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Heutige Börse Nachrichten amp Analyse Realzeit nach Stunden Pre-Market Nachrichten Blitz Zitat Zusammenfassung Zitat Interaktive Diagramme Voreinstellung Bitte beachten Sie, dass, sobald Sie Ihre Auswahl treffen, es für alle zukünftigen Besuche der NASDAQ gelten. Wenn Sie zu einem beliebigen Zeitpunkt daran interessiert sind, auf die Standardeinstellungen zurückzukehren, wählen Sie bitte die Standardeinstellung oben. Wenn Sie Fragen haben oder Probleme beim Ändern Ihrer Standardeinstellungen haben, senden Sie bitte eine E-Mail an isfeedbacknasdaq. Bitte bestätigen Sie Ihre Auswahl: Sie haben ausgewählt, Ihre Standardeinstellung für die Angebotssuche zu ändern. Dies ist nun Ihre Standardzielseite, wenn Sie Ihre Konfiguration nicht erneut ändern oder Cookies löschen. Sind Sie sicher, dass Sie Ihre Einstellungen ändern möchten, haben wir einen Gefallen zu bitten Bitte deaktivieren Sie Ihren Anzeigenblocker (oder aktualisieren Sie Ihre Einstellungen, um sicherzustellen, dass Javascript und Cookies aktiviert sind), damit wir Sie weiterhin mit den erstklassigen Marktnachrichten versorgen können Und Daten, die Sie kommen, um von uns zu erwarten. Der Atlantik Die Schande des College Sports Ich verstecke mich nicht, Sonny Vaccaro sagte eine geschlossene Anhörung im Willard Hotel in Washington, DC im Jahr 2001. Wir wollen unsere Materialien auf die Körper Ihrer Athleten setzen , Und der beste Weg, dies zu tun ist, kaufen Sie Ihre Schule. Oder kaufen Sie Ihren Trainer. Vaccaros Publikum, die Mitglieder der Ritterkommission für Intercollegiate Leichtathletik, sträubten sich. Das waren bedeutende Reformatoren, darunter der Präsident der Nationalen Collegiate Athletic Association, zwei ehemalige Vorsitzende des US-Olympischen Komitees und mehrere Universitätspräsidenten und Kanzler. Die Ritter-Stiftung, eine gemeinnützige Organisation, die ein Interesse an Hochschulathletik als Teil ihrer Besorgnis mit dem bürgerlichen Leben hat, hatte sie mit dem Sparen von College-Sport aus dem unbeständigen Kommerzialismus verkörpert, wie sie von Vaccaro verkörpert wurde, der seit der Unterzeichnung seines Pionier-Schuhvertrages mit Michael Jordanien im Jahr 1984, hatte Sponsoring-Imperien sukzessive bei Nike, Adidas und Reebok. Nicht alle Mitglieder konnten ihre Verachtung für die Sneaker Zuhälter von Schulhof Hustle, die von schriftlichen Prüfungen für Millionen an alle in der Hochschulbildung rühmen zu verstecken. Warum, fragte Bryce Jordan, der Präsident emeritiert von Penn State, sollte eine Universität ein Werbeträger für Ihre Branche Vaccaro nicht blinzeln. Sie sollten nicht, Sir, antwortete er. Du hast deine Seelen verkauft und du wirst sie weiterhin verkaufen. Sie können sehr moralisch und gerecht sein, wenn Sie mich fragen, Sir, Vaccaro fügte mit unbändigem gutem Beifall hinzu, aber theres nicht einer von Ihnen in diesem Raum, der irgendwelche unseres Geldes ablehnen wird. Du wirst es nehmen. Ich kann es nur anbieten. William Friday, ein ehemaliger Präsident von North Carolinas Universitätssystem, noch winces in der Erinnerung. Boy, die Stille, die in diesem Raum fiel, erinnerte sich vor kurzem. Ich werde es nie vergessen. Freitag, der in den vergangenen 20 Jahren zwei der drei Sport-Initiativen der Knight Foundation gründete und co-chaotisierte, nannte Vaccaro den schlechtesten aller Zeugen, die jemals vor der Tafel gekommen waren. Aber was Vaccaro im Jahr 2001 gesagt hatte, war damals wahr, und seine wahren jetzt: Unternehmen bieten Geld, so dass sie von der Herrlichkeit der College-Athleten profitieren können, und die Universitäten greifen. Im Jahr 2010, trotz der schwankenden Wirtschaft, eine einzelne College-Leichtathletik-Liga, die Fußball-verrückt Southeastern Conference (SEC), wurde der erste, der die Milliarden-Dollar-Barriere in athletischen Quittungen knacken. Die Big Ten verfolgt eng auf 905 Millionen. Dieses Geld kommt aus einer Kombination von Ticketverkauf, Konzessionsverkäufen, Waren, Lizenzgebühren und anderen Quellen, aber der Großteil davon kommt aus Fernsehverträgen. Video: Taylor Branch beschreibt, wie seine Forschung für dieses Stück weckte ihn bis zu den NCAAs Ungerechtigkeit (Teil 1 von 3) Pädagogen sind in Flut zu ihren sportlichen Abteilungen wegen dieser Fernsehen Reichtum und weil sie die politischen Furien, die aus einem Schließfach platzen kann respektieren Zimmer. Theres Furcht, Freitag sagte mir, als ich ihn auf dem Campus der Universität von North Carolina in Chapel Hill letzter Fall besuchte. Wie wir sprachen, turmten zwei riesige Baukräne in der Nähe über die Universitäten Kenan Stadium, arbeiten auf die neuesten 77 Millionen Renovierung. (Die Universität von Michigan verbrachte fast viermal so viel, um sein großes Haus zu erweitern.) Freitag bestand darauf, dass für die Netze, riesige Summen an Universitäten zu zahlen ein Schnäppchen war. Wir tun alles für sie, sagte er. Wir liefern das Theater, die Schauspieler, die Lichter, die Musik und das Publikum für ein Drama ordentlich in Zeitschlitzen gemessen. Sie bringen die Kamera und schalten sie ein. Freitag, ein verwitterter Idealist bei 91, beklagt die Kontrolle Universitäten haben in Verfolgung dieses Gelds abgetreten. Wenn Fernsehen Fußball von hier an einem Donnerstag Abend ausstrahlen will, sagte er, schlossen wir die Universität um 3 Uhr, um die Massen unterzubringen. Er sehnte sich für eine Campus-Identität mehr zentriert in einer akademischen Mission. Die Vereinigten Staaten sind das einzige Land in der Welt, dass Gastgeber großen Sport an Hochschulen. Dies sollte an und für sich nicht umstritten sein. College-Leichtathletik verwurzelt sind in der klassischen Ideal von Mens sana in corpore sano einen gesunden Geist in einem gesunden Körper und die mit diesem College-Sport argumentieren würde, sind tief in die Kultur unserer Nation eingeschrieben. Eine halbe Million junge Männer und Frauen spielen wettbewerbsfähige intercollegiate Sportarten jedes Jahr. Millionen von Zuschauern strömen in Fußballstadien jeden Samstag im Herbst und Dutzende von Millionen mehr im Fernsehen. Die March Madness Basketball-Turnier jeden Frühjahr hat sich zu einem großen nationalen Ereignis, mit nach oben von 80 Millionen sehen sie im Fernsehen und reden über die Spiele rund um das Büro Wasserkühler. ESPN hat ESPNU, einen Kanal für College-Sport gewidmet hat, und Fox Sports und andere Kabel-Steckdosen sind die Entwicklung von Kanälen ausschließlich zur Deckung von Sportarten aus bestimmten Regionen oder Divisionen. Mit so vielen Menschen zahlen für Tickets und im Fernsehen, College-Sport hat sich sehr Big Business. Laut verschiedenen Berichten, die Fußball-Teams in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, und Penn Stateto Namen nur ein paar große Einnahmen Fußball Schoolseach verdienen zwischen 40 Millionen und 80 Millionen in Gewinnen im Jahr, auch nach Zahlung von Coaches Multimillionen-Dollar Gehälter. Wenn Sie so viel Geld mit so hohen, fast Stammes-, Stakesfootball-Booster kombinieren sind berühmt tollwütig in ihrem Eifer, um ihre Alma Mater Wincoruption wird wahrscheinlich folgen. Skandal nach Skandal hat College-Sport geschaukelt. Im Jahr 2010 sanktioniert die NCAA der University of Southern California nach der Feststellung, dass Star-Running Back Reggie Bush und seine Familie hatte unangemessen Vorteile, während er für die Trojaner gespielt hatte. (Unter anderem wurden Bush und seine Familienangehörigen behauptet, freie Flug - und Limousinenfahrten, ein Auto und ein rentfreies Heim in San Diego zu bekommen, von Sportvermittlern, die Bush als Klienten wollten.) Die Bowl Championship Series Stripped USC von seinem nationalen Titel 2004 und Bush kehrte die Heisman Trophäe zurück, die er 2005 gewonnen hatte. Im vergangenen Herbst, als Auburn Universitätsfußball seinen Weg zu einer ungeschlagenen Jahreszeit und einer nationalen Meisterschaft stürmte, wurde der Mannschaft-Sternquarterback, Nocken Newton, durch verfolgt Vorwürfe, dass sein Vater einen Personalvermittler verwendet hatte, um bis zu 180.000 von Mississippi State im Austausch für seine Söhne Immatrikulation dort nach Junior College im Jahr 2010 zu erwerben. Jim Tressel, der sehr erfolgreiche Chef Fußballtrainer des Ohio State Buckeyes, trat im vergangenen Frühjahr nach der NCAA Behauptete, er habe die Unwissenheit der Regeln Verstöße von Spielern in seinem Team vorgetäuscht. Mindestens 28 Spieler über den Kurs der vorhergehenden neun Jahreszeiten, entsprechend Sports Illustrated. Hatte Autogramme, Trikots und andere Team Erinnerungsstücke im Austausch für Tätowierungen oder Bargeld an einem Tattoo-Salon in Columbus, in Verletzung der NCAA-Regeln gehandelt. Spät in diesem Sommer, Yahoo Sport berichtet, dass die NCAA Ermittlungen Vorwürfe, dass eine Universität von Miami Booster hatte Millionen von Dollar in illegalen Cash und Dienstleistungen für mehr als 70 Hurricanes Fußballspieler über acht Jahre gegeben hatte. Die Liste der Skandale geht weiter. Mit jeder Offenbarung gibt es viel Auswringen der Hände. Kritiker schelten Schulen für den Glauben brechen mit ihrer pädagogischen Mission, und für die nicht die Durchsetzung der Heiligkeit des Amateurismus. Sportswriters kündigen die NCAA für Tyrannei und Impotenz in seinem Streben, College-Sport zu reinigen. Observers auf allen Seiten drückt durcheinandergebrachte Emotionen über Jugend und Unschuld aus, entlastet gegen professionelle Sitten oder gierige Amateure. Für alle die Empörung, ist der wahre Skandal nicht, dass die Schüler illegal bezahlt oder rekrutiert werden, ist es, dass zwei der edlen Prinzipien, auf denen die NCAA rechtfertigt ihren Existenzamateurismus und die Studenten-athleteare zynische Hoaxes, legalistische Konfekte von den Universitäten so verbreitet Die Fähigkeiten und den Ruhm junger Athleten zu nutzen. Die Tragödie im Herzen des College-Sport ist nicht, dass einige College-Athleten werden bezahlt, aber das sind mehr von ihnen nicht. Video: Taylor Branch verwendet eine religiöse Analogie zu erklären, was ist falsch mit College-Leichtathletik (Teil 2 von 3) Don Curtis, ein UNC Treuhänder, sagte mir, dass verarmte Fußballer nicht leisten können Kinokarten oder Busfahrpreis nach Hause. Curtis ist heute eine Seltenheit in der Hochschulbildung, da er es wagt, das Signal-Tabu zu verletzen: Ich denke, wir sollten diesen Jungs etwas bezahlen. Fans und Erzieher schrecken von diesem Vorschlag wie von der Erbsünde zurück. Amateurismus ist der ganze Punkt, sagen sie. Bezahlt Athleten würde die Integrität und Attraktivität des College-Sport zu zerstören. Viele ehemalige Hochschulathleten behaupten, dass Geld die Heiligkeit der Bindung verdorben hätte, die sie mit ihren Mannschaftskameraden genossen. Auch ich schauderte einst instinktiv nach der Vorstellung der bezahlten Hochschulathleten. Aber nach einer Untersuchung, die mich in Umkleideräume und Elfenbeintürme über das Land führte, bin ich gekommen, zu glauben, dass Gefühl uns blendet, was vor unseren Augen ist. Big-Zeit College-Sport sind voll kommerzialisiert. Milliarden von Dollar fließen durch sie jedes Jahr. Die NCAA macht Geld, und ermöglicht Universitäten und Unternehmen, Geld zu verdienen, aus der unbezahlten Arbeit von jungen Athleten. Sklaverei Analogien sollten sorgfältig verwendet werden. College-Athleten sind keine Sklaven. Doch um die Szenarien und Universitäten zu begutachten, die sich auf dem Rücken unkompensierter junger Männer anreichern, deren Status als Schüler-Athleten ihnen das Recht auf ordnungsgemäße Prozesse entzieht, die von der Constitutionis garantiert werden, um einen unverwechselbaren Hauch der Plantage zu fangen. Vielleicht ist eine eher passende Metapher Kolonialismus: College-Sport, wie von der NCAA betreut, ist ein System von wohlmeinenden paternalists verordnet und rationalisiert mit hoary Gefühle über die Pflege für das Wohlergehen der