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All good questions
But does the NCAA have good answers for athletes?
By Mike Fish/CNNSI
LOS ANGELES -- It is hard to picture two more diverse cast of characters.
Here, after a practice in Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus, sit a sweaty bunch of St. John's University basketball players on benches in front of their lockers.
Down the freeway in Anaheim, the NCAA suits -- staff from the national office in Indianapolis, college presidents and athletic directors, faculty reps, etc. -- huddle in hotel conference rooms discussing the state of college sports.
You can’t help wonder if these two groups ever talk. And if so, does anybody listen?
Less than 24 hours before St. John’s tipped off Saturday against UCLA, Marc Isenberg, an advocate for college athletes and author of The Money Sucker Machine: The Truth About Gambling and How It Destroys Students’ Lives, engages the players in deep conversation about gambling. It’s not the typical scare-the-hell-out-of-them stuff.
Isenberg instead pitches gambling as an illusion, telling players to look behind the sexy marketing and do the math. Fact is, most folks lose -- and some lose big.
After 20 minutes of gambling talk, Isenberg and the dozen or so players turn it into a bull session on big-time college sports. And it is this give-and-take that you wish could take place with the college bosses in Anaheim.
Issues?
"Why do they make it that if you transfer you have to sit out a year?" wonders swingman Willie Shaw.
Isenberg explains it’s a rule applicable to only a few sports, and lobbied for by coaches so athletes would be less inclined to transfer. But then, players can’t pick up and leave if a coach is fired or land a more lucrative gig.
"Health insurance should be year round," center Curtis Johnson pipes up. "Not just in season."
Johnson later says that he suffered a toe infection last season. The medication to treat it was $500, but the school's insurance covered only 80 percent of the cost. "It happened playing basketball, so I didn’t think that was fair [having to make up the difference]," he says.
It seems there are a lot of things players, at least these players, don’t see as fair. A full scholarship is sweet, but that no longer seems like equitable compensation with the NCAA in the first year of an 11-year, $6 billion deal with CBS -- which is driven by men’s basketball.
If you used the NBA's Collective Bargain Agreement that earmarks 48 percent of basketball-related income for players, Isenberg passes along that players at a mid-major basketball school would be entitled to $40,000 in addition to their scholarship.
“How much [should] we get?" excitedly asks 6-foot-1 guard Marcus Hatten, the team’s star player.
Isenberg says it would be even more, and the Red Storm roar their approval.
"They’re definitely making a lot of money off us," Shaw says. "And if we take money from somebody we get our eligibility taken away from us."
If the players can’t be compensated, then some want the chance to least market themselves. They see the NCAA, the colleges and the TV networks doing it. And they know the governing body has vigorously defended its rules in a lawsuit brought by Colorado football player Jeremy Bloom, who wants to retain endorsement income he earned as a world champion mogul skier.
"The biggest thing is when you become an athlete in college you really turn your life over to the university and to NCAA," Johnson says. "You give over all rights to your face, to your name being used. They can use your name and face whenever they want to. You can’t market yourself. You can’t be in anything that promotes yourself. That is not fair.
"Then, we don’t have the same college experience that other students have. I don’t know that athletes should get paid. We have free schooling. But we should have more medical insurance and we should be able to use our own name."
So, what does St. John’s coach Mike Jarvis say about his charges publicly voicing their frustration? First off, a lot of coaches would never invite Isenberg to stir the debate. Jarvis is cool with it, and listens in.
Jarvis later jokes that it would take two weeks to go over all his NCAA issues. So we ask for just the important stuff, please.
"When you have only one controlling organization, one place to go -- it makes it very difficult," begins Jarvis, speaking softly. "In our country, usually people have choices. When it comes to playing college sports you have no choices. You have the NCAA. Unfortunately, history has proven the due process is not there. You are guilty until proven innocent."
Jarvis abruptly stops, asking two remaining players to gather the wet towels left on the locker room floor into a pile.
The coach picks up: "I don’t think an athlete has a full scholarship. I believe a full scholarship should include a monthly stipend, something to help out because basketball players can’t work. I also believe that when schools and the NCAA are promoting individuals for a bunch of games, that somehow there ought to be a benefit for the players -- whether in the form of a trust fund or something later on.
"And not only should there be full medical coverage, but every kid should have a thorough physical by university doctors and financed by the NCAA. That doesn’t happen. ... A lot of kids have died. Maybe some of those kids could have been diagnosed, in terms of heart irregularities. They get examined before they come to college. They bring the medical forms. It could be from a witchdoctor. You got these same kids now going around representing the university. Kids train year-round to represent their school. They should be insured 12 month of the year."
Too bad the Red Storm couldn’t stop at the NCAA convention before heading back to campus.
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