With word from Kevin Duffy that we might hear a ruling in the Ryan Boatright case as early as today, I’d like to point you to a few excellent opinion pieces on the matter (which you’ve probably already seen). The first is the 2nd part of a 2-parter by Joe Nocera at the New York Times. The second is by SBNation Chicago writer Ricky O’Donnell. You can also go join the discussion of the suspension at The UConn Blog’s thread on the Nocera piece.
I’ve already shared my opinion on Ryan Boatright’s suspension, but I’d like to add a couple things. The one point that I’d like to reinforce though, is the fact that at the very center of this whole case the lone virtue being preserved and upheld by the NCAA is amateurism.
As Sonny Vaccaro was quoted in Nocera’s first NYT piece, “Reggie Rose [Boatright's AAU coach who lent Ryan's mother $400 for a plane ticket to visit colleges with her son] is not a UConn booster. He’s not an agent. He has a pre-existing relationship with Ryan’s mother. He was doing what anyone would do: lending a hand. That should be applauded.”
Boatright’s case wasn’t one of someone using money or influence to steer him toward one school or another. Hell, no one has said that the plane ticket his Mom bought which caused his first suspension was to UConn. It could’ve been one of the other schools he visited or committed to. There was no competitive advantage gained by any school that was recruiting Ryan, and there was no competitive advantage gained by Ryan. Are we supposed to expect a school to extend or a rescind a scholarship offer based on meeting Boatright’s mom? Of course not.
There is nothing that threatens the competitive playing field of sport; nothing which undermines anything that happens on the court. Instead, the only thing that’s potentially compromised is Boatright’s status as an “amateur”. Just in case you’re keeping score at home: the billion dollar television contracts that drive conference realignment? Those have a place in amateur athletics. A $400 plane ticket? That compromises the integrity of the game.
Nocera stops short of blaming amateurism itself, though it would seem to fit in the paradigm of his usual anti-NCAA argument. It’s the same argument espoused in both Boatright pieces, and his piece after last year’s national championship excoriating Jim Calhoun. His point in a nutshell: the NCAA is an evil entity which supresses the rights of its players. In the Calhoun piece he talks about the double standard of punishment for player’s and coaches. In the second Boatright piece he compares the NCAA to the Gestapo.
I feel that Nocera could take the argument a step further and take aim at the underlying cause of all of this: the commitment to amateurism. While the comparisons of the NCAA to the Gestapo might have been a little over the top, but amateurism has pretty evil discriminatory history itself.
When I was in college I majored in American Studies, which I thought was a clever way to get course credit writing papers on Charles Mingus and “Blazing Saddles”. I also did a thesis on the segregation of the NFL. In that research I came across a sports figure named Joe Lillard. You probably haven’t heard of Joe Lillard because his promising athletic career was sidelined by the color of his skin. He was an impressive multi-sport star in the early 30s and, along with Hall of Famer Fritz Pollard and future actor/activist Paul Robeson, was one of the black stars of the pre-segregation NFL.
Lillard, nicknamed “The Midnight Express” (because he was black you see, and that was the kind of thing that passed for clever in 1932), starred at the University of Oregon and went on to the NFL. Despite being an electric quarterback/kicker (back when those positions were conjoined and the latter was more valuable than the former) for the Chicago Cardinals in 1934, Lillard found himself out of a job when a “gentleman’s agreement” by NFL owners barred teams from signing black players starting in the 1935 season.
For Lillard this was not the first time he’d been prevented from playing. Several years prior while a basketball and football star at Oregon, Lillard was ruled ineligible by the Pac 8 conference when a probe initiated by the Ducks upcoming gridiron opponent, USC, discovered Lillard had violated his amateur status because of his involvement with a barnstorming baseball team the previous summer. There is no doubt, looking back at the incident from a historical perspective, that Lillard’s ban was a result of the color of his skin, and not the gravity of his transgressions.
The probe found that while he had played with the team, he had not received compensation for his play. He had however, played under “an assumed name”. This was because he joined the team with his half-brother Ben Johnson and hadn’t bothered to correct his teammates who mistakenly assumed they shared the same surname. He had also been employed as the team’s bus driver.
Despite the fact that USC’s own probe found him innocent of having been paid to play ball, the fact that he was employed by the team in any capacity and had played under an “assumed name” was enough to arouse suspicion. The suspicion was thought to besmirch his reputation as an amateur enough to ban him from further collegiate competition.
Basically, Lillard was barred from competing for having a summer job; one which was only tangentially related to sports. This would seem completely nonsensical except for the fact that the amateurism evolved for this very purpose. In the 19th century sports and sporting culture grew mostly amongst the upper and middle classes. There were pre-existing barriers to participation from the working classes (such as grueling 6-day work weeks and unwillingness to play on the Sabbath), and upper class private schools and universities (where students’ well-to-do background’s afforded them the time and equipment to pursue sporting interests) became a hotbed for early sporting culture.
Subscribing to the ethos of amateurism became a way to ensure that the upper classes continue to have the upper hand in sports. Working class athletes would have a much harder time turning down payment for their efforts on the playing fields (mainting their amateur status), and in many cases could not afford to take the time away from their jobs to ply their skills on the playing fields in an amateur capacity.
Basically, amateurism exists to prevent poor athletes from taking the roster spots away from the rich. Despite its antiquated origins, it remains the cornerstone of the NCAA. There are any number of economic realities that have kept it in place, but it’s sad that college athletics have not evolved from the 1930s when Joe Lillard was barred from competition.
While Boatright isn’t being singled out for his race (that ostensibly has evolved, though you didn’t see the NCAA digging through Jimmer Fredette’s ATM receipts), there certainly is an undeniable class component. If Boatright were from a more well-to-do family do you think the NCAA would be asking his mother how she paid for her house? Does the NCAA ask the parents of the Harvard crew team to surrender their bank accounts? Were the Winklevoss twins asked how their cars were paid for?
Our sporting culture as a whole has evolved. We no longer see amateurism as virtuous, or care when players are paid to play sports. Being a professional athlete no longer carries such a stigma that athletes feel the need to play professionally under assumed names lest they dishonor their university. Ryan Fitzpatrick and Jeremy Lin do no dishonor to Harvard by playing in the pros. The College of William and Mary counts among its alumni Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, but uses NFL safety Darren Sharper in its promotional materials.
Even the NCAA has evolved in certain matters when it comes to amateurism. They have no problem accepting billion dollar television contracts for the NCAA Basketball Tournament, selling players’ game-used merchandise or same-numbered replica jerseys, or using players individual attributes and likenesses in video games. They don’t seem to care about schools being sponsored by apparel companies who pay millions to dress players like clowns, or who ask coaches to act as company spokesmen.
They also seem not to have a problem with the fact that the only reason many top high school basketball players are in college in the first place is because the NBA requires them to be a year removed from their high school graduation to serve the marketing needs of the professional league.
So why haven’t the NCAA’s views evolved on a player’s amateur status? Why does this blatantly discriminatory, vestigial ethos which disproportionately targets athletes from poor backgrounds persist today? Why is it okay for Andre Drummond to pay his tuition by securing a bank loan on the promise of his future professional basketball earnings, but not okay for Tanesha Boatright to accept a $400 loan from a friend to visit a college with her son?
Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions is the same: the NCAA doesn’t have one. And the real shame of it is, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.
great article carl