kolonisierten. Aber es ist doch ungerecht. Die NCAA, in ihrer eifrigen Verteidigung der gefälschten Prinzipien, manchmal zerstört die Träume von unschuldigen jungen Athleten. Die NCAA ist heute in vielerlei Hinsicht ein klassisches Kartell. Die Bemühungen, vor allem durch die drei Ritterkommissionen im Laufe von 20 Jahren Reformen durchzuführen, während Änderungen an den Rändern, waren weitgehend fruchtlos. Die Zeit ist gekommen für eine Generalüberholung. Und ob die Kräfte, die so sind oder nicht, große Veränderungen kommen. Bedrohungen auf mehreren Fronten: im Kongress, die Gerichte, abtrünnigen sportlichen Konferenzen, Studenten Rebellion und öffentliche Ekel. Die NCAA, die in gauzy clichs gepeitscht ist, steht vor einer weiten, wuchtigen Herrlichkeit. Von Anfang an wurde der Amateurismus im Collegesport mehrfach prämiert, als die NCAA aus einer Mischung edler und venaler Impulse gebaut wurde. Im späten 19. Jahrhundert glaubten Intellektuelle, dass die sportliche Arena ein bevorstehendes Alter des darwinistischen Kampfes simulierte. Weil die Vereinigten Staaten nicht ein globales Reich wie Englands hielten, warnten Führer vor nationaler Weichheit, sobald Eisenbahnen die letzte kontinentale Grenze eroberten. Als ob sie diese Warnung beachteten, wandten sich schlagkräftige Studenten auf Rugby-Varianten zu einem Härter. Heute erinnert sich eine Plakette in New Brunswick, New Jersey, an das erste College-Spiel am 6. November 1869, als Rutgers Princeton 64 schlug. Walter Camp absolvierte Yale im Jahr 1880 so berauscht von der Sportart, dass er sein Leben ohne Lohn, Der Vater des amerikanischen Fußballs. Er überredete andere Schulen, um das Chaos auf dem Spielfeld zu reduzieren, indem er jede Seite von 15 Spielern auf 11 trimmte, und es war seine Idee, Meßlinien auf dem Spielfeld zu malen. Er konzipiert funktionale Bezeichnungen für Spieler, prägende Begriffe wie Quarterback. Sein Spiel blieb heftig durch Design. Crawler konnten den Ball unter den Haufen von fliegenden Ellbögen ohne Pause vorwärts schieben, bis sie in Unterwerfung riefen. In einem Spiel 1892 gegen seinen Erzrivalen, Yale, war die Harvard Fußballmannschaft die erste, die einen fliegenden Keil, basierend auf Napoleons Überraschung Konzentrationen von militärischer Gewalt. In einem redaktionellen Aufruf für die Abschaffung des Spiels, beschrieb die New York Times es als eine halbe Tonne von Knochen und Muskeln in Kollision mit einem Mann mit einem Gewicht von 160 oder 170 Pfund, bemerkte, dass Chirurgen mussten oft auf dem Feld aufgerufen werden. Drei Jahre später veranlasste das anhaltende Chaos die Harvard-Fakultät, die erste von zwei Stimmen abzuhalten, um den Fußball abzuschaffen. Charles Eliot, der Universitätspräsident, brachte andere Sorgen hervor. Todesfälle und Verletzungen sind nicht das stärkste Argument gegen den Fußball, erklärte Eliot. Dass Betrug und Brutalität profitabel sind, ist das größte Übel. Immer noch hielt Harvard Fußball. Im Jahre 1903 bildeten glühende Alumni Harvard Stadium mit null Hochschulfonds. Die Mannschaften zuerst bezahlt Cheftrainer, Bill Reid, begann im Jahr 1905 bei fast das Doppelte des durchschnittlichen Gehalt für einen ordentlichen Professor. Eine Zeitungsgeschichte aus diesem Jahr, illustriert mit dem Sensenmann, der auf einem Torpfosten lachte, zählte 25 College-Spieler, die während der Fußballsaison umgebracht wurden. Eine märchenhafte Version der Gründung der NCAA hält, dass Präsident Theodore Roosevelt, aufgeregt durch ein Foto von einem blutigen Swarthmore College Spieler, geschworen, Zivilisation oder zerstören Fußball. Die eigentliche Geschichte ist, dass Roosevelt manövriert schlau, um den Sport zu bewahren und geben einen Schub für seine geliebte Harvard. Nach McClures Magazin veröffentlichte eine Geschichte über korrupte Teams mit Phantom Studenten, ein Muckraker ausgesetzt Walter Camps 100.000 Slush-Fonds auf Yale. Als Reaktion auf die wütenden Angriffe rief Roosevelt die Führer von Harvard, Princeton und Yale ins Weiße Haus, wo Camp vorgebrachte Kritik aufbrachte und nichts unverantwortlich in den College Football-Regeln ansetzte. Auf Roosevelts Aufforderung, die drei Schulen veröffentlichten eine öffentliche Erklärung, dass College-Sport muss reformieren, um zu überleben, und Vertreter von 68 Colleges gründete eine neue Organisation, die bald die nationale Collegiate Athletic Association genannt werden würde. Ein Haverford College-Beamter wurde als Sekretär bestätigt, aber dann prompt zugunsten von Bill Reid, der neue Harvard-Trainer, der neue Regeln, die Harvards Spielstil auf Kosten von Yales profitierte eingeführt. Mit einem Schlag rettete Roosevelt Fußball und enttarnte Yale. Seit fast 50 Jahren verkörperte die NCAA, die keine wirkliche Autorität und kein Personal zu sprechen, Amateur-Ideale, dass es hilflos durchzusetzen war. Im Jahr 1929 machte die Carnegie-Stiftung Schlagzeilen mit einem Bericht, American College Athletics, die schlussfolgerten, dass das Gerangel um Spieler die Proportionen des bundesweiten Handels erreicht hatte. Von den 112 Schulen, 81 befragten 81 NCAA-Empfehlungen mit Anreizen für Studenten von offenen Gehaltslisten und verkleidete Booster-Fonds zu No-Show-Arbeitsplätze in Filmstudios. Fans ignorierten den Aufruhr, und zwei Drittel der Colleges erwähnt The New York Times, dass sie keine Änderungen geplant. Im Jahr 1939, Neuling Spieler an der University of Pittsburgh ging Streik, weil sie immer weniger bezahlt wurden als ihre Oberklassen-Teamkollegen. Verlegen, die NCAA im Jahr 1948 erlassen einen Sanity Code, die angeblich alle verborgenen und indirekten Leistungen für College-Athleten verbieten würde jedes Geld für Athleten auf transparente Stipendien nur auf finanzielle Bedürfnisse beschränkt werden. Schulen, die diesen Code verletzen, würden aus der NCAA-Mitgliedschaft ausgewiesen und somit aus dem Wettkampfsport verbannt. Diese fette Bemühung floppte. Hochschulen balked bei der Verhängung solch eine drastische Strafe auf einander, und der Sanity Code wurde innerhalb einiger Jahre aufgehoben. Die Universität von Virginia ging so weit, eine Pressekonferenz anzurufen, um zu sagen, dass, wenn seine Athleten jemals beschuldigt wurden, bezahlt zu werden, sollten sie verziehen werden, weil ihre Studien an der Universität von Thomas Jeffersons so rigoros waren. Im Jahr 1951, die NCAA beschlagnahmte eine serendipitous Reihe von Ereignissen, um die Kontrolle über intercollegiate Sport zu gewinnen. Zuerst stellte die Organisation ein junges College Dropout namens Walter Byers als Executive Director. Ein Journalist, der noch nicht 30 Jahre alt war, war für den vage definierten neuen Posten eine angemessen ungünstige Wahl. Er trug Cowboystiefel und eine Toupee. Er vermied persönlichen Kontakt, besessen über Details und erwies sich als bürokratischer Meister der durchdringenden, anonymen Einschüchterung. Obwohl aus der Armee während des Zweiten Weltkrieges für defekte Vision entlassen, konnte Byers eine Gelegenheit in zwei zeitgenössischen Skandalen zu sehen. In einem war das winzige College of William und Mary, streben die Fußballmächte Oklahoma und Ohio State herauszufordern, wurde festgestellt, dass Fälschungen Noten, um auffällig verwöhnte Spieler förderfähig zu halten. In der anderen, eine Basketball-Punkt-Rasur Verschwörung (in der Spieler bezahlt Spieler schlecht ausführen) von fünf New York Colleges an der University of Kentucky, der amtierende nationale Meister verbreitet hatte, generiert Boulevardzeitung Fotos von Gangster und Handschellen Basketballspieler. Die Skandale stellten eine Krise der Glaubwürdigkeit für College-Leichtathletik, und nichts in der NCAAs schwache Rekord hätte jemand zu einer wirklichen Reform zu erwarten. Aber Byers schaffte es, ein kleines Brechungsbrett zu pflanzen, um Strafen einzustellen, ohne auf eine vollständige Konvention der NCAA-Schulen zu warten, die zur Vergebung geneigt gewesen wäre. Dann lobbierte er eine Universität von Kentucky deanA. D. Kirwan, ein ehemaliger Fußballtrainer und zukünftiger Universitätspräsident, nicht gegen die NCAAs zweifelhafte Rechtsstellung (die Vereinigung hatte keine wirkliche Autorität, die Universität zu bestrafen) zu bestrafen und behauptete, dass Hochschulsport etwas tun muss, um die öffentliche Unterstützung wiederherzustellen. Sein Gambit gelang, als Kirwan widerwillig ein Wahrzeichenpräzedenzfall akzeptierte: das Kentucky Basketballteam würde für die gesamte 195253 Jahreszeit suspendiert. Sein legendärer Trainer, Adolph Rupp, fummelte für ein Jahr in der Schwebe. Der Fall von Kentucky verursachte eine Aura des zentralisierten Befehls für ein NCAA Büro, das kaum existierte. Zur gleichen Zeit, eine kolossale Fehleinschätzung gab Byers Hebelkraft zu Gold. Erstaunlicherweise im Rückblick betrachtet die meisten Hochschulen und Marketing-Experten das Aufkommen des Fernsehens eine schwere Gefahr für den Sport. Studien fanden, dass Broadcasts reduziert Live-Besucher, und daher Gate-Empfänge, weil einige Kunden lieber zu Hause zu sehen, umsonst. Niemand konnte sich die Einnahmen bonanza vorstellen, die das Fernsehen vertrat. Mit klumpigen neuen Fernsehapparaten, die proliferieren, stimmte die 1951 NCAA Konvention 1617 zu verbreiten Fernsehen Spiele außer für einige wenige genehmigt durch das NCAA Personal. Alle bis auf zwei Schulen wurden schnell eingehalten. Die Universität von Pennsylvania und Notre-Dame protestierten den Auftrag, Verträge für Heimspiel-Fernsehsendungen zu brechen und behaupteten das Recht, ihre eigenen Entscheidungen zu treffen. Byers wandte ein, daß solche Ausnahmen eine Katastrophe auslösen würden. Der Konflikt eskalierte. Byers branded Strafen für Spiele im Fernsehen ohne Genehmigung. Penn betrachtete den kartellrechtlichen Schutz durch die Gerichte. Byers gab eine Kontaminationsbekanntmachung heraus und informierte jeden Gegner, der geplant war, Penn zu spielen, dass es für das Zeigen bis zum Konkurrenz bestraft werden würde. Tatsächlich mobilisierte Byers die Hochschulwelt, um die zwei Holdouts in dem, was ein Sportswriter später den Big Bluff nannte, zu isolieren. Byers gewann. Penn faltete sich teilweise zusammen, weil sein Präsident, der mehrjährige Weiße Haus-Anwärter Harold Stassen, die Beziehungen zu den Mitschülern in der aufstrebenden Ivy League, die 1954 formalisiert werden sollte, ausbessern wollte. Als Notre Dame sich ebenfalls übergab, führte Byers exklusive Verhandlungen mit dem neuen Fernsehen durch Netzwerke im Namen jedes College-Teams. Joe Rauh Jr. ein prominenter Bürgerrechtsanwalt, half ihm, ein Rationierungssystem zu entwickeln, um nur 11 Sendungen ein yearthe fabled Spiel der Woche zu erlauben. Byers und Rauh haben einige Teams für die Fernsehaufnahmen ausgewählt, ohne den Rest. Am 6. Juni 1952 unterzeichnete NBC ein einjähriges Abkommen, um die NCAA 1,14 Millionen für ein sorgfältig eingeschränktes Fußballpaket zu zahlen. Byers führte alle vertraglichen Erträge durch sein Amt. Er schwebte die Idee, dass, um eine NCAA-Infrastruktur zu finanzieren, seine Organisation einen 60 Prozent Schnitt nehmen sollte, akzeptierte er 12 Prozent in dieser Saison. (Für spätere Verträge, als die Größe der Fernseheinnahmen exponentiell wuchs, stützte er sich auf 5 Prozent.) Erlöse aus dem ersten NBC Vertrag waren genug, um ein NCAA Hauptsitz in Kansas City zu mieten. Nur ein Jahr in seine Arbeit hatte Byers genug Kraft und Geld gesichert, um alle College-Sportarten zu regulieren. Im Laufe des nächsten Jahrzehnts wuchs die Macht der NCAA mit den Fernseheinkünden. Durch die Bemühungen des stellvertretenden Vorsitzenden und Chef-Lobbyisten, Chuck Neinas, gewann die NCAA eine wichtige Konzession in der Sport Broadcasting Act von 1961, in dem der Kongress seine Gewährung einer kostbaren kartellrechtlichen Freistellung an die National Football League abhängig von dem Blackout des professionellen Fußballs samstags. Geschickt, ohne auch nur die