“Last Week: Tonight” host John Oliver on Sunday unloaded another monologue, unpacking the injustice of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Despite the fact that business is booming for the NCAA, the organization hasn’t backed down its refusal to pay its athletes.
“There is nothing inherently wrong with a sporting tournament making huge amounts of money,” Oliver said.
“But there is something slightly troubling about a $1 billion sports enterprise where the athletes are not paid a penny,” he added.
Oliver rolled a clip of the head of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, defending the league’s practice of not paying the athletes who make the business possible.
“I can’t say often enough, obviously, that student athletes are students, they’re not employees,” Emmert said.
Oliver wasn’t buying it.
“The only other people who say, ‘they’re not employees,’ that much are people who run illegal sweatshops out of their basements,” the host said.
‘They’re not employees! It’s a summer camp where they make the same t-shirt over and over again, thousands of times!” he shouted. “It’s summer fun, year-round!”
Watch the clip, courtesy of HBO:
With the way student debt is now structured and regulated, in some ways it isn’t just the athletes who are working in a sweatshop.
“I can’t say often enough, obviously, that student athletes are students, they’re not employees,” Emmert said."
Puleeeeze! Tell that to the One and Dones at UK. And somebody….anybody please beat that team! Lord knows we don’t want to listen to their boasting and bragging crap forever more.
A core issue is that the players do not own their labor, autographs, and autonomy. One would think that principled conservatives would find this shocking! shocking! But they don’t, proving that their ideology is about the power elite, not principles. A simple step toward solving this is to make all scholarships voucher-based, allowing the player to do the education part at any time, such as after his playing days are over. And he/she could sell or barter the voucher away if desired. If players are getting value for playing, it should have some in the marketplace.
what woul;d be great if all the "STUDENTS who got drafted into a collage told the NCAA that they can stick their rules and if they didnt like it they will play ball but not on TV or in march madness …and see all that money go down the drain
It’s a grotesque system and one that would collapse if the students are considered employees (which they obviously are), since then they would be paid worker’s comp. The most ironic thing about sports is that, while they are viewed as the pinnacle of competition on the field or court, as businesses they are anything but.
By the way, the notion of amateurism in sports has nothing at all to do with the “love of the game”. It originated as a way of keeping the working classes out of sports so rich kids wouldn’t have to compete against them. The ancient Greek athletes, often cited as the model for amateurism, were highly paid professionals.