionalists and others over the impact on the tournament’s aesthetics, effect on college basketball’s regular season and conference tournaments and potential for further intrusion on players’ time and studies.
March Madness: The Billion Dollar Sweatshop
I was invited this week to speak to the Stanford University NAACP about whether or not college athletes should be paid. When I am asked whether I think college athletes should be compensated for their labor, I simply respond to the question with another question: “Why shouldn’t they get paid? Did they not earn the money? Is someone else earning money from their labor? Is the labor of the athlete essential to the revenue-generating process?” Answers to these questions help us to understand how insane it is that athletes earn billions of dollars for coaches, but aren’t entitled to any of that money for themselves. I’ve seen race horses get better deals than that.
Should College Athletes Be Paid?
From Your Black World, AOL Black Voices
Dr. Boyce Watkins, faculty affiliate at The College Sport Research Institute, is going to speak to the Stanford NAACP on Wednesday, March 3. The topic of the conversation will be “Does the NCAA Represent an Opportunity or Exploitation?”
Dr. Watkins is one of the leading authorities on NCAA compensation. He has advocated for college athletes to be paid, and founded the group ALARM: The Athlete Liberation and Academic Reform Movement. He is also the founder of the Your Black World Coalition, with 60,000 members nation-wide.
Is Tiger Woods Being Selfish by holding his press conference?
Tiger Woods is planning to have the press conference of the year tomorrow, during which he will talk about his past, present and future. He will be in the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. He is not going to answer questions and the world will be watching. All three major networks are planning to tune in and for just 30 minutes, you may as well call him Tiger Obama, given that his speech is getting the same attention at the State of the Union Address.
Ernie Els, one of Tiger’s arch rivals on the golf course (if Tiger has any rivals), is lining himself up to be one of the first men to attack Woods for his choices.
"It’s selfish," Els told Golfweek. "You can write that. I feel sorry for the sponsor. Mondays are a good day to make statements, not Friday. This takes a lot away from the golf tournament."
NCAA Anti-Trust Lawsuit Continues
A district court judge in San Francisco on Monday denied theN.C.A.A.’s motion for dismissal in a class-action lawsuit headed by the former U.C.L.A. basketball star Ed O’Bannon. The ruling leaves the N.C.A.A.’s licensing contracts open to discovery.
O’Bannon’s lawyers filed the antitrust suit in July, claiming that former athletes should be compensated for the use of their images and likenesses in television advertisements, video games and on apparel. They said Monday’s ruling was an important first step.
“This is a truly historic day — to our knowledge, no one has ever gotten behind the scenes to examine how student-athletes’ current and future rights in their images are divided up and sold,” said Jon T. King of Hausfeld LLP, one of the lead lawyers representing O’Bannon.
News: USC Bans Itself Over OJ Mayo
USC coach Kevin O’Neill assembled his players early Sunday morning to deliver the news that the Trojans’ eight-game win streak and their newfound status as a Pac-10 title contender won’t matter for an NCAA tournament berth.
The school had decided to self-impose penalties related to former player O.J. Mayo and his relationship with agent/runner/booster Rodney Guillory. But vacated wins from two seasons ago and a scholarship being taken away weren’t tangible to this crew. Having their season end March 7 was all the players heard.
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Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images
O.J. Mayo’s involvement with Rodney Guillory led to USC’s self-imposed sanctions, including a postseason ban.
"My heart sank for a second," said senior point guard Mike Gerrity, a two-time Division I transfer from Pepperdine to Charlotte to USC. "I was frustrated. That’s what you play college basketball for — to play in March."
The Trojans haven’t lost since Gerrity became eligible. Since beating Sacramento State and Idaho State before he was cleared to play Dec. 18, they’ve won six games with him as their lead guard. They beat Tennessee by 22 points, won the Diamond Head Classic with wins over Western Michigan, Saint Mary’s and UNLV, then earned a Pac-10 season-opening home sweep of Arizona and Arizona State. The Trojans are on a roll heading into a three-game road swing to Stanford, Cal and UCLA in the next 12 days.