NCAA erwähnt, ein Fahrer auf der Rechnung geschnitzt jedes Wochenende in geschützten Broadcast-Märkte: Samstag für College, Sonntag für die NFL. Die NFL erhielt ihre kartellrechtliche Freistellung. Byers, nachdem die NCAAs TV-Paket ausgehandelt bis zu 3,1 Millionen pro Fußballsaison, die höher war als die NFLs Zahl in jenen frühen Jahren hatte die NCAA zu einem spektakulär profitablen Kartell. Wir essen, was wir töten Die NCAAs Kontrolle der College-Sport noch ruhte auf einer fragilen Basis, jedoch: die Zustimmung der Hochschulen und Universitäten regierte es. Für eine Zeit, die riesigen Summen von Fernsehen Geld an diese Institutionen geliefert durch Byerss Angebote machte sie bereit zu unterwerfen. Aber die großen Fußballmächte murrten über den Teil der Fernseheinnahmen, die zu fast tausend NCAA Mitgliedsschulen, die an großen athletischen Programmen fehlten, umgeleitet wurden. Sie chafed gegen Kostensenkungsmaßnahmen wie Einschränkungen für Team sizedesigned, um kleineren Schulen zu helfen. Ich möchte nicht, dass Hofstra sagt Texas, wie man Fußball spielt, Darrell Royal, die Longhorns Trainer, griped. Von den 1970er und 80er Jahren, als College-Football-Spiele geliefert Bonanza Ratings und Werbung revenueto die Netze, begannen einige der großen Fußballschulen zu fragen: Warum müssen wir unsere TV-Berichterstattung durch die NCAA vermittelt haben Couldnt wir bekommen einen größeren Schnitt von diesem Fernseher Geld durch den Umgang direkt mit den Netzwerken Byers konfrontiert eine unhöfliche interne Revolte. Die NCAAs stärksten Legionen, ihre großen Fußballschulen, defected en masse. Nachdem die NCAA ein Preisfeststellungskartell angerufen hatte, das jeden Fernsehdollar durch seine Kassen heftete, drohte 1981 ein Schurkenkonsortium von 61 großen Fußballschulen, einen unabhängigen Vertrag mit NBC für 180 Millionen über vier Jahre zu unterzeichnen. Mit einem riesigen Klumpen der Schatzkammer der NCAA, die aus der Tür ging, drohte Byers Sanktionen, wie er vor drei Jahrzehnten gegen Penn und Notre Dame verhängt hatte. Aber diesmal antworteten die Universitäten von Georgien und Oklahoma mit einem Kartellverfahren. Es ist praktisch unmöglich, den Grad unserer Ressentiments der NCAA zu übertreiben, sagte William Banowsky, der Präsident der Universität von Oklahoma. In der Wahrzeichen 1984 NCAA v. Board of Regents der University of Oklahoma Entscheidung, schlagte der US-Oberster Gerichtshof die NCAAs neuesten Fußball-Verträge mit Fernsehen und jede zukünftige onesas eine illegale Zurückhaltung des Handels, die Colleges und Zuschauer schadet. Über Nacht verschwanden die NCAAs Kontrolle des Fernseh-Marktes für Fußball. Upholding Banowskys Herausforderung an die NCAAs Behörde, die Regents Entscheidung befreit die Fußballschulen zu verkaufen und alle Spiele die Märkte tragen würde. Trainer und Verwalter mussten nicht mehr den Umsatz ihrer Athleten mit kleineren Schulen außerhalb des Fußballkonsortiums teilen. Wir essen, was wir töten, ein Beamter an der Universität von Texas prahlte. Ein paar Jahre zuvor, könnte dieser Schlag finanziell verkrüppelt haben die NCAA aber eine steigende Flut von Geld aus Basketball verborgen die strukturellen Schäden der Regents Entscheidung. In den achtziger Jahren wuchs das Einkommen aus dem March Madness College Basketball Turnier, das direkt von den Fernsehsendern an die NCAA bezahlt wurde, um das Zehnfache. Der Windfall bedeckte und überschritt dann weit, was die Organisation vom Fußball verloren hatte. Trotzdem verabschiedete Byers niemals seinen ehemaligen Stellvertreter Chuck Neinas, der das Rebellenkonsortium leitete. Er wusste, dass Neinas von innen gesehen hatte, wie schwach die Kontrolle der NCAA war und wie sorgfältig Byers gearbeitet hatte, um seine Oz-artige Fassade zu stützen. Während Byerss tenure, wuchs das Regelbuch für Division I Athleten auf 427 Seiten des scholastischen Details. Seine NCAA Personal-Handbuch verboten Gespräche rund um Wasserkühler und Kaffeetassen auf Schreibtischen, während genau fest, wann drapiert werden müssen, an der NCAAs 27.000 Quadratmeter großen Hauptsitz in der Nähe von Kansas City (Baujahr 1973 aus dem Erlös von einem 1 Prozent Surtax auf Fußball gezogen werden Verträge). Es war, als ob, nachdem er die Kontrolle verloren hatte, wo es wichtig war, übte Byers pedantisch mehr Kontrolle aus, wo es nicht war. Nach dem Ruhestand 1987 ließ Byers seine unterdrückte Wut fallen, die die ingrate Fußballkonferenzen, nachdem sie die NCAA der Fernseheinnahmen beraubt hatten, noch erwarteten, dass sie Amateurregeln durchführen und jedes Leck der Kapital zu den Universitätsspielern polizeilich. Eine tödliche Gier nagte an den Innereien der Hochschulathletik, schrieb er in seinen Memoiren. Als Byers dem NCAA-Vorwand des Amateurismus entsagte, starrten seine ehemaligen Kollegen, als sei er senil oder, wie er schrieb, meine heiligen Gelübde entweiht. Aber Byers war besser positioniert als jeder andere zu argumentieren, dass College-Footballs Anspruch auf Amateurismus war unbegründet. Jahre später, wie wir sehen werden, würden Rechtsanwälte auf seine Worte ergreifen, um Schlacht mit der NCAA zu tun. Mittlerweile verärgerten sich die Reformer, dass der Kommerzialismus den Hochschulsport verletzte, und dass das historische Gleichgewicht zwischen Hochschullehrern und Leichtathletik durch all das Geld, das herumschwirrte, verzerrt worden war. Neuigkeiten enthüllten, dass die Schulen außergewöhnliche Maßnahmen ergriffen haben, um akademisch inkompetente Athleten förderfähig für den Wettbewerb zu halten, und würden um die begehrtesten Gymnasiasten bitten, indem sie Unterzahlungen anbieten. Im Jahr 1991 wurde die erste Ritterkommission Bericht, Keep Faith With the Student Athlete, veröffentlicht wurde die Kommissionen Bedrohung Überzeugung war, dass Hochschulpräsidenten müssen die Kontrolle über die NCAA von Athletikdirektoren zu ergreifen, um die Vorherrschaft der akademischen Werte über athletische oder kommerzielle wiederherzustellen. Als Reaktion, College-Präsidenten übernahm die NCAAs Governance. Doch im Jahr 2001, als der zweite Bericht der Ritterkommission veröffentlicht wurde, gab es eine neue Generation von Reformern, die zugeben, dass die Probleme der Korruption und des Kommerzialismus seit dem ersten Bericht nicht abgenommen haben. Mittlerweile war die NCAA selbst, die Einnahmen steigend, in eine 50 Millionen, 116.000 Quadratmeter große Zentrale in Indianapolis gezogen. Als die Größe der NCAA-Zentrale mit einer Expansion von 130.000 Quadratmetern wieder zunahm, tappte eine dritte Knight-Kommission blindlings nach einem Halten auf unabhängigen Universitäts-athletischen Konferenzen, die sich wie souveräne Proligen als Verbünde von Universitäten verhielten. Und noch mehr Geld floss weiter in NCAA Kassen. Mit dem Basketball-Turniere 2011 TV-Deal, jährlichen März Madness Broadcast-Einnahmen hatte in 50 Jahren in weniger als 30 Jahren geschrumpft. Der Mythos des Studenten-Athleten Heute hat ein Großteil der moralischen Autorität der NCAA viel von der Rechtfertigung für seine Existenz in seinem Anspruch zu schützen, was es den Schüler-Sportler nennt. Der Begriff soll den Adel des Amateurs beschwören und den Vorrang der Stipendien über sportliches Streben. Aber die Ursprünge der Schüler-Athleten liegen nicht in einem uneigennützigen Ideal, sondern in einer anspruchsvollen Formulierung, wie sie der Sportwissenschaftler Andrew Zimbalist geschrieben hat, um der NCAA bei ihrem Kampf gegen die Arbeitnehmer Schadenersatzansprüche für verletzte Fußballspieler zu helfen. Wir haben den Begriff Schüler-Sportler, Walter Byers selbst schrieb, und bald wurde es in allen NCAA Regeln und Interpretationen eingebettet. Der Begriff kam ins Spiel in den 1950er Jahren, als die Witwe von Ray Dennison, die von einer Kopfverletzung bei Fußballspielen in Colorado für die Fort Lewis AampM Aggies starb, für Arbeitnehmer-Ausgleich Tod Vorteile eingereicht. Hat sein Fußball-Stipendium den tödlichen Zusammenstoß zu einem arbeitsbedingten Unfall gemacht? War er ein Schulangestellter, wie seine Kollegen, die Teilzeit als Lehrassistenten und Buchhandlungkassierer arbeiteten? Oder war er ein Fluchopfer von außerschulischen Beschäftigungen. Angesichts der Hunderte von unfähigen Verletzungen am College Athleten jedes Jahr, die Antworten auf diese Fragen hatten enorme Konsequenzen. Das Colorado Oberste Gericht stimmte schließlich mit der Schule Konkurrenz, dass er nicht für Leistungen in Betracht, da die Hochschule war nicht im Fußball-Geschäft. Der Begriff Schüler-Sportler war bewusst zweideutig. College-Spieler waren keine Schüler im Spiel (was ihre sportlichen Verpflichtungen unterschätzen könnte), noch waren sie nur Athleten im College (was implizieren könnten, dass sie Profis waren). Dass sie Hochleistungssportler waren, bedeutete, dass ihnen verziehen werden konnte, dass sie den akademischen Standards ihrer Kollegen nicht entsprachen, dass sie Studenten waren, dass sie für nichts mehr als die Kosten ihres Studiums kompensiert werden mussten. Student-Athlet wurde die NCAAs Unterzeichnung Begriff, immer wieder in und außerhalb der Gerichtssäle. Mit dem Studenten-Sportler Verteidigung, haben Colleges eine Reihe von Siegen in Haftpflichtfällen zusammengestellt. Am Nachmittag des 26. Oktober 1974 spielten die Texas Christian University Horned Frösche die Alabama Crimson Tide in Birmingham, Alabama. Kent Waldrep, ein TCU zurücklaufen, trug den Ball auf einem Red Right 28 Sweep in Richtung der Crimson Tides Seitenlinie, wo er von einem Schwarm von Tacklern erfüllt wurde. Als Waldrep das Bewusstsein wiedererlangte, stand Bear Bryant, der stolze Crimson Tide Trainer, auf seinem Krankenbett. Es war wie das Gespräch mit Gott, wenn Sie ein junger Fußballspieler sind, erinnert sich Waldrep. Waldrep war gelähmt: er hatte alle Bewegungen und das Gefühl unter seinem Hals verloren. Nach neun Monaten der Zahlung seiner medizinischen Rechnungen, weigerte sich Texas Christian, mehr zu bezahlen, so dass die Waldrep Familie seit Jahren auf schwindende Nächstenliebe bewältigt. Durch die Neunzigerjahre von seinem Rollstuhl, drückte Waldrep eine Klage für Arbeitnehmerausgleich. (Er hat sich auch durch heldenhafte Rehabilitationsanstrengungen in seinen Armen erholt und schließlich gelernt, einen speziell eingerollten Transporter zu fahren. Ich kann mir die Zähne putzen, erzählte er mir letztes Jahr, aber ich brauche noch Hilfe zum Baden und Anziehen.) Seine Anwälte Gefeiert mit TCU und dem Staat Arbeiter-Ausgleichsfonds über was Beschäftigung. Offensichtlich hatte TCU Fußballspielern Ausrüstung für den Job zur Verfügung gestellt, als ein typischer Arbeitgeber würde aber die Universität Löhne zahlen, Einkommenssteuern auf seine finanzielle Unterstützung behalten oder die Arbeitsbedingungen und die Leistung kontrollieren. Das Berufungsgericht lehnte schließlich den Antrag von Waldreps im Juni 2000 ab, Dass er kein Angestellter sei, weil er keine Steuern auf eine finanzielle Unterstützung gezahlt habe, die er hätte halten können, auch wenn er den Fußball beendet hätte. (Waldrep sagte mir, dass Schulbeamte sagten, dass sie mich als Student, nicht als Athleten rekrutieren, was er sagt, war absurd.) Die lange Saga bestätigte die Macht der NCAAs Studenten-Athletenformulierung als Schild, und die Organisation fährt fort, es als aufzurufen both a legalistic defense and a noble ideal. Indeed, such is the terms rhetorical power that it is increasingly used as a sort of reflexive mantra against charges of rabid hypocrisy. Last Thanksgiving weekend, with both the FBI and the NCAA investigating whether Cam Newton had been lured onto his team with illegal payments, Newtons Auburn Tigers and the Alabama Crimson Tide came together for their annual game, known as the Iron Bowl, before 101,821 fans at Bryant-Denny Stadium. This game is always a highlight of the football season because of the