College football is rigged

Sports and education are the two parts of American life where our meritocratic fantasies crash hardest into exploitative reality.

In “BROKE,” SBNation’s Spencer Hall has a powerful argument for paying student-athletes, specifically college football players.

When and if [student-athletes] do receive their degree, it might mean even less in terms of real future dollars than those received by their peers. The networking they might have done with others on campus is restricted by their class schedules and practice; the networking with wealthy alumni that might benefit them in business is explicitly forbidden in many instances, something Princeton’s own Michael Lewis points out in The Blind Side. The athlete receives no dividend or funds kept in trust for their well-above-average financial contributions to the university on graduation.

By rule they are separated from the income they make, and by system they are separated from the university education they were promised. They are neither amateurs nor professionals, and effectively moved as undeclared contraband through the United States tax system.

Hall’s argument is intercut with a personal essay about growing up with his own family precariously in and out of poverty. The two halves don’t quite join up, but it helps break some of the abstractions around the amateur ideal and gives the whole thing an added urgency.

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