BSM Writers
It’s Time To Pay College Football Players
“Exploited for too long, athletes are fighting back — if not opting out or walking out — amid coronavirus fears and bullying cultures in a multi-billion-dollar sport that doesn’t pay them wages.”
Pay them.
Two words, one period, zero room for debate.
And if the dictatorial cavemen who’ve ruled college football prefer to keep intimidating and abusing players instead of rewarding them, maybe they should pause amid the introspective zen of 2020 and ask, “Exactly why am I making millions of dollars to coach 20-year-olds on a 100-by-53-yard field? How did I get here?’’
In extreme times when pivoting is the mission and common sense is the lantern, the mood is right for a pandemic-year trial of compensating players with salaries. If only the powers-that-be had pondered that earlier, before players began opting out — and threatening to walk out — amid coronavirus fears and bullying cultures in a multi-billion-dollar sport that doesn’t pay them wages. The establishment feels the roil of activism and is responding in full pushback mode, engaging players in power tug-of-wars as the likes of Nick Rolovich and Gary Patterson join the Insufferable Tyrants Club. We even have creepy, meat-on-the-hoof allegations at Colorado State, where players say they were told to ignore virus protocols and not report possible symptoms while warned of reduced playing time if they test positive.
Exploitation? Extortion? Attempted murder?
The college ecosystem always has treated players as unpaid labor. But for once, athletes have the leverage to not only fight back but shut down a season via mass defections. Revolution is in the air like never before, and if the sport wants to pocket its usual billions this season — assuming there is one — the system finally will find a way of paying players and honoring their glaring concerns about COVID-19, social injustice and coaching bullies.
The establishment isn’t asking too much from the help, only to engage in close-contact violence amid the ongoing virus ravages so Brinks-loads of money — pause for Mike Gundy reference — can be “run through’’ states, local economies, universities, TV networks and the nine bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms of head coaches’ mansions. Every hour of every day for months, thousands of young men would be directly exposed to the virus throughout the season, at home and in road travel fraught with hotspots. This time, contrary to a past that has resisted pay for play, the athletes should be rewarded handsomely for absorbing massive, potentially life-altering health risks. The question isn’t whether virus outbreaks are inevitable in college cultures, but how many are waiting to explode like wildfires during games and practices and on campuses. LSU, Clemson, Michigan State, Rutgers — I’ve already lost track of the infection clusters that have blitzed programs and/or halted workouts — and this is the right time, I suppose, to mention the outbreak across USC’s fraternity row.
You know my sentiment about starting a college football season now. When it’s hard enough fathoming the resumption of sports — inside Bubbles or in the unprotected outdoors, amid America’s ever-rising death toll and economic ruin — no one in good conscience should send unpaid lads into a 24/7 continuum of COVID. It’s no stretch to compare it with shipping young people off to war. We pray that the University of Connecticut is the clear-thinking forerunner here, the first of many — or preferably, all — Football Bowl Subdivision teams to cancel a season because of the pandemic.
“The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptable level of risk,” said David Benedict, the school’s athletic director. “The necessary measures needed to mitigate risk of football student-athletes contracting the coronavirus are not conducive to delivering an optimal experience for our team.”
The decision was supported by UConn players, who said in a statement released through the university: “We came to campus in the beginning of July knowing there would be challenges presented by the pandemic, but it is apparent to us now that these challenges are impossible to overcome. … Not enough is known about the potential long term effects of contracting (the virus).’’
Thank you. And thank you to Division II and Division III programs that canceled fall sports championships for the same reason. But UConn, while it plays on the sport’s highest level, is not a Power Five program. In fact, it opted out because those elite conferences have canceled games against smaller fries such as UConn, which won’t receive lucrative accompanying checks. Keep your eye on one big number as the Power Five continues to power through with daily updates on reduced, wishful-thinking schedules: $4 billion. That’s the fortune at stake this season … and why smart people, from university presidents to broadcast executives, continue to be stubborn and dumb about pushing on, preferring to believe President Trump when he says the virus “will go away like things go away.’’
Such as Trump, perhaps, come early November.
It’s possible the strongest and ablest would carry on independently in limited conference blocs, with decisions to play determined by each school. Said NCAA president Mark Emmert to the Associated Press: “You have to look at the huge variability around the country. When you look at what are the facts on the ground in Syracuse, N.Y., versus Miami, Fla., they’re very, very different. And those schools are going to have to operate consistent with local municipal policies, state policies, federal policies, and then also whatever they decide collectively in the conference. So it really isn’t the time where you can say we’ll have one rule to govern all of football.’’
At least Major League Baseball players are paid as they impossibly try to avoid the evil droplets. The NBA, NHL and other leagues functioning well inside restrictive environments are protecting athletes AND paying them. NFL players would be playing in the same three-hour-plus Petri dish, but they’re armed with a collective bargaining agreement and a union. Yes, I realize they’re all professionals. And I realize the college kids do receive full scholarships, stipends, facilities, housing, eventual licensing benefits and built-in advantages of influential alumni/boosters who live vicariously through them and sometimes slip them, um, you know, sweet nothings.
