I recently walked away from a town hall session sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists scratching my bald head. I was miffed and a bit bemused to hear panelists conclude that it was probably unreasonable to think about paying college athletes.
Their rationale was the same I have heard echoed by others who argue that the biggest challenge to the proposition is rooted in issues of equity.
The argument goes something like this: If colleges start paying football players, who have advocated for pay, they must pay other athletes at the same level because the law – presumably Title IX – demands equal treatment of all athletes.
On the surface, this line of reasoning sounds somewhat reasonable. But when one digs beneath the surface and looks at the issue in light of how the real world operates, it is a classic case of a false equivalence.
I frankly believe it is time out for using this trite and baseless line of reasoning to defend a system that essentially allows college sports programs – especially the “big” ones – to use certain athletes to make millions and millions of dollars while depriving them of any right to share in the revenues or gain any immediate financial benefit from their efforts.
Some argue that athletes typically receive scholarships to pay for their educations, and that should be enough. Some have even argued that allowing colleges to pay athletes would give larger schools an unfair advantage, as if they don’t already have one.
It is a tale of modern-day sharecropping, not much different from what Southern planters did to African-American farm hands for many years. Plantation owners often offered them shacks to live in on their properties and very menial wages in exchange for hard labor that earned many owners much wealth and, with it, power. It was not a righteous system then, and it is not a righteous system now.