historic rivalry between the two schools, and the 2010 edition had enormous significance, pitting the defending national champion Crimson Tide against the undefeated Tigers, who were aiming for their first championship since 1957. I expected excited fans what I encountered was the throbbing heart of college sports. As I drove before daybreak toward the stadium, a sleepless caller babbled over WJOX, the local fan radio station, that he couldnt stop thinking about the coin toss. In the parking lot, ticketless fans were puzzled that anyone need ask why they had tailgated for days just to watch their satellite-fed flat screens within earshot of the roar. All that morning, pilgrims packed the Bear Bryant museum, where displays elaborated the misery of Alabamas 424 run before the glorious Bryant era dawned in 1958. Finally, as Auburn took the field for warm-ups, one of Alabamas public-address-system operators played Take the Money and Run (an act for which he would be fired). A sea of signs reading CAM taunted Newton. The game, perhaps the most exciting of the season, was unbearably tense, with Auburn coming from way behind to win 2827, all but assuring that it would go on to play for the national championship. Days later, Auburn suspended Newton after the NCAA found that a rules violation had occurred: his father was alleged to have marketed his son in a pay-for-play scheme a day after that, the NCAA reinstated Newtons eligibility because investigators had not found evidence that Newton or Auburn officials had known of his fathers actions. This left Newton conveniently eligible for the Southeastern Conference championship game and for the postseason BCS championship bowl. For the NCAA, prudence meant honoring public demand. Our championships, NCAA President Mark Emmert has declared, are one of the primary tools we have to enhance the student-athlete experience. NCAA v. Regents left the NCAA devoid of television football revenue and almost wholly dependent on March Madness basketball. It is rich but insecure. Last year, CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting paid 771 million to the NCAA for television rights to the 2011 mens basketball tournament alone. Thats three-quarters of a billion dollars built on the backs of amateurson unpaid labor. The whole edifice depends on the players willingness to perform what is effectively volunteer work. The athletes, and the league officials, are acutely aware of this extraordinary arrangement. William Friday, the former North Carolina president, recalls being yanked from one Knight Commission meeting and sworn to secrecy about what might happen if a certain team made the NCAA championship basketball game. They were going to dress and go out on the floor, Friday told me, but refuse to play, in a wildcat student strike. Skeptics doubted such a diabolical plot. These were college kidsunlikely to second-guess their coaches, let alone forfeit the dream of a championship. Still, it was unnerving to contemplate what hung on the consent of a few young volunteers: several hundred million dollars in television revenue, countless livelihoods, the NCAA budget, and subsidies for sports at more than 1,000 schools. Fridays informants exhaled when the suspect team lost before the finals. Cognizant of its precarious financial base, the NCAA has in recent years begun to pursue new sources of revenue. Taking its cue from member schools such as Ohio State (which in 2009 bundled all its promotional rightssouvenirs, stadium ads, shoe dealsand outsourced them to the international sports marketer IMG College for a guaranteed 11 million a year), the NCAA began to exploit its vault of college sports on film. For 29.99 apiece, NCAA On Demand offers DVDs of more than 200 memorable contests in mens ice hockey alone. Video-game technology also allows nostalgic fans to relive and even participate in classic moments of NCAA Basketball. NCAA Football, licensed by the NCAA through IMG College to Electronic Arts, one of the worlds largest video-game manufacturers, reportedly sold 2.5 million copies in 2008. Brit Kirwan, the chancellor of the Maryland university system and a former president at Ohio State, says there were terrible fights between the third Knight Commission and the NCAA over the ethics of generating this revenue. All of this money ultimately derives from the college athletes whose likenesses are shown in the films or video games. But none of the profits go to them. Last year, Electronic Arts paid more than 35 million in royalties to the NFL players union for the underlying value of names and images in its pro football seriesbut neither the NCAA nor its affiliated companies paid former college players a nickel. Naturally, as they have become more of a profit center for the NCAA, some of the vaunted student-athletes have begun to clamor that they deserve a share of those profits. You see everybody getting richer and richer, Desmond Howard, who won the 1991 Heisman Trophy while playing for the Michigan Wolverines, told USA Today recently. And you walk around and you cant put gas in your car You cant even fly home to see your parents Some athletes have gone beyond talk. A series of lawsuits quietly making their way through the courts cast a harsh light on the absurdity of the systemand threaten to dislodge the foundations on which the NCAA rests. On July 21, 2009, lawyers for Ed OBannon filed a class-action antitrust suit against the NCAA at the U. S. District Court in San Francisco. Once you leave your university, says OBannon, who won the John Wooden Award for player of the year in 1995 on UCLAs national-championship basketball team, one would think your likeness belongs to you. The NCAA and UCLA continue to collect money from the sales of videos of him playing. But by NCAA rules, OBannon, who today works at a Toyota dealership near Las Vegas, alleges he is still not allowed to share the revenue the NCAA generates from his own image as a college athlete. His suit quickly gathered co-plaintiffs from basketball and football, ex-players featured in NCAA videos and other products. The NCAA does not license student-athlete likenesses, NCAA spokesperson Erik Christianson told The New York Times in response to the suit, or prevent former student-athletes from attempting to do so. Likewise, to claim the NCAA profits off student-athlete likenesses is also pure fiction. The legal contention centers on Part IV of the NCAAs Student-Athlete Statement for Division I, which requires every athlete to authorize use of your name or picture to promote NCAA championships or other NCAA events, activities or programs. Does this clause mean that athletes clearly renounce personal interest forever If so, does it actually undermine the NCAA by implicitly recognizing that athletes have a property right in their own performance Jon King, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, expects the NCAAs core mission of amateurism to be its last defense standing. In theory, the NCAAs passion to protect the noble amateurism of college athletes should prompt it to focus on head coaches in the high-revenue sportsbasketball and footballsince holding the top official accountable should most efficiently discourage corruption. The problem is that the coaches growing power has rendered them, unlike their players, ever more immune to oversight. According to research by Charles Clotfelter, an economist at Duke, the average compensation for head football coaches at public universities, now more than 2 million, has grown 750 percent (adjusted for inflation) since the Regents decision in 1984 thats more than 20 times the cumulative 32 percent raise for college professors. For top basketball coaches, annual contracts now exceed 4 million, augmented by assorted bonuses, endorsements, country-club memberships, the occasional private plane, and in some cases a negotiated percentage of ticket receipts. (Oregons ticket concessions netted former football coach Mike Bellotti an additional 631,000 in 2005.) The NCAA rarely tangles with such people, who are apt to fight back and win. When Rick Neuheisel, the head football coach of the Washington Huskies, was punished for petty gambling (in a March Madness pool, as it happened), he sued the NCAA and the university for wrongful termination, collected 4.5 million, and later moved on to UCLA. When the NCAA tried to cap assistant coaches entering salary at a mere 16,000, nearly 2,000 of them brought an antitrust suit, Law v. NCAA . and in 1999 settled for 54.5 million. Since then, salaries for assistant coaches have commonly exceeded 200,000, with the top assistants in the SEC averaging 700,000. In 2009, Monte Kiffin, then at the University of Tennessee, became the first assistant coach to reach 1 million, plus benefits. The late Myles Brand, who led the NCAA from 2003 to 2009, defended the economics of college sports by claiming that they were simply the result of a smoothly functioning free market. He and his colleagues deflected criticism about the money saturating big-time college sports by focusing attention on scapegoats in 2010, outrage targeted sports agents. Last year Sports Illustrated published Confessions of an Agent, a firsthand account of dealing with high-strung future pros whom the agent and his peers courted with flattery, cash, and tawdry favors. Nick Saban, Alabamas head football coach, mobilized his peers to denounce agents as a public scourge. I hate to say this, he said, but how are they any better than a pimp I have no respect for people who do that to young people. Keiner. Sabans raw condescension contrasts sharply with the lonely penitence from Dale Brown, the retired longtime basketball coach at LSU. Look at the money we make off predominantly poor black kids, Brown once reflected. Were the whoremasters. NCAA officials have tried to assert their dominionand distract attention from the larger issuesby chasing frantically after petty violations. Tom McMillen, a former member of the Knight Commission who was an All-American basketball player at the University of Maryland, likens these officials to traffic cops in a speed trap, who could flag down almost any passing motorist for prosecution in kangaroo court under a maze of picayune rules. The publicized cases have become convoluted soap operas. At the start of the 2010 football season, A. J. Green, a wide receiver at Georgia, confessed that hed sold his own jersey from the Independence Bowl the year before, to raise cash for a spring-break vacation. The NCAA sentenced Green to a four-game suspension for violating his amateur status with the illicit profit generated by selling the shirt off his own back. While he served the suspension, the Georgia Bulldogs store continued legally selling replicas of Greens No. 8 jersey for 39.95 and up. A few months later, the NCAA investigated rumors that Ohio State football players had benefited from hook-ups on tattsthat is, that theyd gotten free or underpriced tattoos at an Ohio tattoo parlor in exchange for autographs and memorabiliaa violation of the NCAAs rule against discounts linked to athletic personae. The NCAA Committee on Infractions imposed five-game suspensions on Terrelle Pryor, Ohio States tattooed quarterback, and four other players (some of whom had been found to have sold their Big Ten championship rings and other gear), but did permit them to finish the season and play in the Sugar Bowl. (This summer, in an attempt to satisfy NCAA investigators, Ohio State voluntarily vacated its football wins from last season, as well as its Sugar Bowl victory.) A different NCAA committee promulgated a rule banning symbols and messages in players eyeblackreportedly aimed at Pryors controversial gesture of support for the pro quarterback Michael Vick, and at Bible verses inscribed in the eyeblack of the