income based on his marketing utility as a college football player. In fact, even under then-existing NCAA rules he would be allowed to receive income as a professional skier—that is, as a professional in a sport other than football—without sacrificing his amateur status. Many athletes have done exactly this over the years, including such luminaries as John Elway, who was paid six figures by the New York Yankees organization as a Minor League Baseball player while he was quarterback at Stanford during the early 1980s. Other prominent college stars who were also simultaneously amateur and professional athletes include Kirk Gibson at Michigan State University (football in college and Minor League Baseball), Trajan Langdon at Duke University (basketball in college and Minor League Baseball), Danny Ainge at Brigham Young University (basketball in college and Major League Baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays), and Tim Dwight at the University of Iowa (indoor track in college and NFL football), to name just a few.
Bloom, however, in a shocking departure from NCAA precedent, was ruled to be receiving impermissible benefits via endorsement income as Jeremy Bloom the college football player—even though those endorsements were contracted with Jeremy Bloom the professional skier. Bloom fought the NCAA in the courts, but to no avail, due to the potential for further sanctions against the University of Colorado. In the end, he was forced to abandon his final year of college football so he could continue to earn compensation as a skier.8
It’s particularly troubling to me that, even as Bloom was pursuing his legal case against the NCAA, it was revealed during a congressional hearing that Tim Dwight had received endorsement income as a member of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, but was able to continue at Iowa as an amateur athlete in indoor track and field without penalty. In a 2004 hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution (in which Bloom and I both testified), an NCAA representative, Jennifer Strawley, pressed by Indiana congressman John Hostettler to explain the “substantive differences” between the situations and NCAA treatment of Bloom and Dwight, stated that Dwight had asked for forgiveness after the fact, whereas Bloom had asked for permission prior to competing as a skier.9 There are many cases of inconsistency and unfairness in critical NCAA decisions, and people like Bloom have suffered for it.
The point here is that it can be quite normal for a professional athlete to attend college (or high school, for that matter) and make money playing a sport, or receive outside income as a result of being involved in a sport, without impacting their education. No one can say that John Elway was not a viable student at Stanford while he was earning a significant amount of money as a minor league baseball player, and the same holds for the other examples presented. Meanwhile, no one seems to mind when the Olsen twins are making millions as child stars, or Natalie Portman or Jodie Foster continue to work as actresses while enrolled in college. Did it make them bad students? Did it take away from their education? The answer is an unequivocal “no.” The same can be true for many athletes—if adjustments are made.
Earning money for being an athlete doesn’t in itself make someone a worse student. Forcing student-athletes to make unreasonable commitments of time, while those around them manipulate the system of academic eligibility against their best interests, certainly can. It is time for us to end what is essentially a sham regarding amateur athletics in America. This model will enable that, while still keeping some aspects of school-based sports that we seem to value as a country.
The main argument for student-athlete amateurism in the United States is that these athletes should play sports as an avocation and not a vocation, with an educational opportunity as the payoff. Earning market value for playing an educationally based sport has long been thought of as a perversion of amateurism that would taint the sports themselves—and make them less marketable, since school-based sports are supposedly popular because of their amateur aspect and would suffer commercially without it. This is central to the NCAA’s argument in the O’Bannon case.10 If the NCAA were to win on these grounds, it would essentially mean that it could prohibit wages and other compensation for college athletes (including outside income from use of a player’s name, image, and likeness) precisely because allowing such compensation would make colleges sports themselves less marketable. It is easy to refute this. We heard the same arguments regarding the Olympic Games when an end was put to the requirement that competitors be “amateur” athletes, and it is nondebatable that the Olympic Games are more popular than ever. These types of restrictions also exist, of course, at levels below intercollegiate athletics, where athletes are also prohibited from participating in sports aligned with educational institutions if they receive outside compensation. LeBron James, the standout All-Star NBA forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers, once had to miss two games for receiving an extra benefit in high school.11
It is my belief that athletes should be allowed to receive financial support in any way that can maximize both their educational and athletic access and success. As noted, there are many ways this is being done in Europe. If we want to continue to have restrictive amateurism rules in educationally based sports in America, then we can. But we can also have a parallel alternative system that would allow athletes to profit from their athletic ability and compete at the highest level during the time in life when they are most able to do so.
It is debatable in the twenty-first century whether lofty ideals of amateurism from the mid-twentieth century have ever been close to being achieved. Many of the same problems that existed during the first hundred years of intercollegiate athletics, such as recruiting improprieties, the changing definition of amateurism, and excess commercialism, are still happening today, but they are more frequent and much more publicized. Despite the stated mission of intercollegiate athletics as being about education first, it is challenging to justify the system in its current state as being an education-first model, as opposed to an athletic-development model. The inherent flaws of the NCAA, and why the system should be modified to a more education-centric model, are examined more closely in later chapters.
INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORTS IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
During the same period in the twentieth century, public and private school systems began to copy their higher-education counterparts, installing extracurricular activities, specifically sports, outside the existing curriculum but still within the confines of the school. Previously, primary and secondary school students, like college students, had organized clubs to engage in all kinds of activities, including sports, outside school hours as a way to have a needed break from the academic rigor of studying and classes. School officials recognized that some of these extracurricular activities were difficult to control, and many experienced discipline problems. As a consequence, sports clubs were incorporated into the primary and secondary educational systems so that schools could have control over the activities, with one intent being to keep them from conflicting with the educational mission (Pot and van Hilvoorde 2013). Although colleges and universities wanted control of activities in order to prevent injuries, while also gaining the benefits of competition with other schools, having control was also a major reason to not let athletics flourish outside the primary and secondary education systems.
In contrast, school systems in Europe were primarily reserved for academics. Extracurricular activity would take place outside the school doors, allowing for greater integration and participation in sports by members of all socioeconomic classes and academic backgrounds via a community-based club system. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in various European countries it was the student body that established sports clubs outside the schools and independent of school officials, but that is where many of the similarities end. Unlike in the United States, European school officials felt no need to place such student clubs under their supervision, as the students and parents typically cooperated with school authorities and for the most part kept the activities separate and did not let them become a distraction from education. Another and more compelling reason for student clubs, including athletics clubs, not being under the supervision of school authorities is that throughout the bulk of the European education system separate high schools existed and still exist for students of different social and academic classes. This makes populations in most European schools rather homogeneous as compared to the American system, at least in public schools,
