It's Time for the NCAA, NFL and NBA to Team Up to Help Student-Athletes

The NCAA charade of "student-athleticism" is not working, and it's time for colleges to get some professional help—literally.

For every Rhodes Scholar that manages to make it out of college football, another skates by without really needing to study for anything. For every basketball player who actually gets his degree, another cheats on his SATs just to attend.

It goes too far to say that athletes aren't really learning anything—many take full advantage of their scholarships—but when an entire starting lineup of a championship team leaves without degrees, something is rotten in the state of college athletics.

Joe Nocera of the New York Times, who has been doing a fantastic job peeling back the layers of paint over the rotten wood of the NCAA, talked to Deunta Williams about his experience as a "student-athlete":

"

Athletes, he said, could only take the classes the athletic department wanted them to take. Coursework couldn’t interfere with practice, of course. It was always better that the classes not be too difficult — otherwise, there might be eligibility problems. And one other thing: “All the freshman football players take Swahili as their language requirement,” Williams said.

"

Swahili.

60 million people speak Swahili; however, most of them are in East Africa—a place to which most NFL players will never travel. However, according to Nocera, many of the athletic department tutors at UNC are proficient in Swahili, so it makes passing classes a breeze.

This is what the NCAA student-athlete dynamic has become—passing classes by regurgitating subject matter you will likely never need to use again. While NFL and NBA players get taken advantage of financially and many retire bankrupt, that Swahili probably doesn't come in handy.

So, what's the answer?

Stop Calling Them Student-Athletes if They're Really Athletes Who Happen to be Students

It is always refreshing to see a player who truly put his education first in college. Frankly, it is surprising, because everyone around him—professors, tutors, administrators, et al.—likely put his education far behind their bottom line.

College football brings in an absurd amount of money and, while less lucrative, college basketball isn't exactly a non-profit.

College coaches get millions of dollars to put winning teams on the field. Collegiate athletes get, well, less than that.

The "free education" argument seems pretty trite when that education is anything like Williams' described above. It also tends to be full of extremely faulty thinking. Since the cost of education has skyrocketed compared to inflation in recent years, it is a complete fallacy to pretend colleges are "giving away" hundred-thousand dollar scholarships.

Imagine me giving away a gallon of gas and writing off a million dollars worth of charitable giving on my taxes. I can call the value whatever I want, but that doesn't mean anyone has to believe me.

So, even if we pare down the cost of a college education to what it actually costs the college to educate an athlete, that too exceeds the actual value of an institution that is worried far more about wins, losses and graduation rates than actually educating young men.

The rebuttal here is as predictable as it is inane. Somehow, people feel as if it is solely the athlete's fault for not taking advantage of this free education. Yet, that line of thinking fails to actually account for the real-life experiences of a college athlete.

How easy is it for a college athlete to "take advantage" of his scholarship? Not easy at all.

Lifting sessions and practices don't start after the final bell like many people envision. Often times, a player wakes up (or is woken up by coaches or athletic department personnel) and given breakfast during team meetings. The player has to make sure that none of his classes conflict with morning lifting or conditioning sessions, and players are fully expected to work out more on their own than the NCAA limits of supervised lifting time would seems to allow.

This isn't the football experience you remember from high school—this is professional football and basketball with a part-time load of classes jammed into the middle.

Do not kid yourself—the "free education" given to college athletes has everything to do with graduation rates and maintaining the status quo of this multi-billion dollar business and almost nothing to do with actually educating students.

Start Giving Athletes An Education They Can Use...Professionally And Beyond

The NFL and the NBA are not innocent bystanders in this mess.

The NBA let high school graduates into their ranks for years without caring one lick about their education. Frankly, having covered the NBA for years, I question how many of those straight-to-the-NBA players had an education that looked anything like he diploma I earned. I highly question whether today's one-semester wonders will be any better.

The NFL isn't much better and I've seen both sides of the spectrum. Some NFL players I've met through the NFLPA (Jeff Saturday, Dominique Foxworth, etc) are also among some of the smartest people I've ever met, in any walk of life. Others (who will remain nameless) could barely get through a two-minute interview without a dictionary and a road map.

So, why do the NFL and the NBA require college attendance to play for them?

Scouting.

NFL and NBA teams make huge investments in talent every season and, like any good investor, wants to know as much as possible about the product. Forcing top talent to play against other top talent is the best way to learn how good a player really is.

The only problem the NBA had with the straight-out-of-highschool players was how many of them were busting out of the league.

This has nothing to do with academics. It never has, and until something drastic happens, nothing ever will.

It is time for the NFL and the NBA to do themselves, and their players, a favor by starting to actually care about the education their future players will receive. Not only will it provide a better trained crop of young men, able to compete better on and off-the-field, but it will also provide security for the players after their retirement, which (believe it or not) helps the league in the long run as well.

It is time for a degree just for college athletes. Just like we have certifications for HVAC repairmen and automotive technicians, college athletes deserve their own specialized courses. Sadly, the NCAA will never create these on their own, so the professional leagues need to step in and aid (read: force) them.

What does a college athlete course look like? Little-to-no in-season courses with a moderate workload in the quarters during the "off-season." Design it so redshirt players can complete the course in one year and active players take two. Subject wise, it would be general education-heavy with an emphasis in microeconomics, business and courses designed specifically for life as professional athletes.

Most importantly, this course load could be tailored to wrap up into actual degree for the athletes who stick around more than two years.

Maybe, just maybe, teaching athletes about the people who will take advantage of them—family, friends, agents, financial advisers—and giving them the tools to make better business decisions will curb the countless horror stories of bankrupt athletes.

Maybe finally giving college athletes real-life training for their future careers will create a breed of professional athlete that is actually prepared for what they will face once they get to the NFL and the NBA.

Of course, none of this is possible until the leagues start caring about the lives of their players and the NCAA starts actually caring about the education of their athletes. 

The current system is only succeeding insofar as it lines the pockets of college coaches and administrators with cash and provides the professional organizations with quality athletic talent. These athletes deserve a better education and it's time for the NCAA, NFL and NBA to team up and give it to them.

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Michael Schottey is an NFL Associate Editor for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. He has professionally covered both the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, as well as NFL events like the scouting combine and the Senior Bowl.