Nonetheless, 2020 is the boiling point, especially when a successful coach such as Patterson — celebrated for reviving football excellence at Texas Christian — uses the n-word in practice to prove a point about not using the n-word. In this century, there is no room for despots who traffic in cruel, oppressive behavior when the players aren’t even paid. Actually, the coaches should be begging them at this point. Athletic departments will be devastated without football. ESPN, which literally owns and operates the sport, will lose more than $1 billion in advertising and rights payments. College towns, such as the Dabo-dependent village of Clemson, S.C., will be financially and spiritually gutted without games and Trevor Lawrence’s long locks. Paul Finebaum will have no one to piss off.
None of this is going to happen without the players. They know it, too, aware they’re holding unprecedented leverage in an ancient squabble. And that it makes no medical sense for studs to play in a pandemic — Caleb Farley and Rashod Bateman have opted out, with Lawrence and Justin Fields possibly to follow — when NFL riches await. The driving forces of American life — the virus and social justice activism — are empowering players to make demands in a rights movement organized in the Pac-12 conference and still capable, as the season twists in limbo, of raging to other leagues. Athletes are tired of being viewed as servants in a multi-billion-dollar racket. And they’ll no longer tolerate even hints of racism in an industry dominated mostly by wealthy white men, many of whom lord over programs, campuses and entire regions.
As Black Lives Matter dominates sports culture, college football has its own related backlash. The Pac-12 unity group is threatening to boycott the season if 17 demands aren’t satisfied, almost all involving the virus, racial inequality and a redistribution of football revenues. “We believe a football season under these conditions would be reckless and put us at needless risk,” the group, numbering in the hundreds, said in a statement published by the Players’ Tribune. “Every day that we don’t have discussions puts players at additional risk of COVID.”
They’re playing the coronavirus card, as they should, to seek fair market value. The initial ask is outrageous — “distribute 50% of total conference revenue evenly among athletes’’ — but if this is a negotiation that should have started decades ago, why not start high? The question is how many players would risk their football future, in college and possibly the NFL, to take a hardline labor stance. We’ve seen failed attempts to unionize college athletes, some involving ringleader and former UCLA linebacker Ramogi Huma, who is behind the current uprising. But 2020 is different.
COVID-19 makes it different.
Black Lives Matter makes it different.
Someone please inform Rolovich, the new coach at Washington State. He initially was empathetic to the virus concerns of an up-and-coming wide receiver and leader, Kassidy Woods, who called to say he was opting out because of an underlying sickle cell condition. But Rolovich chose to dig, inquiring if Woods was part of the Pac-12 group.
“Yes, sir,’’ he said, in a tape presumably released publicly by Woods.
When the moment called for a human being to guide a college student, Rolovich turned cold and corporate. He told Woods to empty out his locker and said his scholarship wouldn’t be honored beyond this season. Oh, and Woods should spread the word that other players who opt out as part of the Pac-12 group would face similar repercussions. In essence, Rolovich was trying to bust a union before he coached his first game.
Said the coach, regrettably: “OK so that’s going to be, that’s gonna be an issue if you align with them as far as future stuff, ‘cause the COVID stuff is one thing. But, um, joining this group is gonna put you on a … that’s obviously, you know, you get to keep your scholarship this year, but it’s gonna be different. You know, if you, if you say, `I’m opting out ‘cause of COVID and health and safety,’ I’m good. But this group is gonna change, uh, I guess, how things go in the future for everybody, at least at our school. Um, so just think about that is, if it’s about getting paid and not … about racial justice and that stuff. Then it’s probably, it’s there’s two sides, there’s two sides here. I’m good with the Sickle Cell and the COVID, and but this, this group is gonna be at a different level as far as how we’re kind of going to move forward in the future.’’
Was he manipulating a narrative? Issuing a passive-aggressive threat? Actually, both.
Patterson faced a boycott of several players after he mindlessly used a racial slur in a failed teaching moment. In a tweet, freshman linebacker Dylan Jordan explained that Patterson asked him to stop using the n-word, then repeated the slur. Before that, Patterson had rebuked Jordan during practice, according to Jordan, calling him “a f——— brat’’ and threatening to “send you back to Pitt,’’ referring to the player’s hometown of Pittsburg, Kan. After Patterson told players that he wasn’t addressing Jordan directly with the n-word, Jordan tweeted, “The behavior is not okay now or ever and there needs to be repercussions to these actions.’’
Two days later, Patterson was apologizing on Twitter: “I met with our Seniors and Leadership Council last night about how we move forward as a team, together. We are committed as individuals and as a program to fighting racial injustice of any kind. I apologize for the use of a word that, in any context, is unacceptable. I have always encouraged our players to do better and be better and I must live by the same standards.”
College football is a religion. Thus, any uprising by players is viewed as blasphemy by traditionalists, many living in states represented by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes (“Alabama, Arkansas …’’). Know what? Deal with it, people. This is a country that can pay someone $600 a week not to work. This is a country where an assistant college football coach, Alabama’s Steve Sarkisian, just got a raise to $2.5 million a year.
You mean you can’t find a decent piece of a $4 billion pie for athletes braving a monster contagion … and maybe a demonic coach?
If not, you deserve a broken season. And broke coffers.
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