In responding to Professor Harry Edward's essay regarding black athletes in "amateur" college sport, my focus will be on the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) 114 Division IA colleges and universities, particularly the top 50 or so "power schools" and their revenue producing football and basketball sports programs. At these institutions we see the most glaring contradictions between the avowed educational mission of these schools' athletic programs, their governing organization (the NCAA) and the commercial reality of their athletic departments and the NCAA itself. Athletic departments at these top athletic schools are highly profitable sports entertainment enterprises.

Overseeing virtually all post-secondary sports programs in the United States, the NCAA was founded in 1905 in response to the rising death toll in college football and increasing "professionalism" of college sports in general. Its mission, then and now, is "to maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body." College sports programs, then and now, are conceived as amateur educational experiences that benefit and enhance the overall education of students who happen to be athletes.

As a non-profit educational association, the NCAA administers college sport and promulgates and enforces rules agreed upon by its 1027 member schools that provide athletic programs for approximately 325,000 athletes. The NCAA, with an annual budget of $32 million, employs approximately 270 people.

The NCAA member schools are divided into three divisions (1, 11, II, III) based on school size. Division I is further divided into three Divisions (IA, IAA, IAAA) based primarily on a school's athletic department's ability to generate revenue, stadium seating capacity and student body size. In its present form, the NCAA is dominated by the approximately fifty Division IA "power schools" whose athletic departments field the top college football and men's basketball teams and are profit centers for their universities based on their highly successful sports programs. Women's basketball at some of these top schools, the University of Tennessee and Stanford University for example, run programs that are highly successful and profitable. At these top athletic schools, football and basketball revenues fund the overall athletic department and its nonrevenue producing sports programs and still show a profit.

An 18-member executive committee governs the NCAA. Although the 318 Division I schools comprise 31 % of the NCAA membership, they hold 13 (or 72%) of the seats on the executive committee. Within the governance structure of Division 1, of the 15-member board of directors, nine members (or 60%) come from Division IA schools. In addition, Division IA schools hold 18 seats on the 34-member Division I Management Council.

In commercial terms, during the last 20 years, revenue-producing college sport has exploded. NCAA member school sports revenues have increased 8000% since 1976 and NCAA revenues went from $6.6 million in 1977-78 to $267 million in 1997-98. Make no mistake, big-time college football and basketball prograrns are now, collectively, a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise.

Education versus Commerce

The primary contradiction within the NCAA and, in particular, its top revenue producing schools is that, on one hand the amateur rules apply to the athletes and on the other, the rules of the market apply to the school's athletic departments with the big exception being their labor costs. Putting it a different way, on one hand the NCAA and its member schools are non-profit educational entities, with their athlete employees categorized as student athletes, and on the other their athletic departments, at the top level, are highly profitable commercial enterprises. Interestingly, various federal courts have recognized college athletic departments, as competing commercial entities whose activities fall within the Durview of federal anti-trust laws.

In a recent case, in March 1999, the NCAA reached a $54.5 million settlement with entry-level college coaches who had sued the NCAA on anti-trust grounds. In 1991 the NCAA Division I schools by a nearly unanimous vote agreed to cap entry-level coach's salaries at $12,000 per year and $4,000 for the summer. The coaches sued and in 1995 a federal court found the NCAA violated anti-trust law. The NCAA appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court where its petition was denied, thus opening the door for the settlement.

As athletic departments at our major universities have explicitly become sports entertainment businesses, the athletes, unfortunately, still must function under the original NCAA mandate as "amateur student-athletes" who don't get paid for their athletic labor. By continuing to define, what are essentially athlete employees as "amateur student-athletes," the college athlete labor market does not fall under federal or state antitrust laws or state workers compensation laws. As such, any compensation or lack thereof that athletes receive, which the NCAA member schools as economic competitors have conspired to and agreed upon, cannot be challenged in anti-trust court. Further, by defining athlete employees as amateur student-athletes, workers compensation benefits due to injury on the job are non-existent. In this existing relationship between the athletes, who, in the final analysis, produce the revenues, and the schools, who present the games and reap the financial windfall, lies the fertile field of exploitation of human labor and an underground or black-market economy that trades in young, primarily black athletes.

