A friend of mine, Lawrence Watkins, informed me that his brother, Dr. Boyce Watkins, will be featured on ESPN’s “Quite Frankly: with Steven A. Smith” tonight at 11PM. Please check him out. He will be on a panel with Method Man and others speaking about whethter NCAA Student-Athletes should be paid. I would be interested in hearing his arguments as a former NCAA student-athlete. I have copied his argument, as forwarded by Lawrence, below, and I respond in a previous post:
Dr. Boyce Watkins, prominent Syracuse University Professor and author of “Everything you ever wanted to know about college” says that the injury to Heisman candidate Michael Bush is another reminder that the NCAA needs to pay its athletes. “It makes no sense that half of the players come from poverty, and their starving families get little for their efforts,” says Watkins, who was a recent guest on ESPN’s “Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith”.
Bush, the star running back at The University of Louisville, broke his leg in the team’s first game against The University of Kentucky. Bush was expected to be a high draft pick had he left for the NFL last year, and he was also considered by experts to be a strong candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Dr. Watkins, a Louisville native and graduate of The University of Kentucky, knows the experience of the college athlete all too well. He has taught at The University of Kentucky, The Ohio State University and now Syracuse University, all of whom have major athletics programs. “The NCAA has signed an 11 billion dollar TV rights deal for the NCAA tournament alone,” says Watkins, who wrote a scientific study last year calculating the economic value of the black male athlete to the NCAA. “Athletes take the greatest risk, they are distracted from their educations to play sports, and they get almost none of the rewards.” In his study, Watkins finds that over a 40-year period, black males will contribute nearly $250 billion to the NCAA. He claims that this is in stark contrast to the fact that many of these athletes are not invited to become coaches and many of them do not graduate from college.
Watkins, a Finance Professor, has no problem with the financial rewards, as long as everyone is allowed to participate in the financial prosperity. “The NCAA is really a gang of pimps,” says Watkins, who was interviewed for the cover story for the September issue of Smart Money Magazine. “They are pure capitalists when it comes to paying millions to coaches and signing multibillion dollar TV deals, but when the players ask for their cut, they suddenly become amateurs again. This system is made more astonishing by the way players are threatened with scholarship loss if they try to earn money from their fame to support their families. This system is in stark violation of nearly every dimension of the American way.”
Dr. Watkins speaks around the country on strategies for college success, particularly for athletes. His Step Up and Go to College Tour works to persuade inner city students to go to college, and he even writes hip hop rhymes to explain college life. For example, his poem “Strictly for the ballaz” describes the experience of a college athlete who loses his career due to injury. One of the lines states “Did you ever take a second to think, why the coach’s wife shows up to games wearing mink? While my mama is slaving as somebody’s cook, thinking her baby’s off hitting the books.”
When asked what he thinks is going to rectify the problems with college sports, Dr. Watkins recommends a congressional review of the NCAA’s monopoly status, as well as an IRS inquiry into their non-profit status. “Like Nino Brown, the drug dealer from the film ‘New Jack City’,” says Watkins. “It’s going to take a lot of power and courage to correct the blatantly un-American business practices of the NCAA.”
>Ditto to your response Royce. I never knew such a debate existed. Just curious, what does the salary for the NCAA coaches look like?
NCAA exploring compensating players: http://t.co/XburvHW