University takes advantage of free labor with college athletic icons
The money grab known as college conference realignment has continued into the SEC with the recent addition of Texas A&M. There's a key issue being avoided: paying the athletes.
President Harris Pastides answered a financial question poorly in a recent Daily Gamecock interview. He said about the realignment, "Hopefully in the long term, the expansion of the league into a larger, new market will mean additional revenue."
That's a ludicrous statement. Hopefully, Mr. President? There will definitely be extra revenue generated by the SEC and it will be substantial.
The current nine states in the SEC have around 81 million people. Texas alone has over 25 million people. Dallas and Houston give it two of the top 10 television markets in the U.S. The current contract is worth over $2 billion with ESPN. The next contract will go up significantly when the current deal ends and the population of SEC states goes up by over 40 percent, which isn't even taking into account the 14th team that will be added.
The President was quick to point out to Fox Sports that college athletes won't be paid and Spurrier's recent comments in favor of paying athletes "came from a generous place".
The decision did not come from a generous place, it came from a rational place. The recent report "The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport" put out by the Drexel University Department of Sport Management and the National College Players Association made waves when it announced the top college football and men's basketball players are worth six figures.
I do not claim to have an answer on how every financial specific of this situation is going to be worked out, but when the SEC presidents convened in Indianapolis they unanimously voted against playing college athletes. That is wrong.
The new conferences are gearing up for unprecedented paydays. Marcus Lattimore is all over media guides. Alshon Jeffery is gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated. The University of South Carolina is being put on the map as a strong football institution and the lead brand managers of the university are not being adequately compensated. It's not fair in the least. A piece of this billion-dollar pie must go to the athletes.
Excuses such as amateurism, history, and the impact on other "small time" sports are invalid. The soccer team can play on the field they have now, the volleyball team can car pool to Florida, and the women's basketball team can play anywhere. I don't want to get rid of these sports; I just want to stop them from living lavishly off the subsidies of football and men's basketball.
But of course Pastides points out, "there will be a tennis team that has to go to College Station or a volleyball team and we'll do it" so cash poor athletic teams will continue to live off the money generators.