Serfs of the Turf
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007Michael Lewis (the guy who would’ve written Moneyball if Billy Beane hadn’t beaten him to it) on the illusions of equity and amateur status in college football:
College football’s best trick play is its pretense that it has nothing to do with money, that it’s simply an extension of the university’s mission to educate its students. Were the public to view college football as mainly a business, it might start asking questions. For instance: why are these enterprises that have nothing to do with education and everything to do with profits exempt from paying taxes? Or why don’t they pay their employees?
This is maybe the oddest aspect of the college football business. Everyone associated with it is getting rich except the people whose labor creates the value. At this moment there are thousands of big-time college football players, many of whom are black and poor. They perform for the intense pleasure of millions of rabid college football fans, many of whom are rich and white. The world’s most enthusiastic racially integrated marketplace is waiting to happen.
November 13th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
favorite quote:
“And you never know. The N.C.A.A. might one day be able to run an honest advertisement for the football-playing student-athlete: a young man who valued so highly what the University of Florida had to teach him about hospitality management that he ignored the money being thrown at him by Florida State.”.
This is absurd! Florida would obviously offer more money with their TV revenues must be awesome with the recent national title and Tim “running qb” Tebow. Lewis Beane/Billy Michael’s argument falls flat on it’s face.