College basketball needs rule changes, not clean up

The FBI investigation exposed what was wrong with the system of college basketball, but it might not be what you think.

When labor receives fair compensation for the work that it does, we usually call it a result of the free market. When that compensation occurs outside of the law, we call it corruption.

Ultimately, the lines the law draws are arbitrary, made up moral distinctions designed to reinforce a social contract agreed upon by the members of the society that they rule over.

In many cases, like with say democratic governance, enforcing anti-corruption norms is important because of the large-scale implications involved in the failure of those institutions, but college basketball and the NCAA are not that shining city on a hill.

The charges filed on Tuesday against four assistant college basketball coaches, a financial planner, a summer basketball team’s program director, agents and shoe executives stem from the arbitrary lines of amateurism that were drawn around college athletics with the NCAA’s inception in 1906.

The NCAA’s idea of amateurism has always been malleable. At the time it was created, the organization did not allow athletes to receive financial aid or any other sort of payment for their participation in college sports. It wasn’t until 1948 that the NCAA allowed athletes to receive scholarships.

Nowadays, those scholarships represent a cap in the compensation that student-athletes can earn, a cap that we know now based on the complaints filed yesterday is below market value for the players involved. We also know that when regulations establish a cap on the value of a product, but the market holds that product to a higher value, the market will find some way to pay market value for that product. That’s how black markets like this one are born.

So, don’t act surprised that college basketball players whose labor contributes to a multi-million dollar industry were receiving additional value for their work. And don’t be surprised that assistant coaches were linking those players up with agents who figured out how to profit off of their employment. In most other industries, we call that head hunting.

It’s fair to ask questions about the motives of those involved in big money college basketball recruiting, especially given the age of some of the players involved. There are certainly horror stories to be told about advisers gaining the trust of athletes and then squandering their money away — that is after all how this whole thing started — but in numerous other cases there are people genuinely looking to make a better life for those involved. Just think about how many professional basketball players talk about their mentors.

The most damning critique of markets like this one is that the rules are drawn up to protect the most powerful and disadvantage the most vulnerable. That’s how modern neoliberalism works, after all. For many of the country’s top basketball players, the sport is a way out of poverty and labor rights like fair pay or potentially unionization are a way for them to protect their value.

Now, for many of those who will be caught up in this investigation, the path out will get tougher. They’ll likely be forced to forgo playing college basketball, their chance to impress professional scouts on the sport’s biggest stage gone with an NCAA sanction.

You’ll also notice that those caught up in the federal investigation so far are college basketball’s assistant coaches, not the head coaches who are in charge of the program. That’s because as Christian Dawkins notes in the complaint filed against he and three of the assistants, “the head coach . . ain’t willing to [take bribes] ’cause they’re making too much money. And it’s too risky.” That these assistants and players involved are largely black reflects a structural inequality reinforced by neoliberalism that is deserving of additional critique.

It was telling that Joon H. Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, identified the schools as the real victims here because they were defrauded by these individuals who encouraged players to check boxes on financial aid paperwork that no NCAA violations were committed. Ultimately, it’s all about protecting the institutions that make this situation possible in the first place.

For many, the hope is that this so-called “dirty underbelly” of college basketball will be erased now that it has been exposed, that this cleanup operation will be successful, but the truth is that the clean version of this sport under the rules of amateurism has never existed. The shining city on a hill is a mirage.

Next: Potential fallout from college basketball investigation

So, where do we go from here? Rather than striving toward an ideal that does not exist, we ought to reshape the playing field all together. The arbitrary laws codified by the NCAA are meant to be changed.

Want to remove the incentives for players to take under the table money from shoe companies? Then let them use their likeness to earn endorsements in a way that can be regulated and in a way that they can be compensated fairly.

Want to take away the incentives for assistants to recruit players for agents and financial advisers? Pay them a fairer wage and don’t make it illegal for players to have interactions with those agents. Certainly of the two, this is the more difficult problem to solve.

As it stands, though, the image of the idealistic college basketball system that many want to believe exists has already been blown up. The solution is not to repeat the mistakes of our past. It’s too move on, redefine our laws and strive towards a different city on a different hill.