Last week, NCAA officials indicated that they were finally looking into allowing student-athletes to turn a profit while still in school. A new group comprised of representatives from all levels of the NCAA will reconsider the league’s rules regarding athletes’ ability to be compensated for the use of their names, images, and likenesses.
Let us hope that they don’t change these rules one bit.
This group’s creation is in response to the growing outcry that collegiate sports are unfair to their athletes, that university athletic departments are making money off the backs of their (predominately black) athletes. As a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I have seen firsthand how big the college athletics industry has gotten and agree that it is a problem in need of fixing, especially in light of the uncomfortable racial politics of the whole situation. But I hope we can find a way to do so without destroying the last bastion of amateurism in sports.
From a deeply individualistic perspective, amateurism seems fairly stupid. Why wouldn’t someone seek to maximize their profit-earning potential, especially in their early adulthood? However, it’s a mistake to look at collegiate sports in purely financial terms. There is something philosophically beautiful in amateur sports, which engenders virtues that are sure to be lost if NCAA reformists get their way.
The idea that amateurism is the purest form of athletics has a long history; it’s what led to the modern Olympics, which banned professional athletes until 1986. It’s premised on the idea that there is something inherently noble in sacrifice and that in forgoing financial recourse athletes prove they are participating out of a sincere and abiding love for the game. To show up and to compete without promise of monetary reward displays a level of love that isn’t guaranteed when money enters the picture.
I absolutely believe that most professional basketball players love the game they play. As a UNC student, I got to see Coby White, Luke Maye, and all our other boys in light blue take the court. It was deeply affecting to do this for their love of the game, not because they were getting paid absurd sums of money.
The sense of pride in one’s alma mater found among college athletes is another virtue we risk losing should amateurism go extinct. Could Michael Jordan, arguably Chapel Hill’s biggest hero, have been lured away to our fierce and deep-pocketed rival, Duke, with the promise of more money? I hope not, but there’s little in professional basketball to indicate that is the case.
Money is a powerful motivator, one that can sever even the seemingly strongest of ties. Though NCAA athletes aren’t currently earning a paycheck, we can see money’s influence on college basketball players’ decision making. Just look at one-and-done players, whose choice to leave after only one season indicates they don’t care a whole lot about their schools, striking fans as disloyal and self-centered. Players who stick around all four years instead of turning pro, on the other hand, make a sacrifice. They help bring glory to their school when they could be bringing home a fat paycheck.
Of course, throughout sporting history, the rules have been bent to help amateurs make some money — during the shamateur period of tennis, for example, sporting companies hired players as “salesmen” — but even in such instances the pretense of amateurism was seen as necessary to maintain. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, after all.
Amateurism serves as a keen reminder that not everything in life is about the money. We keep some things around, things like art museums, National Parks, and the United States Poet Laureate not because they make money, but because they are beautiful and help elevate our minds and ideals from the base to something higher.
There is indeed a growing issue in collegiate sports, one that certainly needs to be addressed. But there must be another way to correct the problem — perhaps colleges simply shouldn’t be able to sell merchandise with players’ names or likenesses. We must not be so narrow-sighted in brainstorming solutions as to think there is only one possible moral fix. To professionalize college sports would fundamentally change their character and make so much of what makes them great disappear.
Alec Dent is a freelance writer and graduate of the UNC Chapel Hill School of Media and Journalism
