08-08-2014, 10:23 AM
Was watching Sportscenter a few minutes ago and they have Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby on live. Yesterday, Bowlsby had said that he supported paying all P5 college athletes the same cost of attendance/stipend and his rationale was that they all put in the same effort - a basketball stud doesn't practice or work any harder than a women's volleyball player or a wrestler, which in economics terms is an articulation of a "labor theory of value", meaning the belief that the worth of a product or service is determined by the quantity of labor or effort that is expended to create it. Thus, it doesn't matter that a wrestler brings in no revenue while a basketball star may be the reason that thousands of tickets are sold, since they both put in the same amount of work and sweat, their efforts should be valued (paid) equally.
But Jay Bilas mentioned the hypocrisy involved: If all P5 college athletes should get the same stipend because they all work equally hard, then why is it OK that in his office, Bowlsby is paid $1.8 million per year while his secretary, who works just as hard as he does, is paid 20 times less?
It was fun watching Bowlsby try to weasel his way out of the conundrum of having to either (a) admit his salary and his custodian's pay should be equalized, or (b) say that he works 20x harder than his secretary does.
So what did he say? First, Bowlsby said that the college athletic system is "voluntary" and "maybe not for everyone", in other words, "well, if you are an athlete and you are smart enough to recognize the hypocrisy of our policies and don't like them, then go do something else with your life". Then, he talked about the need for the NFL and NBA to start there own minor league systems like baseball to accommodate star football and basketball players who might chafe at making the same peanuts as the volleyball players.
Maybe he has a point, though (a) that could be slitting his own throat, since one reason college baseball is far less popular than football or basketball is because the best 18-22 year old baseball players are in farm systems not college, which could mean that NFL/NBA minor leagues that drained away talent would result in a significant drop in viewership of college football and basketball leading to much less money for his conference, and (b) even if the NBA and NFL did set up minor leagues, that wouldn't change the fact that college football and basketball would still be more popular than volleyball and thus we still have his labor theory of value hypocrisy to address.
Finally, he claimed that if college athlete scholarships and stipends were based on revenue generation and not effort, then these athletes would not be "students" or "amateurs" anymore but rather employees of the university, which he is emphatically against. But, this doesn't address the problem either: Whether someone is called an amateur on a stipend* or an employee, there is still the issue of whether they should be compensated based on effort or revenue generated.
Anyway, it was fun watching him twist in the wind on that one.
* The real paradox here is that if an athlete is truly an amateur, then they would get no compensation at all. The whole idea of an "athletic scholarship" is a nonesuch, and means the athletes are not amateurs. Club sports are amateur sports, scholarship sports are not.
But Jay Bilas mentioned the hypocrisy involved: If all P5 college athletes should get the same stipend because they all work equally hard, then why is it OK that in his office, Bowlsby is paid $1.8 million per year while his secretary, who works just as hard as he does, is paid 20 times less?
It was fun watching Bowlsby try to weasel his way out of the conundrum of having to either (a) admit his salary and his custodian's pay should be equalized, or (b) say that he works 20x harder than his secretary does.
So what did he say? First, Bowlsby said that the college athletic system is "voluntary" and "maybe not for everyone", in other words, "well, if you are an athlete and you are smart enough to recognize the hypocrisy of our policies and don't like them, then go do something else with your life". Then, he talked about the need for the NFL and NBA to start there own minor league systems like baseball to accommodate star football and basketball players who might chafe at making the same peanuts as the volleyball players.
Maybe he has a point, though (a) that could be slitting his own throat, since one reason college baseball is far less popular than football or basketball is because the best 18-22 year old baseball players are in farm systems not college, which could mean that NFL/NBA minor leagues that drained away talent would result in a significant drop in viewership of college football and basketball leading to much less money for his conference, and (b) even if the NBA and NFL did set up minor leagues, that wouldn't change the fact that college football and basketball would still be more popular than volleyball and thus we still have his labor theory of value hypocrisy to address.
Finally, he claimed that if college athlete scholarships and stipends were based on revenue generation and not effort, then these athletes would not be "students" or "amateurs" anymore but rather employees of the university, which he is emphatically against. But, this doesn't address the problem either: Whether someone is called an amateur on a stipend* or an employee, there is still the issue of whether they should be compensated based on effort or revenue generated.
Anyway, it was fun watching him twist in the wind on that one.
* The real paradox here is that if an athlete is truly an amateur, then they would get no compensation at all. The whole idea of an "athletic scholarship" is a nonesuch, and means the athletes are not amateurs. Club sports are amateur sports, scholarship sports are not.