NCAA is the Great Scam of the 21st Century
Read More: Education, Florida State University, Football, NCAA, Seminoles, Sports, Student, University
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According to the ESPN Show "Outside the Lines," the Florida State Seminoles appear to be about everything except education.
In order to win games and make millions, football players are having their majors chosen for them, and many athletes are being conveniently misdiagnosed as learning disabled. One recent episode stated that one-half of all Florida State University football players and three-fourths of their African-American athletes are Social Science majors (indicative of major clustering). One of the academic counselors said that when she started her tenure, there were 15 football players tagged as learning disabled. That number has since spiked to 65.
When the allegations were released, Florida State University started backpedaling faster than an NFL defensive back. The NCAA has done its usual grandstanding, detaching itself from the Seminoles, as if this doesn’t also happen at nearly every other campus under its domain.
But the truth is that this behavior is not uncommon. If you think that Florida State University is the only NCAAschool to engage in such destructive and irresponsible behavior, then you need to be educated on how many campuses now do business. College athletes, many of them African-American, are brought to college as hired guns, under the guise of getting an education. The entire charade is sustained for the sake of helping the NCAAmaintain its multi-billion dollar professional sports league.
Yes, I said professional, not amateur. Any league that earns money on par with the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB is a professional sports league. NCAA coaches, commentators and administrators - mostly white - earn six and seven figure salaries while simultaneously robbing athletes of their educations, their futures, and the money that they and their families have earned. In order to avoid paying taxes on their revenue, the NCAA spends millions on marketing to convince us that their multi-million dollar corporate extravaganzas are polite little weekend activities that students barely remember to keep on their schedules. All the while, Tyrone Smith attends four years of college and doesn’t even learn how to read.
For the NCAA, the educational mission of their professional sports league is one of the great scams of the 20th and 21st centuries, no different from the Ponzi schemes of Bernie Madoff. It is a convenient illusion, like Tiger’s wife using the golf club to "save him from a car accident."
Black Coaches Finally Getting NCAA Football Jobs
The executive director of the Black Coaches and Administrators, Floyd Keith, said Monday that he is encouraged by the quick hirings of three black head coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision, increasing the number from seven to 10.
"Let’s keep it in perspective," Keith said. "But it’s a positive. Finally — as long as we’ve been involved — I don’t ever recall this early there being such a positive response. And I think that number may even increase in the next few days."
On Monday, Virginia hired Richmond’s Mike London. Recently, Western Kentucky hired Stanford running backs coach Willie Taggart and Memphis hired LSU running backs backs coach Larry Porter.
“
When coaches have had the opportunity, they’ve had success. In recent Super Bowls, there have been black head coaches and they have been winners.
”– Floyd Keith, executive director
of the Black Coaches & Administrators
Buffalo coach Turner Gill is interviewing with Kansas, a source close to the situation said Monday. And Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong has interviewed with Louisville.
"Maybe after years of there being talented individuals out there, there are some open-minded presidents and athletic directors who are saying, ‘Hey, I’m familiar with this guy. Maybe he’d be a good fit here,’" Keith said. "When coaches have had the opportunity, they’ve had success. In recent Super Bowls, there have been black head coaches and they have been winners."
NCAA May Select a Black President
By the end of this week, the NCAA may start the process of joining the rest of the country in making history. Nearly a year after American voters elected the nation’s first black president, the association that runs college sports may be poised to select the first black man to run one of the country’s major sports organizations.
The NCAA’s Executive Committee is slated to meet this Thursday at the organization’s headquarters in Indianapolis, and is expected to choose a firm to help in its search to find a successor to Myles Brand, the former president, who died last month.
Among the contenders is Dr. Bernard Franklin, a former president of four schools, most notably Virginia Union. Franklin, who was hired for the NCAA by Brand, currently serves as the organization’s executive vice president for membership and student-athlete affairs.
Franklin’s ascendance would not only zoom the NCAA past the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA in terms of moving an African-American into a chief executive post, but would send a powerful message to university and college presidents, who could desperately use it. (It bears noting that African-American James Frank, of Lincoln University, previously served as the NCAA’s president. However, that title was given to elected officials from individual schools, while the post of executive director went to the full-time chief executive officer.)