Athletic Scholarship System

Central to the athletic scholarship system is an implied quid pro quo; student athletes will receive a quality college education in trade for four years of athletic service. However, there is a significant flaw in the economic argument that justifies not paying a revenue-producing athlete cash money because of his or her athletic scholarship cost. Adding 100 scholarship student athletes to a 10,000 undergraduate student body minimally increases the overall costs of educating the total, in this example, thelO,100 undergraduate student body. The university's absorbing the scholarship cost for 100 student athlete's athletic scholarships is really a "paper expense," because the actual education cost for scholarship athletes is absorbed by the university's undergraduate program. No extra capital expenditures are necessary to accommodate the additional 100 student-athletes, nor is the school required to hire extra professors to teach them. For sure, expenses for room and board are real costs, yet compared to revenues generated, they are miniscule. With this essentially cost-free labor pool, it is small wonder big-time programs are so profitable.

In the present system the most important issue for black and white scholarship student athletes alike is whether or not they will receive a legitimate college education and degree that is translatable to meaningful and financially viable work as "payment" for their athletic services. Unfortunately, in most cases they will not. Looking at graduation rates for incoming National Football League (NFL) players, of the 211 rookies on NFL teams in 1998 only 13, or 6 percent, had graduated. In August 1999 The Chronicle of Higher Education reported: "Graduation rates of football players and of men's and women's basketball players at colleges in the NCAA's top division have fallen to their lowest levels in seven years. The report also states, "... the new figures show fewer black athletes graduating than at any time since the mid1980s...." when Proposition 48 was instituted to help solve the problem. In the Division I revenue producing sports, football and men's basketball, 51% of football players graduated and 41% of male basketball players graduated after six years. According to the report, only 33% of Division I black male basketball players graduated in six years, the lowest graduation rate since 1985.

The Chronicle ... does not examine the quality of education measured in part by the potential future "worth" of a particular degree. Clearly a degree in engineering or a quality liberal arts degree will be potentially worth more than a degree in criminal justice or recreation. Examining kinds of degrees earned by NFL players shows a preponderance of athlete graduates fall into what could be called the non-academic degree category. This pattern is not so much an affirmation of the "dumb jock" stereotype but rather is a product of an athletic/acaden-tic structure that severely limits educational opportunity for scholarship athletes. Participation in a top revenue-producing program is more than a fulltime job as numerous commentators have pointed out with extended seasons, away game travel, offseason conditioning and strength-training programs and in-season practice and meetings.

The Black Athlete

Student athletes' participation in college revenue producing sports programs, which are dominated by black athletes, continues to reveal a century long pattern of exploitation of student athletes. As black athletes increasingly dominate college revenue producing sports the burden of this exploitive system falls on their shoulders. The plight of the black athlete, in what could by understatement be called a system of athletic exploitation, is a matter of degree compared to white athletes. However it is more severe due to an underlying pattern and consequence of racism in college sports as well as the larger society. Nevertheless, the most onerous issues black athletes face in Division IA revenue producing sports programs, primarily football and basketball, are almost identical to those faced by white athletes. By way of analogy, when Jerry Kramer the white All-Pro Green Bay Packer guard who played for the late legendary NFL coach, Vince Lombardi, was asked if Lombardi treated black football players differently than whites, his reply was, "Not really, he treats us all like dogs."

For the black athlete there still exist a number of other issues revolving around race that exacerbates their plight in our country's top college athletic programs. For example, the virtual lack of black coaches and athletic directors in Division IA programs and remnants of racially motivated "stacking," the practices of denying black athletes access to certain positions on a football team. Historically, in big-time college and professional football, blacks had been denied access to what were called the "thinking" positions, "the lilly white triangle," the center, two guards and quarterback for example. Black football players were "stacked" in positions thought to merely require raw talent and athleticism, running back and defensive back, for example.