former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. The moral logic is hard to fathom: the NCAA bans personal messages on the bodies of the players, and penalizes players for trading their celebrity status for discounted tattoosbut it codifies precisely how and where commercial insignia from multinational corporations can be displayed on college players, for the financial benefit of the colleges. Last season, while the NCAA investigated him and his father for the recruiting fees theyd allegedly sought, Cam Newton compliantly wore at least 15 corporate logosone on his jersey, four on his helmet visor, one on each wristband, one on his pants, six on his shoes, and one on the headband he wears under his helmetas part of Auburns 10.6 million deal with Under Armour. Obscure NCAA rules have bedeviled Scott Boras, the preeminent sports agent for Major League Baseball stars, in cases that may ultimately prove more threatening to the NCAA than Ed OBannons antitrust suit. In 2008, Andrew Oliver, a sophomore pitcher for the Oklahoma State Cowboys, had been listed as the 12th-best professional prospect among sophomore players nationally. He decided to dismiss the two attorneys who had represented him out of high school, Robert and Tim Baratta, and retain Boras instead. Infuriated, the Barattas sent a spiteful letter to the NCAA. Oliver didnt learn about this until the night before he was scheduled to pitch in the regional final for a place in the College World Series, when an NCAA investigator showed up to question him in the presence of lawyers for Oklahoma State. The investigator also questioned his father, Dave, a truck driver. Had Tim Baratta been present in their home when the Minnesota Twins offered 390,000 for Oliver to sign out of high school A yes would mean trouble. While the NCAA did not forbid all professional adviceindeed, Baseball America used to publish the names of agents representing draft-likely underclassmenNCAA Bylaw 12.3.2.1 prohibited actual negotiation with any professional team by an adviser, on pain of disqualification for the college athlete. The questioning lasted past midnight. Just hours before the game was to start the next day, Oklahoma State officials summoned Oliver to tell him he would not be pitching. Only later did he learn that the university feared that by letting him play while the NCAA adjudicated his case, the university would open not only the baseball team but all other Oklahoma State teams to broad punishment under the NCAAs restitution rule (Bylaw 19.7), under which the NCAA threatens schools with sanctions if they obey any temporary court order benefiting a college athlete, should that order eventually be modified or removed. The baseball coach did not even let his ace tell his teammates the sad news in person. He said, Its probably not a good idea for you to be at the game, Oliver recalls. The Olivers went home to Ohio to find a lawyer. Rick Johnson, a solo practitioner specializing in legal ethics, was aghast that the Baratta brothers had turned in their own client to the NCAA, divulging attorney-client details likely to invite wrath upon Oliver. But for the next 15 months, Johnson directed his litigation against the two NCAA bylaws at issue. Judge Tygh M. Tone, of Erie County, came to share his outrage. On February 12, 2009, Tone struck down the ban on lawyers negotiating for student-athletes as a capricious, exploitative attempt by a private association to dictate to an attorney where, what, how, or when he should represent his client, violating accepted legal practice in every state. He also struck down the NCAAs restitution rule as an intimidation that attempted to supersede the judicial system. Finally, Judge Tone ordered the NCAA to reinstate Olivers eligibility at Oklahoma State for his junior season, which started several days later. The NCAA sought to disqualify Oliver again, with several appellate motions to stay an unprecedented Order purporting to void a fundamental Bylaw. Oliver did get to pitch that season, but he dropped into the second round of the June 2009 draft, signing for considerably less than if hed been picked earlier. Now 23, Oliver says sadly that the whole experience made me grow up a little quicker. His lawyer claimed victory. Andy Oliver is the first college athlete ever to win against the NCAA in court, said Rick Johnson. Yet the victory was only temporary. Wounded, the NCAA fought back with a vengeance. Its battery of lawyers prepared for a damages trial, ultimately overwhelming Olivers side eight months later with an offer to resolve the dispute for 750,000. When Oliver and Johnson accepted, to extricate themselves ahead of burgeoning legal costs, Judge Tone was compelled to vacate his orders as part of the final settlement. This freed NCAA officials to reassert the two bylaws that Judge Tone had so forcefully overturned, and they moved swiftly to ramp up rather than curtail enforcement. First, the NCAAs Eligibility Center devised a survey for every drafted undergraduate athlete who sought to stay in college another year. The survey asked whether an agent had conducted negotiations. It also requested a signed release waiving privacy rights and authorizing professional teams to disclose details of any interaction to the NCAA Eligibility Center. Second, NCAA enforcement officials went after another Scott Boras client. The Toronto Blue Jays had made the left-handed pitcher James Paxton, of the University of Kentucky, the 37th pick in the 2009 draft. Paxton decided to reject a reported 1 million offer and return to school for his senior year, pursuing a dream to pitch for his team in the College World Series. But then he ran into the new NCAA survey. Had Boras negotiated with the Blue Jays Boras has denied that he did, but it would have made sense that he hadthat was his job, to test the market for his client. But saying so would get Paxton banished under the same NCAA bylaw that had derailed Andrew Olivers career. Since Paxton was planning to go back to school and not accept their draft offer, the Blue Jays no longer had any incentive to protect himindeed, they had every incentive to turn him in. The Blue Jays president, by telling reporters that Boras had negotiated on Paxtons behalf, demonstrated to future recruits and other teams that they could use the NCAAs rules to punish college players who wasted their draft picks by returning to college. The NCAAs enforcement staff raised the pressure by requesting to interview Paxton. Though Paxton had no legal obligation to talk to an investigator, NCAA Bylaw 10.1(j) specified that anything short of complete cooperation could be interpreted as unethical conduct, affecting his amateur status. Under its restitution rule, the NCAA had leverage to compel the University of Kentucky to ensure obedience. As the 2010 season approached, Gary Henderson, the Kentucky coach, sorely wanted Paxton, one of Baseball Americas top-ranked players, to return. Rick Johnson, Andrew Olivers lawyer, filed for a declaratory judgment on Paxtons behalf, arguing that the state constitutionplus the universitys code of student conductbarred arbitrary discipline at the request of a third party. Kentucky courts deferred to the university, however, and Paxton was suspended from the team. Due to the possibility of future penalties, including forfeiture of games, the university stated, it could not put the other 32 players of the team and the entire UK 22-sport intercollegiate athletics department at risk by having James compete. The NCAA appraised the result with satisfaction. When negotiations occur on behalf of student-athletes, Erik Christianson, the NCAA spokesperson, told The New York Times in reference to the Oliver case, those negotiations indicate that the student-athlete intends to become a professional athlete and no longer remain an amateur. Paxton was stranded. Not only could he not play for Kentucky, but his draft rights with the Blue Jays had lapsed for the year, meaning he could not play for any minor-league affiliate of Major League Baseball. Boras wrangled a holdover job for him in Texas with the independent Grand Prairie AirHogs, pitching against the Pensacola Pelicans and Wichita Wingnuts. Once projected to be a first-round draft pick, Paxton saw his stock plummet into the fourth round. He remained unsigned until late in spring training, when he signed with the Seattle Mariners and reported to their minor-league camp in Peoria, Arizona. You Might As Well Shoot Them in the Head When you dream about playing in college, Joseph Agnew told me not long ago, you dont ever think about being in a lawsuit. Agnew, a student at Rice University in Houston, had been cut from the football team and had his scholarship revoked by Rice before his senior year, meaning that he faced at least 35,000 in tuition and other bills if he wanted to complete his degree in sociology. Bereft of his scholarship, he was flailing about for help when he discovered the National College Players Association, which claims 7,000 active members and seeks modest reforms such as safety guidelines and better death benefits for college athletes. Agnew was struck by the NCPA scholarship data on players from top Division I basketball teams, which showed that 22 percent were not renewed from 2008 to 2009the same fate he had suffered. In October 2010, Agnew filed a class-action antitrust suit over the cancellation of his scholarship and to remove the cap on the total number of scholarships that can be awarded by NCAA schools. In his suit, Agnew did not claim the right to free tuition. He merely asked the federal court to strike down an NCAA rule, dating to 1973, that prohibited colleges and universities from offering any athletic scholarship longer than a one-year commitment, to be renewed or not, unilaterally, by the schoolwhich in practice means that coaches get to decide each year whose scholarships to renew or cancel. (After the coach who had recruited Agnew had moved on to Tulsa, the new Rice coach switched Agnews scholarship to a recruit of his own.) Agnew argued that without the one-year rule, he would have been free to bargain with all eight colleges that had recruited him, and each college could have decided how long to guarantee his scholarship. Agnews suit rested on a claim of an NCAA antitrust violation combined with a laudable academic goalmaking it possible for students to finish their educations. Around the same time, lawyers from President Obamas Justice Department initiated a series of meetings with NCAA officials and universities in which they asked what possible educational rationale there was for allowing the NCAAan organization that did not itself pay for scholarshipsto impose a blanket restriction on the length of scholarships offered by colleges. Tidbits leaked into the press. In response, the NCAA contended that an athletic scholarship was a merit award that should be reviewed annually, presumably because the degree of merit could change. Justice Department lawyers reportedly suggested that a free market in scholarships would expand learning opportunities in accord with the stated rationale for the NCAAs tax-exempt statusthat it promotes education through athletics. The one-year rule effectively allows colleges to cut underperforming student-athletes, just as pro sports teams cut their players. Plenty of them dont stay in school, said one of Agnews lawyers, Stuart Paynter. Theyre just gone. You might as well shoot them in the head. Agnews lawsuit has made him a pariah to former friends in the athletic department at Rice, where everyone identified so thoroughly with the NCAA that they seemed to feel he was attacking them personally. But if the premise of Agnews case is upheld by the courts, it will make a sham of the NCAAs claim that its highest priority is protecting education. They Want to Crush These Kids