The Inaugural Post

Ah, my first blog post . . . I have a couple of goals with this new endeavor. My main goal of starting a blog is to have an outlet to share my thoughts and ideas about the events of the day, while also providing a glimpse at some of the more entertaining developments in my life and that of living in a decent sized city that also happens to be our nation's capital. Having a blog will enable me to do so without having to send unprompted emails to friends who may or may not be interested in reading my missives. With a blog, you, my friends, can come check out what I'm thinking and doing at your leisure and your own volition. I'm also going to try to carry my camera with me as much as possible. Living in a city like Washington, D.C. always presents me with the opportunity to witness strange, funny, interesting, or heartbreaking scenes. I'll share these photos on this blog. (Just on Saturday afternoon alone, I saw two or three things that would have made great photos and topics of discussion for a post. For instance, I came across a protest in front of the Scientology building near Dupont Circle, with about 50 college-aged kids wearing Guy Fawkes masks or other identity hiding costumes. It was quite a scene.)

So with that intro over, let me delve into the meat of my first post. There are several major story lines in sports that I think the media just gets completely wrong. How they cover the topic along with their underlying biases result in bad reporting and even worse commentary. In no particular order, I think the media overlooks and/or ignores the nuance of the issue of the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs by elite athletes. I think the media is too worried about their own standing and protecting their own turf to discuss rationally and logically the phenomenon of sports blogs. I think that the majority of sports columnists do not have an open-mind about the analysis of the sports using statistics and other objective measures. I think that the majority of the sports media does a poor job of explaining why professional athletes are paid as well as they are and that this reporting has served to foster resentment between fans and players. Lastly, I think the media overlooks the inherent corruption of and injustice promulgated by the NCAA. When the media does report on this corruption, they focus on minor incidents that are manifested by the inherent corruption and injustice and ignore the fundamental causes of these incidents.

Today, we have another example where corruption has been exposed in a major college program for one of the two major NCAA sports. For those of you who are unfamiliar, O.J. Mayo, a basketball player for the University of Southern California who has declared himself eligible for the N.B.A. draft after completing his freshman season, is alleged to have received about $30,000 in cash and gifts from a sports agency in violation of NCAA rules. ESPN broke the story yesterday morning, and touted it on its website all day. One ESPN columnist even wrote today that the USC men's basketball program should receive the "death penalty," meaning the team should be banned from competing for a year or more, because of this scandal. A brief listening to sports radio this morning and a viewing of today's Pardon the Interruption resulted in me hearing other similar sentiments about how unscrupulous USC is and "even if he didn't know" Mayo was on the take, that Tim Floyd (USC's head coach) should have known and should pay for Mayo's transgressions.

Let's get a couple of things out of the way: I agree that it's likely that O.J. Mayo broke NCAA rules. I agree it's likely that O.J. Mayo knew he was breaking NCAA rules. I also think it's likely that Tim Floyd and other USC officials knew that Mayo was receiving gifts in violation of NCAA rules.

But let's take a step back and look at the system as a whole for the NCAA's major college basketball programs. First, regardless of the propaganda promoted by the NCAA and its institutions, players are players first and foremost and students at best second (if at all). The demands on their time for attending practice, weightlifting, studying the playbook, watching game films, and playing in games (including travel to away games) are considerable and comparable to the amount of time that a professional basketball player spends on his job. It's not hard to imagine that the average Division I player devotes at least 6-8 hours per day to his sport.

Second, a considerable percentage of the players are attending college only to play basketball, with the hope of eventually becoming professional players. Many have no interest in the classes they're taking, nor in acquiring a degree. Many of these players would not have been admitted to the schools they attend were it not for their basketball ability, and a number of these players do not even come close to having the ability to succeed at the schools they attend. I'm not trying to put down these players, because quite honestly, only a select few people in general have the ability to succeed at institutions like Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, all three of which are among the top 25-50 universities in our country and also happen to have elite men's college basketball teams. (By the way, as further proof that I'm not putting down these players, I don't think I would have been admitted to any of the three schools I just listed had I applied to them. Nor do I think that there aren't a number of players who are qualified to attend the schools they attend, are able to succeed at their school, and are interested in their courses of study and in acquiring a degree).

Third, and most importantly, Division I men's college basketball is a de facto professional sport that generates hundreds of millions of dollars for colleges and universities and for college basketball coaches each year.

Let's look at what the colleges and universities make, starting with their profits from the NCAA men's tournament. In 1999, the NCAA sold the rights to broadcast its annual men's basketball tournament for 11 years starting with the 2003 tournament to CBS for $6 billion (see this New York Times article for the exact details). That's not a typo. That's BILLION with a B. That's $545 million per year on average. That's essentially pure profit, as it can't cost more than $10-$20 million per year to run the tournament. Even if my estimates are way off, say by a factor of five, and it costs $100 million to run the tournament, that's still more than $400 million in profit on average per year.

