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Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sports-nerd fight and slave-labor
JC dukes it out with Zimbalist, as he points to this blog as to whether student-athletes can treat themselves as regular human beings. I’m definitely more on JC’s side on the basic issue. JC goes below the belt on Zimbalist in the last paragraph, which is uncool, and am definitely not on his side there.
The question is why do colleges have a strangehold on the 18-22 year old athletes? Talk about slave-labor. Professional sports are pretty bad on being able to pay depressed wages on athletes 18-22, but the colleges are in a league of its own. (Yes, most industries pay depressed wages on all its workers aged 18-22, but those workers don’t have the chance to be the instant stars that ARod and Junior were. And eventually, those industries end up paying those workers, albeit a few years late.)
There is no reason that you necessarily need to play for the team you go to school with. It may turn out to be a good thing (overall), because of the fanbase. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good for the student-athletes, nor that it’s right.
In Canada, the Major Junior Leagues have no affiliation to their high schools. Players only receive stipends. They are then afforded scholarships. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but at least the schools are disentagled from the players.
The first step is realizing that colleges don’t have to own the players. After that, it’s a question of how best to allocate the money among current players (how socialist/welfare do you want to make it).
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