NCAA Football 2012: Mark Emmert's Comments on Exploitation Are Absurd

Yesterday here on Your Best 11, we caught the comments of Tar Heel safety Deunta Williams with respect to the NCAA and the use of athletes in order to make inordinate sums of cash for everyone but themselves. Well, the president of the governing body, Mark Emmert, decided to take some time out of his busy schedule to address the idea that athletes are exploited during a segment of Outside the Lines on ESPN.

In reading the transcript from his response, more than a couple things stand out, especially when supplemented with his discussion on conference realignment being a money grab by leagues.

For starters, I strongly recommend reading the work of Joe Nocera of the New York Times. He and Taylor Branch have done some serious work on framing solid arguments about the NCAA, the system itself and the incongruous relationship between the mission of the NCAA and the practices of the organization.

You see, ultimately the NCAA preaches this edict of protecting and advocating for student athletes; they sell the beauty of the amateurism through their "going pro in something other than sports" campaign while preaching graduation rates and extolling the virtues of competition.

It's a great sell; it is. We know that because the bulk of the public has bought it hook, line and sinker. It has absolutely worked.

The NCAA plays God, they construct their rule book and thanks to the ambiguous power they wield over their voluntary member institutions, they hold the cards when it comes to control of the production. Through their production they create a marketable product to sell to consumers—fans, television networks, radio stations, online content providers and the like.

That's how all business works: A producer creates a product that there is a demand for and consumers pay the producer for the rights to that product.

The issue here is that the means of production, the low men on the totem pole, are operating with an artificial wage ceiling. As profits skyrocket, college sports has become a multibillion-dollar industry. The means of production are being held well below the market value in order to secure wider profit margins, increased reinvestment and wild spending on selected portions of the producers.

Ordinarily in a situation like this you'd see disgruntled employees working together to evoke change. That's how unions get started; that's how walkouts or sit-ins occur. Except not here, because the means of production—thanks to their own institutions and the iron fist of the NCAA—do not actually have a voice when it comes to how the system treats them.

There's no NCAA players association to advocate for fairness or better treatment.

Thanks to the crafting of right and wrong, and players who run afoul of the rules as villains, the NCAA has the bulk of the public on their side. Fans largely just want the kids to "shut up and play ball" as they trumpet the idea "well, they get a scholarship!"

An organization that can't even get their members to pass full-cost scholarships in order to bridge the gaps in funding comes across as the benevolent ruler on the college athletics landscape. An organization that supports their member institutions to hopscotch across the country and bend to the whim of television executives going after the all-powerful live sports ratings somehow is the side folks believe is in the right.

Mark Emmert, bless his heart, goes so far as to even say it himself:

"

I would have loved to have my kids exploited like that.  I would love to have been exploited like that myself as a young man.  The idea that somehow playing in front of a stadium with 70,000 people and being on ESPN SportsCenter diminishes you in some fashion while creating an opportunity for you to be known world-wide is somehow exploitation is a curious notion of exploitation.  I think the vast majority of your audience would love to be on this show, would love to have a chance to have their name known widely.

"

And maybe that's the problem. So many folks are on the outside, wishing that they got the scholarship, the chance to be on television or the chance to be on the field in front of a huge crowd that the idea of what it means to be a college athlete is wildly romanticized in their eyes. It most certainly seems like it from Emmert's analysis of the situation.

But college sports are about so much more than being on television, getting a shot at the league or people knowing your name. In today's 24/7/365 world of collegiate athletics there is no offseason. Revenue and non-revenue sports the same; they are full-time jobs for these kids.

Full-time jobs that see the coaches make more money than ever. Full-time jobs that see schools positioning themselves to grab a bigger slice of the ever-growing television revenue pie regardless of what that means for travel. Full-time jobs that see the member organization jockeying to squeeze the maximum amount of money out their biggest seller, the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.

Perhaps you would love to be exploited like that. Perhaps my experiences have left me to view things with a jaundice eye. But ultimately we're talking about 17- to 22-year-old people working their behinds off, then hearing the organization's president tell them that it's a fair trade as he gets ready to collect that $740 million check for the NCAA.

That will all trickle down through the system. Sure, the athletes might get some snazzy facility upgrades and maybe some new equipment, but ultimately that and the "good job" they get for their efforts won't get them fed on the 25th of the month when the meal check runs out.

Totally fair.