Major men's college basketball programs also generate additional millions in revenue per year through a number of other ways: TV and radio deals for regular season games, TV and radio deals for conference tournaments, ticket sales, merchandise sales (more on that to follow), and concessions at games. While most of the merchandise highlights the school only (such as a t-shirt that has only the school's name or mascot on it), some merchandise features star players (such as not only having the school's name or mascot, but also having the star player's name or number on the back of a jersey).

Head coaches of major programs often receive salaries of more than $1 million per year. One high profile coach reportedly turned down an offer to coach at his alma mater for $3.5 million per year with a $6 million signing bonus. Head coaches are also often compensated to sums of $100,000 or more per year through peripheral activities due to their status as a head coach of a major college basketball program, such as running basketball camps in the summer, having their own TV shows during the season, writing books, and speaking at corporate events.

What sort of compensation do the players receive as a result of these millions and millions of dollars they generate per year? Their compensation is free tuition and room and board. The only choice they have in the matter is from what college and university they receive that tuition and room and board.

Now some of you are probably thinking that you would have been delighted to have received a full scholarship with room and board and are thinking that such a deal is worth $30,000 - $50,000 per year. Well, if you're thinking that, you are overlooking a few things. First, the monetary value of any in-kind compensation such as free tuition varies from recipient from recipient. Imagine if you were paid for your current job in the form of gift certificates to Starbucks equal in value to your current salary. Would you be satisfied with this arrangement? Say you make $75,000 per year. Would $75,000 in Starbucks gifts certificates be worth $75,000 in cold hard cash to you? If it would be, you are absolutely insane (by the way, resolving this problem of the varying value of in kind compensation to each person is why humanity developed the concept of money and did away with the barter system). Now, remember that for a number of the players, the educational opportunity presented by the scholarship is only a secondary or tertiary priority. So that in turn makes the true value of the scholarship less and less for them.

Or, thinking about it another way, the easiest way to put a monetary value on the scholarship for each player would be to ask him how much he'd be willing to pay to attend that school only as a student. I bet quite a few players would answer with amounts well below the listed tuition price for their school.

Let's do some quick and rough math. There are 341 Division I men's college basketball programs, with 13 full scholarships per program. Let's be more than generous about how much the average player values his free tuition and room and board and say that such remuneration is the equivalent of $50,000 per year. $50,000 x 13 x 341 = $222 million. If we do the math with a still (in my opinion) overestimated value of the tuition and room and board at $40,000 per year, the total cost becomes $177 million. With a much more realistic valuation of $20,000 per year, the total is $89 million. As noted above, the NCAA Tournament alone generates $500 million or more in profit per year. I have no idea how much money is generated by the other revenue streams, but it's likely more than $100 million per year.

More importantly, elite players like O.J. Mayo generate revenues for their school at a far greater rate than the average player, thus exacerbating the inequity of the situation. O.J. Mayo made USC a high profile team last season, after it largely had been off the radar since the days of Harold Miner. He led USC to the NCAA tournament. One thing that sabermetric research in professional baseball has shown is that making the playoffs has a considerable impact on a team's bottom line. I can't imagine the same is not true for teams making the NCAA tournament (i.e. the increased exposure from the tournament leads to more applications, increased donations, additional merchandise sales, and more lucrative local TV and radio deals in the future).

Someone like Mayo is exploited even further as the school he attends often sells merchandise capitalizing on him. For example, I studied at American University's Washington Semester Program during the spring semester of 1996, which coincided with Allen Iverson's final season at Georgetown. Throughout that spring, I saw tons of kids around the city aged 8 -17 wearing Georgetown gear that had the number 3 on the back. Today, I rarely see kids that age wearing Georgetown gear. And if I do see them wearing it, it never has a number associated with it. Any guesses who wore 3 in 1996? Any guesses why those kids were wearing Georgetown gear then and why they aren't wearing it now? If you answered "Allen Iverson" to both questions, you, my friend, are quite astute. How much of this money that Georgetown made directly because of and only because of Allen Iverson did Allen Iverson receive? Here's an answer: the next time you see a penny on the ground, stop and pick it up. Once you've done that, you'll have made more money than Allen Iverson did on Georgetown merchandise sold because of him.

This discrepancy in compensation to the players versus the revenue they generate is the big scandal. This discrepancy is the fundamental cause of the corruption. From it flows all the minor scandals. These players are exploited worse than major league baseball players were before the days of Marvin Miller and Curt Flood (this post is already huge, so I'll refrain from going into the matter of how little freedom players have to transfer from school to school without penalty, akin to how pro baseball players were beholden to the team that signed them and had to accept being traded without recourse prior to Curt Flood's protest, but trust me there are plenty of parallels between the two causes). This discrepancy is not hard for the players to see, and, in this context, it should be no surprise when college basketball players accept gifts and cash from shady sports agents in violation of NCAA rules.

This discrepancy should not be hard for the media to see either. But, the only sports writer that I've come across who realizes this is King Kaufman from Salon.com. Instead, sports columnists take the easy way out and just pounce on a particular player/coach/program for being corrupt and they ignore the larger issue.

I'll save for another day my idea to help fix this problem. Peace out.

-- 2 M.F. White