When Amateurism Goes (More) Pro: An Exercise in Reimagination.
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Sharks are Circling
With all the hubbub about the NCAA/Power 5 settlement last week, there has been no shortage of pundits offering perspectives as to what the future holds for intercollegiate sport in the U.S.
I just re-read an article titled, College Sports Is About to Turn Pro. Private Equity Wants In, from The Wall Street Journal by Andrew Beaton and Louise Radnofsky, dated May 22, 2024 – just a few days before the proverbial straw broke the camel’s back. The article is all about private equity’s chomping at the bit to enter the college sports fray.
Stop-You-in-Your-Tracks Question
It made me flashback to my earlier days teaching undergraduate Sport Operations classes at my alma mater, Colorado Mesa University. I started every class with the expectation that students would bring to me their burning questions about current issues and headlines facing the world of sport since the week prior’s class.
One morning a student asked me point blank, “Why are college sports so dirty?”
“Wow! Come out and say it, why don’t you?” I thought to myself.
I looked around at a room full of wide-eyed 20-somethings longing to work in the “exclusive” sport industry. Then I threw my lesson plans out the window and spent the next 75 minutes scribbling on the whiteboard, answering their “un-askable” questions, and diving into the spider web of the intercollegiate sport world.
A Peek Behind the Curtain
They asked. I answered. HONESTLY. From the multi-view perspective of an academician, a sport and tourism practitioner, a researcher, a parent, a former DI, DII, and III worker (once in grad school, I worked in all three divisions at the same time), and…importantly, a former DII student-athlete.
I said all the things I only wish someone had explained to me as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed undergraduate wanting to work in the field of my passion.
This was during the height of the Adidas and Louisville men’s basketball program scandal, so there were no shortage of real industry examples swirling.
Challenging Perspectives and Growing Minds
But you’d be mistaken if you assumed the ensuing discussion was about all the brokenness at this level of sport. I was in front of a room full of more than 75% student-athletes. Well aware of the opportunity that sport, and participation in collegiate sport, had afforded many of them, as it did me. And as I was teaching at a DII institution, as we know, is a different universe than D1, or Power 5, or heck, even just football, Men’s basketball, and women’s basketball, for that matter.
I DID NOT give them the answers. I DID NOT demand they adopt my way of thinking. I DID NOT claim to be right or know everything. I DID ask them a lot of questions. I DID encourage them to do their own research. To challenge their assumptions. To fortify their own opinions. To be willing to take in new information as it becomes available and humble themselves to listen, change, and grow. To be wrong. But to also be a part of the solution, a part of shaping the future of the industry.
It was, hands down, one of my favorite class sessions ever. And I hope they learned something. (I think they did because I still hear from many of them regularly.) My job in academia was never to have my students commit to memory the fine nuances of planning and executing large-scale sporting events.
Sure, I taught that information, but more importantly, it was to grow their minds, teach them transferable skills that will come in valuable in their own careers, encourage them to think outside the norm, and give them the opportunity to realize the path is circuitous, not linear…And to prepare them for success (and failure) in life, regardless of the industry.
Remember When…
Flashing back to today. The point of inflection is now in the rearview. When private capital rolls – or should I say FLOODS – into intercollegiate sport, it will change it forever. If you thought NIL and the transfer portal changed intercollegiate sports as we know it, those were horses that had barely gotten out of the gates.
The fact is, as Jason Gay from the Wall Street Journal articulated in his article last week, “Spoiler alert: This [intercollegiate sport] is a business, and always has been.”
We’ll be recalling the good ol’ days when – as student-athletes – we busted our butt for our sport day-in and day-out (but no more than 20 hours a week, I assure you! :D), high-tailed it attend class (in-person) so we could make the grade, squeezed in a part-time job coaching or reffing local rec sport (yep, that existed back then), and still had time to enjoy the quintessential college experience.
I wonder if the joys, perils, and lifelong learnings of those times are gone forever.
The 19th Hole by Stoll
As an optimist, I’m very hopeful that this trembling at the core of intercollegiate sport, which now bears witness to the chasms and canyons that have been growing under the surface, could also be a reconciliation to the purity of sport. Though I realize with entry of private equity, that likelihood is minuscule.
However, there is an opportunity to reimagine. As illustrated in the article serving as the inspiration for this post, major players in private capital are already reimagining. Reimagining what investment in “college sports” could look like. And we could take a page from that book to reimagine what if?
- What if private capital supported entire athletic departments?
- What if student-athletes were employees?
- What if revenue-generating sports and non-revenue sports truly played by a separate set of rules?
- What if divisions truly played by a different set of governance rules?
- What if intercollegiate sport got rebuilt from the ground up?
- What would that look like?
- What does true amateurism look like?
- How do we preserve – or reinstate – it?
- What if an entirely new governance organization emerged?
- What if sport was truly pure?
There are many more questions than answers. But this settlement isn’t a blanket win for student-athletes. It’s a sign of the instability in the system. The rubble is only beginning to fall. It’s inevitable.
So, my last question, I’ll go back to that day in the classroom all those years ago…
- What if we played a part in how intercollegiate sport is reimagined? Me, you, our industry, and maybe even some of those eager-eyed students of mine from years ago, many of whom are now established in their sport management careers. Just what if?
Nothing is impossible!
Evoke a thought.
