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A review by jjupille
Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA by Michael McCann, Ed O'Bannon
2.0
2 stars feels low, but "it was OK" is a pretty good description for this up-close-and-personal entry in my growing library on the problems with intercollegiate athletics. For those who don't follow these things, O'Bannon was a star basketball player for a national champion UCLA basketball team in the 1990s, who years later saw his likeness in a video game the maker of which had not compensated him. It turns out the Electronic Arts (EA) would have liked to compensate him (and others whose likenesses were used), but the NCAA inveighed upon it not to do so.
O'Bannon, who seems like a great guy, sued the NCAA on behalf of former players, forswearing any possibility of personal financial gain and trying to establish a basic principle of fairness. The book is well written and reads pretty quickly. Indeed, one of my issues is that it's a little superficial. I don't mind the personal narrative aspect, and indeed liked that about the book. I am obviously a massive outlier, being pretty deep into NCAA rules and all of the issues the book raises, but I would have liked to see a much more serious engagement with the tradeoffs.
For student-athletes --yes, I use the term unironically-- to be able to profit from their names, images and likenesses (NILs) is fair and right. Non-athlete students can do so, and I don't thing SAs should be treated less favorably than any other students. This is especially important insofar as those with earning potential in this space are disproportionately black and disproportionately from relatively economically disadvantaged backgrounds. But I worry about it --and a fortiori about creating a full-fledged market for players-- and I'd like to try to explain why.
It might help to tell it, as O'Bannon does, from a personal perspective: I am a faculty member, I love being a college professor, and I have zero interest in being in the professional sports business, or working for an organization that is in that business. I know the response, that I effectively already am/do, or that the only reason I am not/do not is because the system is rigged to allow for all of the benefits of such a system to flow to me and my ilk while maintaining a fiction that things are otherwise. But all I can say is that, if I were forced to choose between an "inferior" level of basketball that remained truly amateur, or a higher level of basketball that involved professionalism, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the former. Again, I am not interested in being involved with professional sports, except as a fan. I am in the education business.
So, for me, that rules out paying players. If they want to play professional ball, they are free to do so. If they want to come to college and play, they do so knowing full well that they need to be students, and that they won't be drawing a paycheck. Scholarships are awesome for artists, musicians, whizkid mathematicians, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and folks with athletic talents. Come one, come all.
Now, what's the problem with NIL? What concerns me is that unsavory actors in the system would use the possibilities for NIL compensation to, effectively, just pay athletes to come and play for their favorite colleges. The value of NIL is what the market can bear, and the market would probably see deep-pocketed alumni willing to pay for a fiction of NIL compensation, when what's really happening is they are paying young men to play. "Sure, we'll pay you a million a year to have your name on the billboard for our car dealership". I worry that this will bring onto our campuses young people who are there for the money, not for the education. Again, I am not interested, and universities have *zero* obligation, to be in such a business.
I don't really know what the answer is. The "free market" is good in all kinds of ways, but it would produce this outcome that I don't support, of kids coming to campus for the money and not really being students. I want to bring students to campus, while allowing them to pursue every extracurricular opportunity they can that is consistent with a commitment to coming to college to study and earn a degree. If the Big Ballers and others want to go pro, they can do so, and I wish them well. They can cash in on their NILs and get paid to play and not have to worry about going to class, etc. We (universities) get to work with students who really want to be students. Win-win.
Frustratingly, I don't have any ready-made solution. I wonder if the best solution isn't just to let the market work, and for some of us --e.g., the Pac-12 and Big-10 schools-- to create our own stratum where we offer cost-of-attendance, maybe allow some kind of regulated or deferred NIL, while the SEC or Big-12 or others go "pro", as they might wish. I think this might address EO'B's 12 recommendations at the end of Court Justice, which I'll address in referencing such an imaginary Pac-12-type stratum.
1. let players capitalize on their brands. Sure, go for it - but you'll be less free to do so if you come to one of the Pac-12 schools.