Academic performance has always been difficult for the NCAA to address. Any detailed regulation would intrude upon the free choice of widely varying schools, and any academic standard broad enough to fit both MIT and Ole Miss would have little force. From time to time, a scandal will expose extreme lapses. In 1989, Dexter Manley, by then the famous Secretary of Defense for the NFLs Washington Redskins, teared up before the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Education, Arts, and Humanities, when admitting that he had been functionally illiterate in college. Within big-time college athletic departments, the financial pressure to disregard obvious academic shortcomings and shortcuts is just too strong. In the 1980s, Jan Kemp, an English instructor at the University of Georgia, publicly alleged that university officials had demoted and then fired her because she refused to inflate grades in her remedial English courses. Documents showed that administrators replaced the grades shed given athletes with higher ones, providing fake passing grades on one notable occasion to nine Bulldog football players who otherwise would have been ineligible to compete in the 1982 Sugar Bowl. (Georgia lost anyway, 2420, to a University of Pittsburgh team led by the future Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino.) When Kemp filed a lawsuit against the university, she was publicly vilified as a troublemaker, but she persisted bravely in her testimony. Once, Kemp said, a supervisor demanding that she fix a grade had bellowed, Who do you think is more important to this university, you or Dominique Wilkins (Wilkins was a star on the basketball team.) Traumatized, Kemp twice attempted suicide. In trying to defend themselves, Georgia officials portrayed Kemp as naive about sports. We have to compete on a level playing field, said Fred Davison, the university president. During the Kemp civil trial, in 1986, Hale Almand, Georgias defense lawyer, explained the universitys patronizing aspirations for its typical less-than-scholarly athlete. We may not make a university student out of him, Almand told the court, but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career. This argument backfired with the jurors: finding in favor of Kemp, they rejected her polite request for 100,000, and awarded her 2.6 million in damages instead. (This was later reduced to 1.08 million.) Jan Kemp embodied what is ostensibly the NCAAs reason for beingto enforce standards fairly and put studies above sportsbut no one from the organization ever spoke up on her behalf. T he NCAA body charged with identifying violations of any of the Division I league rules, the Committee on Infractions, operates in the shadows. Josephine Potuto, a professor of law at the University of Nebraska and a longtime committee member who was then serving as its vice chair, told Congress in 2004 that one reason her group worked in secret was that it hoped to avoid a media circus. The committee preferred to deliberate in private, she said, guiding member schools to punish themselves. The enforcement process is cooperative, not adversarial, Potuto testified. The committee consisted of an elite coterie of judges, athletic directors, and authors of legal treatises. The committee also is savvy about intercollegiate athletics, she added. They cannot be conned. In 2009, a series of unlikely circumstances peeled back the veil of secrecy to reveal NCAA procedures so contorted that even victims marveled at their comical wonder. The saga began in March of 2007, shortly after the Florida State Seminoles basketball team was knocked out of the NIT basketball tournament, which each spring invites the best teams not selected for the March Madness tournament. At an athletic-department study hall, Al Thornton, a star forward for the team, completed a sports-psychology quiz but then abandoned it without posting his written answers electronically by computer. Brenda Monk, an academic tutor for the Seminoles, says she noticed the error and asked a teammate to finish entering Thorntons answers onscreen and hit submit, as required for credit. The teammate complied, steaming silently, and then complained at the athletic office about getting stuck with clean-up chores for the superstar Thornton (who was soon to be selected by the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round of the NBA draft). Monk promptly resigned when questioned by FSU officials, saying her fatigue at the time could not excuse her asking the teammate to submit the answers to another students completed test. Monks act of guileless responsibility set off a chain reaction. First, FSU had to give the NCAA preliminary notice of a confessed academic fraud. Second, because this would be its seventh major infraction case since 1968, FSU mounted a vigorous self-investigation to demonstrate compliance with NCAA academic rules. Third, interviews with 129 Seminoles athletes unleashed a nightmare of matter-of-fact replies about absentee professors who allowed group consultations and unlimited retakes of open-computer assignments and tests. Fourth, FSU suspended 61 of its athletes in 10 sports. Fifth, the infractions committee applied the byzantine NCAA bylaws to FSUs violations. Sixth, one of the penalties announced in March of 2009 caused a howl of protest across the sports universe. Twenty-seven news organizations filed a lawsuit in hopes of finding out how and why the NCAA proposed to invalidate 14 prior victories in FSU football. Such a penalty, if upheld, would doom coach Bobby Bowdens chance of overtaking Joe Paterno of Penn State for the most football wins in Division I history. This was sacrosanct territory. Sports reporters followed the litigation for six months, reporting that 25 of the 61 suspended FSU athletes were football players, some of whom were ruled ineligible retroactively from the time they had heard or yelled out answers to online test questions in, of all things, a music-appreciation course. When reporters sought access to the transcript of the infractions committees hearing in Indianapolis, NCAA lawyers said the 695-page document was private. (The NCAA claimed it was entitled to keep all such records secret because of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that it had won in 1988, in NCAA v. Tarkanian . which exempted the organization from any due-process obligations because it was not a government organization.) Media outlets pressed the judge to let Florida State share its own copy of the hearing transcript, whereupon NCAA lawyers objected that the school had never actually possessed the document it had only seen the transcript via a defendants guest access to the carefully restricted NCAA Web site. This claim, in turn, prompted intercession on the side of the media by Floridas attorney general, arguing that letting the NCAA use a technical loophole like this would undermine the states sunshine law mandating open public records. After tumultuous appeals, the Florida courts agreed and ordered the NCAA transcript released in October of 2009. News interest quickly evaporated when the sports media found nothing in the record about Coach Bowden or the canceled football victories. But the transcript revealed plenty about the NCAA. On page 37, T. K. Wetherell, the bewildered Florida State president, lamented that his university had hurt itself by cooperating with the investigation. We self-reported this case, he said during the hearing, and he later complained that the most ingenuous athletesthose who asked Whats the big deal, this happens all the timereceived the harshest suspensions, while those who clammed up on the advice of lawyers went free. The music-appreciation professor was apparently never questioned. Brenda Monk, the only instructor who consistently cooperated with the investigation, appeared voluntarily to explain her work with learning-disabled athletes, only to be grilled about her credentials by Potuto in a pettifogging inquisition of remarkable stamina. In January of last year, the NCAAs Infractions Appeals Committee sustained all the sanctions imposed on FSU except the number of vacated football victories, which it dropped, ex cathedra, from 14 to 12. The final penalty locked Bobby Bowdens official win total on retirement at 377 instead of 389, behind Joe Paternos 401 (and counting). This carried stinging symbolism for fans, without bringing down on the NCAA the harsh repercussions it would have risked if it had issued a television ban or substantial fine. Cruelly, but typically, the NCAA concentrated public censure on powerless scapegoats. A dreaded show cause order rendered Brenda Monk, the tutor, effectively unhirable at any college in the United States. Cloaking an old-fashioned blackball in the stately language of law, the order gave notice that any school hiring Monk before a specified date in 2013 shall, pursuant to the provisions of Bylaw 19.5.2.2(l), show cause why it should not be penalized if it does not restrict the former learning specialist Monk from having any contact with student-athletes. Today she works as an education supervisor at a prison in Florida. T he Florida State verdict hardly surprised Rick Johnson, the lawyer who had represented the college pitchers Andrew Oliver and James Paxton. All the NCAAs enforcements are random and selective, he told me, calling the organizations appeals process a travesty. (Johnson says the NCAA has never admitted to having wrongly suspended an athlete.) Johnsons scalding experience prompted him to undertake a law-review article on the subject, which in turn sent him trawling through NCAA archives. From the summary tax forms required of nonprofits, he found out that the NCAA had spent nearly 1 million chartering private jets in 2006. What kind of nonprofit organization leases private jets, Johnson asks. Its hard to determine from tax returns what money goes where, but it looks as if the NCAA spent less than 1 percent of its budget on enforcement that year. Even after its plump cut for its own overhead, the NCAA dispersed huge sums to its 1,200 member schools, in the manner of a professional sports league. These annual payments are universalevery college gets somethingbut widely uneven. They keep the disparate shareholders (barely) united and speaking for all of college sports. The payments coerce unity within the structure of a private association that is unincorporated and unregulated, exercising amorphous powers not delegated by any government. Searching through the archives, Johnson came across a 1973 memo from the NCAA general counsel recommending the adoption of a due-process procedure for athletes in disciplinary cases. Without it, warned the organizations lawyer, the association risked big liability claims for deprivation of rights. His proposal went nowhere. Instead, apparently to limit costs to the universities, Walter Byers had implemented the year-by-year scholarship rule that Joseph Agnew would challenge in court 37 years later. Moreover, the NCAAs 1975 convention adopted a second recommendation to discourage legal actions against the NCAA, according to the minutes. The members voted to create Bylaw 19.7, Restitution, to intimidate college athletes in disputes with the NCAA. Johnson recognized this provision all too well, having won the temporary court judgment that the rule was illegal if not downright despotic. It made him nearly apoplectic to learn that the NCAA had deliberately drawn up the restitution rule as an obstacle to due process, contrary to the recommendation of its own lawyer. They want to crush these kids, he says. The NCAA, of course, has never expressed such a desire, and its public comments on due process tend to be anodyne. At a congressional hearing in 2004, the infractions-committee vice chair, Josephine Potuto, repeatedly argued