NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes

NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes

An Amateurism That Never Was

  • Autor: Southall, Richard M.; Nagel, Mark S.; Staurowsky, Ellen J.; Karcher, Richard T.; Maxcy, Joel G.
  • Editor: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781643363776
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781643363790
  • Lloc de publicació:  South Carolina , United States
  • Any de publicació digital: 2023
  • Mes: Maig
  • Pàgines: 356
  • Idioma: Anglés

A well-constructed and reasoned debunking of the mythology of amateurism in for-profit NCAA athletics

For the last 60-plus-years, as the revenue-generating capacity of Power Five football and men's basketball has dramatically increased, NCAA Division I Power Five football and men's basketball players (college profit-athletes) have been economically exploited, their labor has been severely restricted. To mask this inequity, the NCAA and its members created, disseminated, and embedded a fictitious "collegiate model of athletics" established and repeatedly modified for the benefit of member schools, designed to ensure profit-athletes were denied employment status and just compensation for their athletic labor.

The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes: An Amateurism That Never Was provides a comprehensive historical, sociological, legal, financial, and managerial argument for the reclassification of profit-athletes as employees. Such a reclassification would permit profit-athletes to gain not only fair financial compensation but also equal access to educational benefits that have been promised but systematically denied.

The authors trace how Power Five college sports have morphed into a hyper professionalized and commercialized sport–business enterprise. They provide evidence that at least since 1956 the NCAA's amateurism has been a collusive, exploitative, and racialized "pay for play" scheme that disproportionately affects Black profit-athletes. The authors cut through the institutional doublespeak of approved benefits, cost-of-attendance stipends, or name, image, likeness (NIL) collectives to lay bare the immorality of Power Five college sports.

The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes makes the case that profit-athletes (and their representatives) must have the right to unionize and freely negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with management (e.g., NCAA, Power Five conferences and athletic departments). In addition, this book offers a forward-thinking structure in which individual labor contracts, or a potential collective bargaining agreement, address profit-athlete compensation and working conditions.

  • Cover
  • The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • CONTENTS
  • Preface The NCAA’s Scholarly Colloquium: An Aborted Attempt at Purchasing College Sport Research
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Big-Time College Sport Is Big Business
  • PART I College Athletes Have Always Been Paid
    • An Amateurism That Never Was
    • Some College Athletes Are Employees: Lessons Learned from Professional Sport Labor
    • Power Five Football and Men’s Basketball: At the Center of It All
    • Challenging the NCAA’s Collegiate Model Paradigm
  • PART II Legal and Economic Realities of Big-Time College Sports
    • The Legal Status of College Athletes as Employees under Workers’ Compensation and Labor Laws
    • Northwestern Football, Unionization Efforts, and the NLRB’s Decision Not to Exercise Jurisdiction
    • Title IX, College Athlete Employment, and the Politics of Destruction
    • College Sport Workplace Economics: Suppressing Player Compensation to Increase Profits
  • PART III Power Five College Sport Today
    • The Exploitation of Power Five Profit-Athletes: Paternalism, Patriarchy, and Racialization
    • The End of the Beginning of the End?
  • Contributors
  • Index