The Few

On ESPN, there is a documentary entitled “The Student Athlete”. If you have Xfinity it is easy to get to…

As we prepare for a football season that probably won’t happen, this documentary is worth watching.

Since this is a subject close to my heart, this statistic is telling.

“56% of NCAA Football Players on Scholarship are Black

66% of NCAA Basketball Players are Black

3% of College Undergrads at NCAA Schools are Black.

56 to 66 to 3? What! ????

The documentary tells how the NCAA and the Universities are making billions, not millions, but billions of dollars from NCAA Football and Basketball.

When I played, in the last century, TV covered about three games a year. Radio was 100%. And attendance at games ran about 70,000!

Now Stanford Stadium was larger then, today it only holds 54,000 and change.

And it is hardly every full!

But it doesn’t matter, TV revenue is the big gorilla in the room…Stanford makes millions off football with practically no overhead…Many of the scholarships are endowments (mine was) not paid for by football program income.

So, I was working for free as far as the athletic Department was concerned…no workman’s comp either.

And in those days, if you quit, it was Vietnam!

And now Stanford has all the way around the stadium a mosaic tile sidewalk….and the facilities would make a millionaire blush.

We dressed in Encina Hall and walked to the stadium…That was how the famous “Walk” started…we didn’t have a bus!

There were restrooms and a hut for halftime. That was it.

Now the accommodations are incredible.

But the undergraduate athlete makes the same, adjusting for inflation, that I did on scholarship…Sure tuition is now over 65,000 dollars a year, but it was $3800 in 1965…remember inflation.

And because Stanford had/has such high tuition, the limit on NCAA scholarships meant we had to hash (wait tables in dorms or the Frat House) and work in the athletic grounds corp yard to pay our room and board.

Now I did clear $100 a month, actually make a saving account while on scholarship… I kept the money my parents sent ($100 a month) and the rest I paid for with a severely damaged spine that hurts to this day.

It took me a few years to tell my parents that I used the $100 a month on beer?!

No workers comp…no shoe deals in those days.

We did get money for selling our comp tickets, which is totally illegal under NCAA present rules. That was also gravy…

But those who got injured, and that was everybody, had no workman’s comp. Of the 23 scholarship players in my class, 3 of us (I was one of them) did not get a knee operation.

And the shocking thing was at our last reunion, the Frosh Football Team, had 22 of the 60 on the team who had died.

The documentary follows some borderline pro players, who struggle to make it, and don’t…they were stars in college, but only about 3% of all NCAA Division 1 Players ever even get a cup of coffee, they are invited to tryout and then cut….of that 1% a fraction make the team and of that fraction on another fraction make the big money.

If we go back to the statistics the racism and prejudice jumps off the page at you: 56% off NCAA Football players are Black, 66% of NCAA Basketball Players and only 3% of college undergrads are Black.

And of those large percentages only about 1/2 of 1 percent ever see the promised land of big salaries.

And those salaries do not start until after their college days are over.

The NCAA reports graduation rates, but there are loopholes…many scholarship athletes, especially those who have a chance at the NFL or NBA never graduate.

The average playing career in the NFL is three (3) years!

The tryouts of the NCAA Football Camps, before the draft, cause many players to drop out during their senior year. If they don’t make the cut in the pros, they never go back to school…and most of them are African American.

Now you are probably saying so what…the players are heroes, they get all the good looking coeds, etc.

And they limp along the rest of their lives…Many never finish school, because even if you are All American, there is always next year, there is always another spot on the depth chart that is waiting to take your job…

I was lucky, I had no delusion that I had a pro career chance…so I had a plan B.

Minorities don’t have a plan B…they often are hoping to get into the Pros and help their parents once they get a big salary.

And 99% of them don’t…

I was asked in class one time, how is it that there are no such things as races, when African Americans can jump higher and run faster?

If you look at the history of racism and prejudice, the answer has nothing to do with race…It has to do with opportunity and inclusion…The only way out of the ghetto is often athletics, one area in life that is truly a meritocracy….

And it is the American Dream…that only 1/2 of 1 percent can every enjoy.

So what we really have is a fancy form of slavery…..with young men and women all fighting for one of the few entry points to the privileged life style that is available to them.

Shame on us…