that although the NCAA is not bound by any judicial due process standards, its enforcement, infractions, and hearing procedures meet and very likely exceed those of other public institutions. Yet when pressed, Potuto declared that athletes would have no standing for due process even if the Supreme Court had not exempted the NCAA in the 1988 Tarkanian decision. In order to reach due-process issues as a legal Constitutional principle, the individual challenging has to have a substantive property or liberty interest, she testified. The opportunity to play intercollegiate athletics does not rise to that level. To translate this from the legal jargon, Potuto used a circular argument to confine college athletes beneath any right to freedom or property in their own athletic effort. They have no stake to seek their rights, she claimed, because they have no rights at stake. Potutos assertion might be judged preposterous, an heir of the Dred Scott dictum that slaves possessed no rights a white person was bound to respect. But she was merely being honest, articulating assumptions almost everyone shares without question. Whether motivated by hostility for students (as critics like Johnson allege), or by noble and paternalistic tough love (as the NCAA professes), the denial of fundamental due process for college athletes has stood unchallenged in public discourse. Like other NCAA rules, it emanates naturally from the premise that college athletes own no interest in sports beyond exercise, character-building, and good fun. Who represents these young men and women No one asks. Video: Taylor Branch explains the circular logic that keeps college athletes from getting a slice of the enormous industry that surrounds them (part 3 of 3) The debates and commissions about reforming college sports nibble around the edgestrying to reduce corruption, to prevent the contamination of athletes by lucre, and to maintain at least a pretense of concern for academic integrity. Everything stands on the implicit presumption that preserving amateurism is necessary for the well-being of college athletes. But while amateurismand the free labor it providesmay be necessary to the preservation of the NCAA, and perhaps to the profit margins of various interested corporations and educational institutions, what if it doesnt benefit the athletes What if it hurts them The Plantation Mentality Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes, Sonny Vaccaro says. Go to the skill positionsthe stars. Ninety percent African Americans. The NCAA made its money off those kids, and so did he. They were not all bad people, the NCAA officials, but they were blind, Vaccaro believes. Their organization is a fraud. Vaccaro retired from Reebok in 2007 to make a clean break for a crusade. The kids and their parents gave me a good life, he says in his peppery staccato. I want to give something back. Call it redemption, he told me. Call it education or a good cause. Heres what I preach, said Vaccaro. This goes beyond race, to human rights. The least educated are the most exploited. Im probably closer to the kids than anyone else, and Im 71 years old. Vaccaro is officially an unpaid consultant to the plaintiffs in OBannon v. NCAA. He connected Ed OBannon with the attorneys who now represent him, and he talked to some of the additional co-plaintiffs who have joined the suit, among them Oscar Robertson, a basketball Hall of Famer who was incensed that the NCAA was still selling his image on playing cards 50 years after he left the University of Cincinnati. Jon King, an antitrust lawyer at Hausfeld LLP in San Francisco, told me that Vaccaro opened our eyes to massive revenue streams hidden in college sports. King and his colleagues have drawn on Vaccaros vast knowledge of athletic-department finances, which include off-budget accounts for shoe contracts. Sonny Vaccaro and his wife, Pam, had a mountain of documents, he said. The outcome of the 1984 Regents decision validated an antitrust approach for OBannon, King argues, as well as for Joseph Agnew in his continuing case against the one-year scholarship rule. Lawyers for Sam Kellera former quarterback for the University of Nebraska who is featured in video gamesare pursuing a parallel right of publicity track based on the First Amendment. Still other lawyers could revive Rick Johnsons case against NCAA bylaws on a larger scale, and King thinks claims for the rights of college players may be viable also under laws pertaining to contracts, employment, and civil rights. Vaccaro had sought a law firm for OBannon with pockets deep enough to withstand an expensive war of attrition, fearing that NCAA officials would fight discovery to the end. So far, though, they have been forthcoming. The numbers are off the wall, Vaccaro says. The public will see for the first time how all the money is distributed. Vaccaro has been traveling the after-dinner circuit, proselytizing against what he sees as the NCAAs exploitation of young athletes. Late in 2008, someone who heard his stump speech at Howard University mentioned it to Michael Hausfeld, a prominent antitrust and human-rights lawyer, whose firm had won suits against Exxon for Native Alaskans and against Union Bank of Switzerland for Holocaust victims families. Someone tracked down Vaccaro on vacation in Athens, Greece, and he flew back directly to meet Hausfeld. The shoe salesman and the white-shoe lawyer made common cause. Hausfeld LLP has offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and London. Its headquarters are on K Street in Washington, D. C. about three blocks from the White House. When I talked with Hausfeld there not long ago, he sat in a cavernous conference room, tidy in pinstripes, hands folded on a spotless table that reflected the skyline. He spoke softly, without pause, condensing the complex fugue of antitrust litigation into simple sentences. Lets start with the basic question, he said, noting that the NCAA claims that student-athletes have no property rights in their own athletic accomplishments. Yet, in order to be eligible to play, college athletes have to waive their rights to proceeds from any sales based on their athletic performance. What right is it that theyre waiving, Hausfeld asked. You cant waive something you dont have. So they had a right that they gave up in consideration to the principle of amateurism, if there be such. (At an April hearing in a U. S. District Court in California, Gregory Curtner, a representative for the NCAA, stunned OBannons lawyers by saying: There is no document, there is no substance, that the NCAA ever takes from the student-athletes their rights of publicity or their rights of likeness. They are at all times owned by the student-athlete. Jon King says this is like telling someone they have the winning lottery ticket, but by the way, it can only be cashed in on Mars. The court denied for a second time an NCAA motion to dismiss the OBannon complaint.) The waiver clause is nestled among the paragraphs of the Student-Athlete Statement that NCAA rules require be collected yearly from every college athlete. In signing the statement, the athletes attest that they have amateur status, that their stated SAT scores are valid, that they are willing to disclose any educational documents requested, and so forth. Already, Hausfeld said, the defendants in the Ed OBannon case have said in court filings that college athletes thereby transferred their promotional rights forever. He paused. Thats ludicrous, he said. Nobody assigns rights like that. Nobody can assert rights like that. He said the pattern demonstrated clear abuse by the collective power of the schools and all their conferences under the NCAA umbrellaa most effective cartel. The faux ideal of amateurism is the elephant in the room, Hausfeld said, sending for a book. You cant get to the bottom of our case without exposing the hypocrisy of amateurism, and Walter Byers says it eloquently. An assistant brought in Byerss memoir. It looked garish on the shiny table because dozens of pink Post-its protruded from the text. Hausfeld read to me from page 390: The college player cannot sell his own feet (the coach does that) nor can he sell his own name (the college will do that). This is the plantation mentality resurrected and blessed by todays campus executives. He looked up. That wasnt me, he said. That was the NCAAs architect. He found a key recommendation on page 388: Prosecutors and the courts, with the support of the public, should use antitrust laws to break up the collegiate cartelnot just in athletics but possibly in other aspects of collegiate life as well. Could the book become evidence Might the aged Byers testify (He is now 89.) Was that part of the plaintiffs strategy for the OBannon trial Hausfeld smiled faintly. Id rather the NCAA lawyers not fully understand the strategy, he said. He put the spiny book away and previewed what lies ahead. The court soon would qualify his clients as a class. Then the Sherman Antitrust Act would provide for thorough discovery to break down exactly what the NCAA receives on everything from video clips to jerseys, contract by contract. And we want to know what theyre carrying on their books as the value of their archival footage, he concluded. They say its a lot of money. We agree. How much The work will be hard, but Hausfeld said he will win in the courts, unless the NCAA folds first. Why Hausfeld asked rhetorically. We know our clients are foreclosed: neither the NCAA nor its members will permit them to participate in any of that licensing revenue. Under the law, its up to them the defendants to give a pro-competitive justification. They cant. Ende der Geschichte. I n 2010 the third Knight Commission, complementing a previous commissions recommendation for published reports on academic progress, called for the finances of college sports to be made transparent and publictelevision contracts, conference budgets, shoe deals, coaches salaries, stadium bonds, everything. The recommendation was based on the worthy truism that sunlight is a proven disinfectant. But in practice, it has not been applied at all. Conferences, coaches, and other stakeholders resisted disclosure college players still have no way of determining their value to the university. Money surrounds college sports, says Domonique Foxworth, who is a cornerback for the NFLs Baltimore Ravens and an executive-committee member for the NFL Players Association, and played for the University of Maryland. And every player knows those millions are floating around only because of the 18-to-22-year-olds. Yes, he told me, even the second-string punter believes a miracle might lift him into the NFL, and why not In all the many pages of the three voluminous Knight Commission reports, there is but one paragraph that addresses the real-life choices for college athletes. Approximately 1 percent of NCAA mens basketball players and 2 percent of NCAA football players are drafted by NBA or NFL teams, stated the 2001 report, basing its figures on a review of the previous 10 years, and just being drafted is no assurance of a successful professional career. Warning that the odds against professional athletic success are astronomically high, the Knight Commission counsels college athletes to avoid a rude surprise and to stick to regular studies. This is sound advice as far as it goes, but its a bromide that pinches off discussion. Nothing in the typical college curriculum teaches a sweat-stained guard at Clemson or Purdue what his monetary value to the university is. Nothing prods students to think independently about amateurismbecause the universities themselves have too much invested in its preservation. Stifling thought, the universities, in league with the NCAA, have failed their own primary mission by providing an empty, cynical education on