However, due to increasing economic pressure during the last decade on coaching staffs in the top programs to "win and win now," and changing social attitudes, black athletes now star in all college football team positions including quarterback. Given the chance, black athletes are becoming the best players at these former "white" positions exemplified by the fact that three black and two white college quarterbacks were number one picks in the 1999 NFL college player draft.

While the NCAA and its Division IA member schools exploit the talents of black athletes and deny these same athletes access to a quality education, they also limit employment opportunities to blacks athletes after their athletic career ends. For the 1999 season in the 114 Division IA college football programs, black players comprised 51 % of the total while there were only five black head coaches equaling 4% of the total. Black Division I basketball coaches comprised 28%, 86 out of 310. Clearly, for black athletes, opportunities for career advancement in their sport beyond their athletic career are virtually non-existent. A glass ceiling is a fact of life for black coaches and athletic administrators in "big-time" college sports programs as it is, incidentally, in the NFL, National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball.

Shoring up this fiction of the amateur student-athlete, and, in an attempt to blunt rising criticism of this exploitive system, the NCAA member schools in 1983 enacted Proposition 48. Ten years before in 1973, in response to a rising tide of student athlete protests, primarily by black athletes, the NCAA Division IA schools eliminated their four-year athletic grants-inaid (athletic scholarships) converting them to one-year renewable grants. With the one-year renewable scholarship the head coach and athletic department had a bigger hammer to control the athletes. If an athlete misbehaves in the eyes of the coach, his scholarship can be terminated. Critics pointed out that Prop. 48 was a not so veiled attempt to reduce the number of black scholarship athletes, assuming that more high school black athletes than whites would be unable to meet the Proposition 48 requirements. In fact this assumption has turned out to be the case. As Dr. Edwards's article points out, "In the first two years of Proposition 48 enforcement 92% of all academically ineligible basketball players and 84% of academically ineligible football players were black athletes."

Proposition 48, as an attempt to legitimize the educational mission of the Division I revenue producing college sports programs by establishing minimal academic standards for incoming student athletes, had the unspoken and, some would say, desired effect on black athletes. It was devastating. However Proposition 48 also caused an unintended effect; not only did it negatively impact black athletes as a group, it potentially eliminated superior black athletes who were coveted by the top athletic programs. In response, the NCAA in 1990 instituted Proposition 42 to "loophole" Proposition 48 creating a category of potential scholarship athlete called "partial qualifiers." However, as Dr. Edwards points out, the net effect of both propositions 48 and 42 "... has been to limit the opportunities-both educational and athletic-that would otherwise be available to black youth."

In 1996, as an amendment to Proposition 48, the NCAA adopted Proposition 16 which established a minimum 820 score on the Scholarship Aptitude Test (SAT) for incoming scholarship athletes, over protests from minority groups including the Black Coaches Association. In March 1999, federal Judge Ronald Buckwalter in Cureton v. NCAA ruled the NCAA could not use minimum test scores to eliminate student athletes from eligibility because the practice is discriminatory and unfair to blacks. On December 22, 1999, in a two-to-one decision, the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Buckwalter's ruling on a technicality. The Appellate Court did not address the primary issue in the case.

Judge Buckwalter's ruling, I believe, signaled a fresh assessment of the NCAA mission and the role of revenue producing sports programs at our major universities, particularly now, given the significant revenues involved. At the heart of his ruling is the issue of discrimination and exploitation, particularly of black athletes that is embedded in, an almost century-old system of athlete exploitation in collegiate revenue producing sports. Furthermore, Judge Buckwalter's decision points directly to a fundamental issue the NCAA has been dancing around for years, which is equitable compensation in real dollars for athletes who generate these enormous college sports revenues. His decision also raises the issue of whether or not a college education is appropriate or fair compensation for all NCAA revenue-producing athletes.