You have a much better chance of finding subtlety in a Tyler Perry movie than you do of spotting an African-American football coach or athletic director - often two of the most powerful positions on a college campus - at the nation’s biggest colleges.
NCAA in a Legal Battle over Video Rights with NFL
The NFL’s college advisory committee may find it next to impossible to render informed opinions on the readiness of juniors who are potential 2010 draft prospects because the league has been locked in a multi-million dollar standoff with a Boston-area company that produces and disseminates digitized content of NCAA games for eight major conferences, league sources told SI.com.
According to those sources, XOS Technologies, based in Billerica, Mass., requested the NFL pay a rights fee between $20 million and $30 million for a multi-year commitment to electronically receive the coaches’ tape content for itself and its 32 teams. That content — which shows the entire alignment of both the offense and defense on each play, shot from the end zone — was formerly supplied free of charge in video tape form by schools as a mutually beneficial consideration between the NFL and NCAA. That’s changed now.
Contacted by SI.com on Friday, XOS chief executive officerRandy Ecckersaid his company made the rights fee request to the NFL in August on behalf of the conferences it represents, and that XOS is no longer involved in the discussions between the league and the eight conference commissioners. NFL officials reached by SI.com declined comment.
Read more:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/football/nfl/10/23/xos.nfl/index.html#ixzz0UoWqx6Tn
The Third Strike in Kentucky Basketball Shame
The video is out there, and we’ll see it someday. It’ll show Billy Gillispie, months removed from leading the famous Kentucky basketball program, in an orange jumpsuit — the kind worn by the prisoners picking up garbage on the highway. The video will show Gillispie in that jumpsuit, being arraigned last week on charges of driving while intoxicated.
Already the mug shot is out there, and it’s startling enough. It shows Gillispie with puffy, heavy eyes. He looks 10 years older. He looks 20 pounds heavier. He looks drunk.
Billy Gillispie’s mug shot from his most recent drunken driving arrest. (AP)
Still, I submit the following: I submit that Gillispie is one of the luckiest SOB’s around.
If he was going to get arrested for DUI — and this being Gillispie, he was going to get arrested for DUI eventually — last week was the best week possible. It came shortly after two enormous basketball stories had already broken in that state. Just one week earlier, the NCAA had taken away the 2008 Final Four banner from Memphis and the former Memphis coach who replaced Gillispie at Kentucky, John Calipari. And that came after the revelation that current Louisville (and former Kentucky) coach Rick Pitino had a one-dinner stand with a woman who accused him of raping her, impregnating her, marrying her off to his personal assistant and then paying for the abortion.
U. Michigan Football and “Voluntary” Workouts – The Whistle Gets Blown
Ask University of Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez about Mike Barwis, and the superlatives will flow.
“He’s my guy,” Rodriguez told the Free Press in the summer of 2008. “I won’t go anywhere without him.”
Barwis has been Rodriguez’s strength and conditioning coach for six years — four at West Virginia University, two at Michigan. The 46-year-old Rodriguez, entering his second season at U-M, has said Barwis might be even more important than Rodriguez’s assistant coaches because of all the time Barwis spends working with players.
But how much time is too much?
The NCAA, which governs college athletics, has strict limits on how much time coaches can require players to spend on their sport. But Rodriguez’s team has routinely broken the rules since he took over in January 2008, people inside the program told the Free Press.
Dr Boyce and Wilmer Leon speak on the NCAA Lawsuit
Dr. Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University and Dr. Wilmer Leon of Howard University speak about the NCAA class action lawsuit. The NCAA is being sued for illegal use of player images. What do you think? Should the NCAA start paying players?
Tennessee Running Back Has Eligibility Questioned
Tennessee is trying to make one final plea on behalf of freshman running back Bryce Brown with the hope of keeping him from missing any games this season.
The NCAA has been investigating his amateur status dating back to his high school days in Wichita, Kan., and Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton said Wednesday that the NCAA has handed down its initial ruling.