college sports. The most basic reform would treat the students as what they areadults, with rights and reason of their ownand grant them a meaningful voice in NCAA deliberations. A restoration of full citizenship to student-athletes would facilitate open governance, making it possible to enforce pledges of transparency in both academic standards and athletic finances. Without that, the NCAA has no effective checks and balances, no way for the students to provide informed consent regarding the way they are governed. A thousand questions lie willfully silenced because the NCAA is naturally afraid of giving student-athletes a true voice. Would college players be content with the augmented scholarship or allowance now requested by the National College Players Association If a players worth to the university is greater than the value of his scholarship (as it clearly is in some cases), should he be paid a salary If so, would teammates in revenue sports want to be paid equally, or in salaries stratified according to talent or value on the field What would the athletes want in Division III, where athletic budgets keep rising without scholarships or substantial sports revenue Would athletes seek more or less variance in admissions standards Should non-athletes also have a voice, especially where involuntary student fees support more and more of college sports Might some schools choose to specialize, paying players only in elite leagues for football, or lacrosse In athletic councils, how much would high-revenue athletes value a simple thank you from the tennis or field-hockey players for the newly specified subsidies to their facilities University administrators, already besieged from all sides, do not want to even think about such questions. Most cringe at the thought of bargaining with athletes as a general manager does in professional sports, with untold effects on the budgets for coaches and every other sports item. I would not want to be part of it, North Carolina Athletic Director Dick Baddour told me flatly. After 44 years at UNC, he could scarcely contemplate a world without amateur rules. We would have to think long and hard, Baddour added gravely, about whether this university would continue those sports at all. I, too, once reflexively recoiled at the idea of paying college athletes and treating them like employees or professionals. It feels abhorrentbut for reasons having to do more with sentiment than with practicality or law. Not just fans and university presidents but judges have often found cursory, non-statutory excuses to leave amateur traditions intact. Even in the increasingly commercial modern world, said a federal-court judge in Gaines v. NCAA in 1990, this Court believes there is still validity to the Athenian concept of a complete education derived from fostering the full growth of both mind and body. The fact that the NCAA has not distilled amateurism to its purest form, said the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1988, does not mean its attempts to maintain a mixture containing some amateur elements are unreasonable. But one way or another, the smokescreen of amateurism may soon be swept away. For one thing, a victory by the plaintiffs in OBannons case would radically transform college sports. Colleges would likely have to either stop profiting from students or start paying them. The NCAA could also be forced to pay tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in damages. If OBannon and Vaccaro and company win, it will turn college sports on its ear, said Richard Lapchick, the president of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports, in a recent interview with The New York Times . Though the OBannon case may take several years yet to reach resolution, developments on other fronts are chipping away at amateurism, and at the NCAA. This past summer, Sports Illustrated editorialized in favor of allowing college athletes to be paid by non-university sources without jeopardizing their eligibility. At a press conference last June, Steve Spurrier, the coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks football team (and the winner of the 1966 Heisman Trophy as a Florida Gator), proposed that coaches start paying players 300 a game out of their own pockets. The coaches at six other SEC schools (Alabama, Florida, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU, and Tennessee) all endorsed Spurriers proposal. And Mark Emmert, the NCAA president, recently conceded that big changes must come. The integrity of collegiate athletics is seriously challenged today by rapidly growing pressures coming from many directions, Emmert said in July. We have reached a point where incremental change is not sufficient to meet these challenges. I want us to act more aggressively and in a more comprehensive way than we have in the past. A few new tweaks of the rules wont get the job done. Threats to NCAA dominion also percolate in Congress. Aggrieved legislators have sponsored numerous bills. Senator Orrin Hatch, citing mistreatment of his Utah Utes, has called witnesses to discuss possible antitrust remedies for the Bowl Championship Series. Congressional committees have already held hearings critical of the NCAAs refusal to follow due process in disciplinary matters other committees have explored a rise in football concussions. Last January, calls went up to investigate informal football workouts at the University of Iowa just after the season-ending bowl gamesworkouts so grueling that 41 of the 56 amateur student-athletes collapsed, and 13 were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening kidney condition often caused by excessive exercise. The greatest threat to the viability of the NCAA may come from its member universities. Many experts believe that the churning instability within college football will drive the next major change. President Obama himself has endorsed the drumbeat cry for a national playoff in college football. This past spring, the Justice Department questioned the BCS about its adherence to antitrust standards. Jim Delany, the commissioner of the Big Ten, has estimated that a national playoff system could produce three or four times as much money as the existing bowl system does. If a significant band of football schools were to demonstrate that they could orchestrate a true national playoff, without the NCAAs assistance, the association would be terrifiedand with good reason. Because if the big sports colleges dont need the NCAA to administer a national playoff in football, then they dont need it to do so in basketball. In which case, they could cut out the middleman in March Madness and run the tournament themselves. Which would deprive the NCAA of close to 1 billion a year, more than 95 percent of its revenue. The organization would be reduced to a rule book without moneyan organization aspiring to enforce its rules but without the financial authority to enforce anything. Thus the playoff dreamed of and hankered for by millions of football fans haunts the NCAA. There will be some kind of playoff in college football, and it will not be run by the NCAA, says Todd Turner, a former athletic director in four conferences (Big East, ACC, SEC, and Pac-10). If Im at the NCAA, I have to worry that the playoff group can get basketball to break away, too. This danger helps explain why the NCAA steps gingerly in enforcements against powerful colleges. To alienate member colleges would be to jeopardize its own existence. Long gone are television bans and the death penalty sentences (commanding season-long shutdowns of offending teams) once meted out to Kentucky (1952), Southwestern Louisiana (1973), and Southern Methodist University (1987). Institutions receive mostly symbolic slaps nowadays. Real punishments fall heavily on players and on scapegoats like literacy tutors. A deeper reason explains why, in its predicament, the NCAA has no recourse to any principle or law that can justify amateurism. Es gibt keine solche Sache. Scholars and sportswriters yearn for grand juries to ferret out every forbidden bauble that reaches a college athlete, but the NCAAs ersatz courts can only masquerade as public authority. How could any statute impose amateur status on college athletes, or on anyone else No legal definition of amateur exists, and any attempt to create one in enforceable law would expose its repulsive and unconstitutional naturea bill of attainder, stripping from college athletes the rights of American citizenship. For all our queasiness about what would happen if some athletes were to get paid, there is a successful precedent for the professionalization of an amateur sports system: the Olympics. For years, Walter Byers waged war with the NCAAs older and more powerful nemesis, the Amateur Athletic Union, which since 1894 had overseen U. S. Olympic athletes. Run in high-handed fashion, the AAU had infamously banned Jesse Owens for life in 1936weeks after his four heroic gold medals punctured the Nazi claim of Aryan supremacybecause instead of using his sudden fame to tour and make money for the AAU at track meets across Europe, he came home early. In the early 1960s, the fights between the NCAA and the AAU over who should manage Olympic athletes become so bitter that President Kennedy called in General Douglas MacArthur to try to mediate a truce before the Tokyo Olympic Games. Ultimately, Byers prevailed and effectively neutered the AAU. In November 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the bipartisan Amateur Sports Act. Amateurism in the Olympics soon dissolvedand the world did not end. Athletes, granted a 20 percent voting stake on every Olympic sports governing body, tipped balances in the United States and then inexorably around the world. First in marathon races, then in tennis tournaments, players soon were allowed to accept prize money and keep their Olympic eligibility. Athletes profited from sponsorships and endorsements. The International Olympic Committee expunged the word amateur from its charter in 1986. Olympic officials, who had once disdained the NCAA for offering scholarships in exchange for athletic performance, came to welcome millionaire athletes from every quarter, while the NCAA still refused to let the pro Olympian Michael Phelps swim for his college team at Michigan. This sweeping shift left the Olympic reputation intact, and perhaps improved. Only hardened romantics mourned the amateur code. Hey, come on, said Anne Audain, a track-and-field star who once held the world record for the 5,000 meters. Its like losing your virginity. Youre a little misty for awhile, but then you realize, Wow, theres a whole new world out there Without logic or practicality or fairness to support amateurism, the NCAAs final retreat is to sentiment. The Knight Commission endorsed its heartfelt cry that to pay college athletes would be an unacceptable surrender to despair. Many of the people I spoke with while reporting this article felt the same way. I dont want to pay college players, said Wade Smith, a tough criminal lawyer and former star running back at North Carolina. I just dont want to do it. Wed lose something precious. Scholarship athletes are already paid, declared the Knight Commission members, in the most meaningful way poss-ible: with a free education. This evasion by prominent educators severed my last reluctant, emotional tie with imposed amateurism. I found it worse than self-serving. It echoes masters who once claimed that heavenly salvation would outweigh earthly injustice to slaves. In the era when our college sports first arose, colonial powers were turning the whole world upside down to define their own interests as all-inclusive and benevolent. Just so, the NCAA calls it heinous exploitation to pay college athletes a fair portion of what they earn. Rundschreiben