2. empower SAs to participate in rulemaking, etc. O'Bannon is a little behind the times on this one, as SAs already have 15 votes (out of 80, since the 65 schools each have one vote) in the "Autonomy" or "Power-5" context, which governs inter alia financial aid issues for the participating conferences. In the Pac-12, we already involve SAs more than in other conferences, though, admittedly, they don't have a formal vote in the Pac-12 Council. (Neither do ADs, or faculty athletics reps [FARs] or senior woman administrators [SWAs], by the way - only member institutions have votes in that setting.)
3. make NCAA rules understandable. Sure, but good luck with that. I think O'Bannon's take on this is reasonable, but utterly unrealistic. The issues are complicated, and it will remain nearly true that "one needs a PhD in NCAA Studies to understand" the rules (p. 220). Heh heh.
4. allow SAs to transfer without penalty. I agree with him here. We are making progress on this, but not enough.
5. make amateurism rights the same across all sports. Agree. He also promotes the baseball model in re agents and the draft, and again I agree. Current work on transfer rules is likely to put these kinds of notion into action, which is good.
6. guarantee health benefits for SAs. The Pac-12 already does this for current SAs (ER 7-1(d)) and for former SAs up to four years or age 26 for medical issues related to athletic participation (ER 7-1(e)). In the P-5 group, the former will be true, extending out two years beyond participation, as of August 1, 2018 (proposal 2017-104, creating bylaw 16.4.1, adopted January 2018 (see [URL]https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/search/proposalView?id=101792[/URL]).
7. guarantee freedom of expression for SAs. A very interesting one. I guess I agree, but boy will it cause some interesting PR headaches! Price we pay for working with young people whom we want to empower and make responsible (which we do).
8. schedule games and such to allow for fulfillment of academic obligations. Amen.
9. end farcical rules such as the 20-hour per week rule. No - make the 20 hr. per week rule operational by actually limiting athletic commitments to, you know, 20 hours per week.
10. let college athletes major in sports. Sounds crazy, and would be very hard to gain approval for among vast majority of faculty, but it's an idea that I am warming up to. On this logic, athletics is no different from art or music or dance. Think about it.
11. develop better educational programs around coaching, also bullying, hazing, domestic violence. I think we are making great strides on the latter three (though always more to do). Coaching - agreed.
12. let college athletes vote on who becomes NCAA president. Ha! No.
O'Bannon, who seems like a great guy, sued the NCAA on behalf of former players, forswearing any possibility of personal financial gain and trying to establish a basic principle of fairness. The book is well written and reads pretty quickly. Indeed, one of my issues is that it's a little superficial. I don't mind the personal narrative aspect, and indeed liked that about the book. I am obviously a massive outlier, being pretty deep into NCAA rules and all of the issues the book raises, but I would have liked to see a much more serious engagement with the tradeoffs.
For student-athletes --yes, I use the term unironically-- to be able to profit from their names, images and likenesses (NILs) is fair and right. Non-athlete students can do so, and I don't thing SAs should be treated less favorably than any other students. This is especially important insofar as those with earning potential in this space are disproportionately black and disproportionately from relatively economically disadvantaged backgrounds. But I worry about it --and a fortiori about creating a full-fledged market for players-- and I'd like to try to explain why.
It might help to tell it, as O'Bannon does, from a personal perspective: I am a faculty member, I love being a college professor, and I have zero interest in being in the professional sports business, or working for an organization that is in that business. I know the response, that I effectively already am/do, or that the only reason I am not/do not is because the system is rigged to allow for all of the benefits of such a system to flow to me and my ilk while maintaining a fiction that things are otherwise. But all I can say is that, if I were forced to choose between an "inferior" level of basketball that remained truly amateur, or a higher level of basketball that involved professionalism, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the former. Again, I am not interested in being involved with professional sports, except as a fan. I am in the education business.
So, for me, that rules out paying players. If they want to play professional ball, they are free to do so. If they want to come to college and play, they do so knowing full well that they need to be students, and that they won't be drawing a paycheck. Scholarships are awesome for artists, musicians, whizkid mathematicians, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and folks with athletic talents. Come one, come all.
