Amateurism: A Word That Ruins College Sports

July 23, 2012; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Photos of the exterior of the NCAA Headquarters taken after the NCAA holds a press conference announcing corrective and punitive measures against Penn State University for the child abuse committed by former Penn State Nittany Lions assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Honesty is the best policy. Well, at least that is what my mom told me right before I let her know I could travel through time. That is why I want to point out that I think amateurism is a faced used by people with money to keep from sharing it from those without. There is more to it than that, but we will get to that in a minute.

Amateurism has never been put on a bigger stage than it has been now. Not the form the Olympics have used, but the kind that the NCAA holds closer to their hearts than I do my Teddy Ruxpin doll at night. With the lawsuit seemingly trending against them, Jay Bilas embarrassing them one tweet at a time and actual student-athletes starting to publicly rebel, the NCAA as we know it might look a lot different in a short period of time.

There is obviously two sides of this argument. You either think student-athletes should get paid or you don’t. Sadly — as Kyle Kensing points out — many people are so stuck with whatever helps their narrative in this debate that they leave little room for an actual discussion. You know, something that might help out all involved and fix whatever issues are currently going on. Issues, mind you, that the governing body of college sports has yet to fix on their own.

A word, amateurism, is something the NCAA would like to figuratively define college sports is actually splitting the nation in half and helping ruin the growth of college sports (much like the BCS). As previously mentioned, I think athletes should get paid. If you don’t, well, I need you to stay with me for a minute before you call me an idiot.

Paying athletes would definitely be complex and would need much more foresight than it is currently being given. Competitive balance — something that seriously lacks now, anyway — would be a huge issue going forward.

A school like Oregon could certainly used Phil Knight’s relationship with Nike (he is the head honcho there) to help lure top-prospects to come play at the school. Considering the main suggestion by those who want to pay players is to just let them capitalize off their likeness, this would certainly give Oregon (or other established, national programs) a big advantage. Especially when it comes to things like uniforms, commercial appearances or anything that could be benefited by playing in a larger market or for nationally followed teams.

That would also be where people who oppose paying players would stop their argument. Instead of thinking a little longer, digging a little deeper and helping the other side come to a mutual agreement, those folks would rather use that as the backbone argument.

We should be clear. Competitive balance barely, if at all, exists. The BCS — which most of those same people loved — tossed a majority of Division I programs to the wayside. They were to be given a much smaller chance to make the big BCS payout bowls. How exactly is that fair in keeping competitive balance?

Also, life is pretty much unfair. We need to do away with the “everyone gets a trophy in Little League” thinking. By doing away with amateurism and acknowledging that college sports is indeed a business, the NCAA no longer needs to worry about competitive balance. The biggest, brightest, best, etc are supposed to be the greatest, right? I mean, if they weren’t then the BCS was always morally and fiscally wronging  amateurism — the word the NCAA loves more than you love Russell Crowe.

Rather than pointing fingers at each other, though, and placing blame on the student-athletes or the schools or the boosters, maybe we should start thinking of a solution.

There happens to be some middle-ground in some form of revenue sharing. Revenue sharing can be a fickle beast. Seriously, I get it. It is kind of like socialism (to be fair, lovers of not paying players and haters of socialism, amateurism spits in the face of capitalism). Except it goes without Fox News telling us how horrible it is every time we put on our picture-box. What it does, however, will help keep lower-level programs in the same ball park as the Florida States of the world.

It would have to be some combination of capping how much a singular athlete can make off of his likeness and then whatever extra is made would be shared within that player’s conference or throughout the entire NCAA. It would certainly be a seriously complex math formula or whatever, but this is college sports — there should be like a ton of future mathematicians just lying around or something.

The thing is, really, the idea of this topic being black and white is ridiculous. People like Colin Cowherd are steadfast in defending their opinion only. He does, from time to time, make a point to be condescending to anyone with a different viewpoint. Granted, that is a guy who compared student-athletes to sweatshop workers. No really. That is what he did today on his radio show when he said student-athletes are not exploited in the same way a shoe company doesn’t exploit third-world country workers by paying them 30 cents an hour in a 25 cents an hour market.

There are other people just as guilty. People like me. Snarky, possibly evil and could possibly be confused with someone who cares about the exploitation of kids. Folks like myself have been going about this the wrong way too. We have been so busy poking holes in the system that we have left little time in coming up with ideas to fix it (like my surely ill-fated idea of revenue sharing).

All a student-athlete gets now is a scholarship, a room and some food. Despite college sports becoming a billion dollar business a college degree has decreased in value — yet, it is the main thing offered to prospects out of high school. Inflation is going up everywhere. Network deals, website contracts and memorabilia are all becoming increasingly profitable for the NCAA and universities. Pretty much everyone — but what the student-athlete gets in return of their services — are making more money every new year.

Here is the bottom line. The NCAA is broken. It has been. For a very long time. Regardless if you think players should be paid or not, I think the majority of us are in agreement that the governing body of college sports is about as respectable and competent as a former pedophile doing clown shows for kids.

The NCAA needs to be woken up to realize that amateurism — by definition — is a broken and flawed system in today’s world of big time college sports being a big time, billion dollar business. Paying student-athletes will open up a Pandora’s Box worth of problems. But just because new problems are going to arise it doesn’t mean the ones we currently have are any better.

Out with the old (amateurism) and in with the new (getting money to athletes in the “money sports”), right? Right?

Is this thing on?

Guess not…

Joseph is the editor of ChopChat. For the love of Sam Cassell, follow him on the mean streets of Twitter @JosephNardone