Tennessee isn’t saying for sure what that ruling is, but it sounds like Brown could be suspended for a game or two and have to make restitution for any funds or extra benefits he might have received back in high school as part of his relationship with his adviser, Brian Butler.
Tennessee officials have gone out of their way to clarify that the Vols aren’t under investigation. This issue deals with Brown’s amateur status and goes back to before Tennessee was even recruiting him.
The whole thing has weighed heavily on Brown and angered Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin, who feels that Brown is being singled out.
Calipari Found Cheating – Kentucky Coach Must Give Back 38 wins
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP)—Memphis will be forced to vacate the record 38 victories from its Final Four season of 2007-08 under former coach John Calipari because of NCAA violations, The Commercial Appeal reported.
The newspaper, citing an unidentified source close to the situation, said on its Web site Wednesday night the NCAA will release findings of its investigation Thursday. The Commercial Appeal said it was unaware of any penalties beyond this season.
The NCAA investigated whether someone took the SAT exam for a player on that Final Four team. Memphis was notified of potential violations in January and met with the governing body in June.
The NCAA has said an unknown person took the college entrance exam for a player—with his knowledge—and that the player used it to get admitted. The governing body says the athlete played for the Tigers only in the 2007-08 season and the 2008 NCAA tournament. Just one person fits that description: Derrick Rose, the Chicago Bulls’ No. 1 overall draft pick in 2008 and its rookie of the year.
March Has Become Monopoly Madness – New York Times
Every March, college basketball fans have been primed to experience one of the world’s most powerful monopolies — the N.C.A.A. tournament. This event, which is enjoying a $6 billion, 11-year agreement with CBS, has become the poster child for commercialism in college sports and all of its adverse consequences on student athletes. What most fans don’t realize, however, is that the N.C.A.A. tournament did not acquire, and does not maintain, its monopoly fairly. It does so through a set of anticompetitive rules that force all invited schools, under pain of severe penalty, to participate only in the N.C.A.A. tournament and to boycott any competing events. This was not always the case.
Once upon a time, the National Invitation Tournament, which is older than the N.C.A.A. tournament and culminates every year in Madison Square Garden, provided strong competition to the N.C.A.A. tournament and attracted many of the top teams in the country. In 1950, for example, City College of New York played in and won both tournaments.
In 1962, Loyola, Mississippi State, Dayton, the University of Houston and St. John’s all chose to participate in the N.I.T. rather than accept invitations to the N.C.A.A. tournament. In 1970, Marquette, one of the best teams in the nation that year, chose to go to the N.I.T. over the N.C.A.A. tournament, which provoked an outcry by the powers that ran the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Dr Billy Hawkins: Black Athletes are Driving Ms. Daisy
Dr. Billy Hawkins, University of Georgia
Excerpts from the forthcoming book – The New Plantation: The Internal Colonization of Black Male Athletes
It should not take a long stretch of the imagination to see how Black male athletes contribute significantly to the athletic labor class at predominantly White National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Institutions (PWI’s); thus, to the overall bottom-line of the revenue generated. Their presence as starters and their representation on the top football and basketball programs in the country speak volumes to PWI’s need for Black male athletes. Tables 1 &2 illustrate the contribution Black male athletes make for some of the top athletic programs in the nation.
Within this current economic configuration, another area to consider is the contribution Black male athletes are making towards “Title IX sports”[1]: those sports that are added to meet gender equity requirements, which undoubtedly are played mostly by White women (e.g. rifle, golf, equestrian, rowing, bowling, and lacrosse). According to Welch Suggs:
…Only 2.7 percent of women receiving scholarships to play all other sports at predominantly white colleges in Division I are black. Yet those are precisely the sports – golf, lacrosse, and soccer, as well as rowing – that colleges have been adding to comply with Title IX.[2]
Therefore, since Title IX has provided very limited opportunity for Black females but additional opportunities for White women to compete and Black male athletes make-up the greater percentage of the revenue generating sports that contribute to athletic departments’ revenue, and thus their ability to support these additional sports, a reoccurring historical relationship between the White female and Black male has been resurrected. I refer to this contribution and connection as the “Driving Miss Daisy” syndrome.
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Paying College Athletes