Now, what's the problem with NIL? What concerns me is that unsavory actors in the system would use the possibilities for NIL compensation to, effectively, just pay athletes to come and play for their favorite colleges. The value of NIL is what the market can bear, and the market would probably see deep-pocketed alumni willing to pay for a fiction of NIL compensation, when what's really happening is they are paying young men to play. "Sure, we'll pay you a million a year to have your name on the billboard for our car dealership". I worry that this will bring onto our campuses young people who are there for the money, not for the education. Again, I am not interested, and universities have *zero* obligation, to be in such a business.
I don't really know what the answer is. The "free market" is good in all kinds of ways, but it would produce this outcome that I don't support, of kids coming to campus for the money and not really being students. I want to bring students to campus, while allowing them to pursue every extracurricular opportunity they can that is consistent with a commitment to coming to college to study and earn a degree. If the Big Ballers and others want to go pro, they can do so, and I wish them well. They can cash in on their NILs and get paid to play and not have to worry about going to class, etc. We (universities) get to work with students who really want to be students. Win-win.
Frustratingly, I don't have any ready-made solution. I wonder if the best solution isn't just to let the market work, and for some of us --e.g., the Pac-12 and Big-10 schools-- to create our own stratum where we offer cost-of-attendance, maybe allow some kind of regulated or deferred NIL, while the SEC or Big-12 or others go "pro", as they might wish. I think this might address EO'B's 12 recommendations at the end of Court Justice, which I'll address in referencing such an imaginary Pac-12-type stratum.
1. let players capitalize on their brands. Sure, go for it - but you'll be less free to do so if you come to one of the Pac-12 schools.
2. empower SAs to participate in rulemaking, etc. O'Bannon is a little behind the times on this one, as SAs already have 15 votes (out of 80, since the 65 schools each have one vote) in the "Autonomy" or "Power-5" context, which governs inter alia financial aid issues for the participating conferences. In the Pac-12, we already involve SAs more than in other conferences, though, admittedly, they don't have a formal vote in the Pac-12 Council. (Neither do ADs, or faculty athletics reps [FARs] or senior woman administrators [SWAs], by the way - only member institutions have votes in that setting.)
3. make NCAA rules understandable. Sure, but good luck with that. I think O'Bannon's take on this is reasonable, but utterly unrealistic. The issues are complicated, and it will remain nearly true that "one needs a PhD in NCAA Studies to understand" the rules (p. 220). Heh heh.
4. allow SAs to transfer without penalty. I agree with him here. We are making progress on this, but not enough.
5. make amateurism rights the same across all sports. Agree. He also promotes the baseball model in re agents and the draft, and again I agree. Current work on transfer rules is likely to put these kinds of notion into action, which is good.
6. guarantee health benefits for SAs. The Pac-12 already does this for current SAs (ER 7-1(d)) and for former SAs up to four years or age 26 for medical issues related to athletic participation (ER 7-1(e)). In the P-5 group, the former will be true, extending out two years beyond participation, as of August 1, 2018 (proposal 2017-104, creating bylaw 16.4.1, adopted January 2018 (see [URL]https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/search/proposalView?id=101792[/URL]).
7. guarantee freedom of expression for SAs. A very interesting one. I guess I agree, but boy will it cause some interesting PR headaches! Price we pay for working with young people whom we want to empower and make responsible (which we do).
8. schedule games and such to allow for fulfillment of academic obligations. Amen.
9. end farcical rules such as the 20-hour per week rule. No - make the 20 hr. per week rule operational by actually limiting athletic commitments to, you know, 20 hours per week.
10. let college athletes major in sports. Sounds crazy, and would be very hard to gain approval for among vast majority of faculty, but it's an idea that I am warming up to. On this logic, athletics is no different from art or music or dance. Think about it.
11. develop better educational programs around coaching, also bullying, hazing, domestic violence. I think we are making great strides on the latter three (though always more to do). Coaching - agreed.
12. let college athletes vote on who becomes NCAA president. Ha! No.