The central issue for black athletes, (and white athletes as well) is dealing with an essentially corrupt and exploitive, "amateur" athletic system. Given the existing contradiction between the NCAA's mission of athletics as education versus the reality of revenue producing college athletics as big business, and the competitive marketplace for superior athletic talent, I believe it can be categorically said that every big-time athletic program violates NCAA rules or university policy Simply put different academic standards and ethical conduct exist for revenue producing student-athletes and their athletic departments versus regular students and their respective academic departments. By sustaining the fiction of the amateur athlete, a flourishing "black market" or underground economy exists for exceptional high school athletes involving school alumni, scouts, agents, runners, athletic shoe companies, high school coaches and high school administrators. Because many superior high school athletes are black and poor, and have attended academically deficient high schools, this means the interested university will need "help" in recruiting an athlete, admitting the athlete as a student to the university and keeping the athlete eligible for athletic participation and enrolled in school.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this morally bankrupt system for black athletes and their parents is how the work of largely poor black athletes, who dominate the top revenue producing football and basketball programs, finances the almost exclusively middle class white "minor" sports programs, million dollar plus coach's salaries, and extremely generous athletic department administration budgets.

Radical Reform or Continued Corruption?

By fostering the widening contradiction between the educational mission of the university and a for-profit sports entertainment enterprise on their college campuses, college officials have opened the door wide for the exploitation of revenue producing athletes. They have created a hypocritical system that allows corruption, dishonesty, and unfair dealing to be the rule. The cynical "bottom line" that justifies this state of affairs is that it is cheaper for the NCAA's member schools to maintain this dishonest and corrupt system rather than compete in the open market for athletic talent, much like professional sports teams do.

It is apparent that the present system of college revenue producing sport needs radical change. I would propose a college sports system that allows the top fifty or so schools to have legitimate professional football and basketball teams with a major caveat being the athlete having a range of choices as to how he or she will be paid, for their athletic labor. These choices would range from access to a guaranteed legitimate college education to cash payments or salaries. Athletes and their parents would select the various compensation plans and sign a binding contract with the school. Provisions could include modifying the compensation plan as the athlete career emerges. For example, an athlete could choose a guaranteed seven year scholarship as a high school senior but after his sophomore year, because he has a good chance at a professional career, could elect to take cash payments and focus on training for his sport, much like Olympic athletes do. In this scheme athletes could attend trade schools or enter apprentice programs, the cost of which would be part of their compensation package. Similarly athletes could elect non-academic courses of study at the university or other post-secondary schools.

The thrust of the above general scheme is to introduce a notion of honesty and fair dealing in revenue producing college sport. Given the relationship revenue producing college sports programs (football and basketball) have with the NFL and NBA, where the colleges are the developmental (minor) leagues for the pros, most high school athletes need to play college ball to sufficiently develop their athletic skills to play in the NFL and NBA. Professional football and basketball don't bear the cost of supporting minor leagues to develop talent and the colleges, under their present system, have access to a cost-free athletic labor pool. Those athletes who possess the athletic skill to play professionally should not be penalized or compromised by needing to go through the charade of being a student athlete. And they should not be forced to provide a college with three or four years of athletic labor before they have the opportunity to enter the pros.

In the present system, the vast majority of revenue producing athletes' athletic careers end in college; less than one percent of Division IA athletes gain a professional team roster slot. After four years of athletic labor, most walk away from their university without a college education or worthwhile degree, carrying only memories. Paraphrasing an old saying, "memories and a dollar bill will get you a cup of coffee."

Note: Subsequent to writing this article I read Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in BigTime College Sports by Andrew Zimbalist, Princeton University Press, 1999. Zimbalist's and my analyses of revenue producing college sport coincide to a remarkable degree. He has produced an extremely thorough and detailed analysis of college revenue sport and an excellent book. I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in big-time college sport, the rampant contradictions inherent in it and the almost frightening patterns of racism, gender exploitation, cronyism, political boosterism, and exploitation of many of our finest athletes.