Professionalization Is Killing College Sports

Let us take for granted that the NCAA in its prime was greedy, hypocritical, reactionary, schoolmarmish, tone-deaf, and more than a little absurd. That case is not difficult to make, and I have made it before, fairly drowning in examples.

Nevertheless, having come out the other side of NCAA v. Alston, the 2021 Supreme Court ruling that stripped the association of much of its enforcement power, fans of college athletics are beginning to concede that the ancien régime was perhaps slightly less awful than previously thought. Though the comparison is ill-mannered, one is reminded of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The old villain had his flaws, but who else could have held together Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Baathists, and other assorted members of that doomed Mesopotamian state?

The NCAA of old would have had Bill Belichick tarred and feathered before it let him give his girlfriend duties at UNC. In the same way, college sports have collapsed into anarchy in the absence of a single, dominating authority. Whereas (former) University of Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava would have been smote from the face of the planet had his recent saga unfolded in, say, 2019, the sporting world barely blinked when the young man forced his way out of Knoxville earlier this spring following an unsuccessful “Name, Image, and Likeness” money grab. Similarly, the NCAA of old would have had Bill Belichick tarred and feathered before it let him give his 24-year-old girlfriend even unofficial duties at UNC. About this, more to follow.

Every week brings new affronts to conventional ideas of fairness, stability, and campus tradition. Every week, it seems, brings new affronts to conventional ideas of fairness, stability, and campus tradition. In February of this year, University of Oklahoma golfer Holly McLean filed a lawsuit challenging the prohibition against playing for two schools in the same academic year. In April, former UNC and Duke football players brought action against the NCAA’s eligibility limits, arguing that the longstanding five-years-to-play-four-seasons rule violates their constitutional rights.

To game out this litigation is to foresee both in-season trades and the return of former NFL pros to Division I fields. It is, in other words, to envision the final ruin of college sports as we have known them. Will Congress, the president, the courts, or a hobbled NCAA stand up to such madness? I suppose it’s possible. Yet the schools themselves almost certainly won’t. All of the energy—all of the incentives—are flowing in exactly the opposite direction.

Take, for example, last month’s development in the Bluegrass State. Determined to break new ground in the pursuit of off-the-field advantage, the University of Kentucky has transformed its athletic department from a division of the nonprofit institution to a separate, for-profit LLC, henceforth to be known as Champions Blue. While UK is the first American college to make such a move, it will surely not be the last, particularly if, as university spokesman Jay Blanton recently promised, the shift “unlock[s] new revenue streams through public-private partnerships and … real estate.”

To be clear, Kentucky is doing something novel in the history of college sports. While both the University of Florida and the University of Georgia have long spun their athletic programs into legally separate entities, both the UF Athletic Association and UGA Athletics retain nonprofit status (for now). No mere bookkeeping measure, Kentucky’s evolution is different in kind, not just degree. Champions Blue will eventually have a Fortune 500-style CEO. It will presumably pay executives and shareholders high-dollar bonuses. Its founding document gives lip service to “student-athletes” but fairly buzzes with pecuniary lingo: “financial,” “revenue,” “funding,” “dollars,” “capital,” et cetera.

And what of those sports that can’t pull their own profit-making weight? As Forbes recently speculated, Kentucky’s ultimate goal appears to be “accepting private capital into athletics.” However, “private capital means new expectations and priorities, such as growth and return targets.” Since many college sports (e.g., women’s swimming) barely finish out of the red, “what happens if cutting a sport would improve the bottom line?” Throw in Title IX regulations, and one has a recipe for investor complaints and political agitation. To ask who will look out for Jane’s and Joe’s actual education seems so quaint that the question may as well be served with gingerbread and tea.

Where Kentucky goes, other big-name schools will follow. So, too, will Uncle Sam, as recently explained in the darkly amusing Alabama Law Review article, “The Taxable Future of College Sports.” Thus will university athletics settle into a new dispensation. The feds get revenue. Top athletes get paid. Investors get profits. And schools and students get … what, exactly?

Already, there are signs that universities may live to regret the creeping professionalization of college sports. Already, there are signs that universities may live to regret the creeping professionalization of college sports. The story of the last five years has been conference realignment, a money-grubbing travesty that saw (for instance) the 2024 Stanford women’s volleyball team schlep to Milwaukee, Lincoln, South Bend, Louisville, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Miami, Atlanta, Chapel Hill, and Durham in a single season. Let’s hope you ladies can study on the plane. The story of the next five years may well be the ritual beclowning of once-august institutions as the cost of competitive advantage comes due. Lest anyone be confused, that price absolutely will be paid.

The story of the next five years may well be the ritual beclowning of once-august institutions. Consider, for example, the ongoing Bill Belichick adventure at UNC-Chapel Hill. Having flirted for weeks with a Tar Heel-spurning departure for the NFL, the former New England Patriots coach has since awarded his 24-year-old paramour, Jordon Hudson, a de facto public-relations position in the Chapel Hill football office. When, late last month, the young woman provoked national scorn and wonder for interrupting Belichick during a CBS interview, UNC went so far as to release a defensive statement on University Communications letterhead. As has been widely reported, Hudson was instrumental in the rejection of a plan to feature UNC on HBO’s football docuseries, Hard Knocks. Until approximately yesterday, such hijinks would have led to Belichick’s termination for cause and a season or two of heads-down damage control on the part of the football office. (Recall Bobby Petrino’s firing from the University of Arkansas in 2012.) Today, the hit to the university’s reputation is merely the cost of doing business at the highest level.

If the pending college-sports dystopia produces heroes, they will be those institutions that take their balls and go home, refusing to further sacrifice their missions and visions on the altar of field-and-court success. Earlier this spring, for instance, Pennsylvania’s Saint Francis University made the surprising decision to flee Division I for Division III, announcing, by way of motive, that “it’s a time for choosing in higher education.” As university president Father Malachi Van Tassell told Forbes, Saint Francis doesn’t “want to be in a [financial] arms race,” a state of affairs that Division I competition now demands. Instead, the institution will henceforth “control [its] own destiny.” After all, “the money is better spent on people.”

Bravo. If the goal—the actual goal—of a university is to educate young men and women, I can think of few better choices.

Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.