It might make for good politics, but it’s bad law and devalues education for politicians to support efforts, encouraged by Louisiana State University, to allow professional athletes to play their sport at Louisiana institutions of higher learning.
As college football has begun, much attention has focused on the efforts of a number of former college players who participated in National Football League camps who wish to return to playing in college after their attempts to latch onto an NFL team failed. They do so on the basis of a ruling made by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a group of conferences comprised of different school classified into different competitive categories, at summer’s beginning that allows five years of eligibility for athletes.
The previous rule had allowed only four years, except for extenuating circumstances most often caused by injury that had a student missing much of a season. The new rule gives everybody five years, although additional eligibility could be granted only under uncommon circumstances.
But by the time the rule came out, a number of students whose eligibilities had expired under the old rule had begun engaging in attempts to become professionals, if not received pay for play. They have argued they should be eligible for one more go-round after all others with eligibility for this academic year received an extra year.
In most cases with football, it hasn’t been controversial. A handful of players who tried out for NFL teams but were cut never received any money to do so. But a couple who did now want to play with LSU. This breaks the NCAA rule against allowing professionals from participating in the sports in which they received money.
This represents just the latest attempted breach against amateurism in collegiate athletics. A few years ago, under legal threat, the NCAA began to permit name, image, and likeness deals brokered by individual athletes that some exploited skillfully (such as a middling LSU women’s gymnast receiving millions of dollars a year, well more than the budget of the entire team). It backed down further when schools were permitted to distribute over $20 million to all their athletes, almost erasing the line between amateur and professional sports.
This is why failed profession-seekers want back in to their sports, because they can make money while keep playing their sports, only in a different way. While the players won an injunction in state courts (including Louisiana) allowing this, the four major conferences, including LSU’s Southeastern Conference, have fought back against LSU for allowing professionals for signing on by suing in federal court, arguing that its First Amendment right of free association is violated by forcing it to accept a member school acting contrary to its rules (which LSU approved).
Behind the scenes, the stakes are much higher. Also looking to go back to college at LSU are two softball players. Unlike other sports where professional contracts well outstrip the common NIL money distributed, as professional leagues are small in size and barely pay, and even bigger-paying leagues in Japan and Australia, of the extremely few softball players that can go pro few of them will make more money as professionals than if part of NIL deals either directly from a school or brokered for them individually by allies of a school.
Louisiana politicians have jumped out in support of professionals returning to LSU. They echo arguments that it was unfair that four-year students weren’t grandfathered in as they didn’t know they’d get to stay eligible before accepting money. Ultimately, that may lose in the courts – LSU signaled that may be the case as to date it has held off putting on its official football roster the petitioning players after the federal suit was filed – but with many LSU football fans in the electorate that might win at the ballot box.
Yet even if LSU were to win that case, it’s not the morally correct thing to do. Understand the motives of the petitioners. It highly unlikely that without the extra eligibility year any of them would have returned to school absent their not having completed a degree and unable to secure a professional gig, and even those had the same motivation for not finishing their degrees as those who did: they wanted to make money playing a game, not to be educated further.
The only reason they returned was because they wanted money and to play a game. That’s not why we have higher education paid for by the public. Higher education is not for earning money playing games or for building athletic skills to play professionally, but for education first, or even at all and not as some necessary evil to be endured to play, and if students don’t bring an education first attitude with them, public higher education doesn’t need them. Even if they pledge to give back the money, their hearts and minds aren’t in the right place.
Unfortunately, that compelling argument won’t affect the thinking of many politicians wanting to catch voters’ attention, so expect their blathering to continue until the issue is resolved judicially.
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