Tyler Krenzin
Lantern Staff
In America sports reign supreme, especially in Midwest and Southeast America. We can come to the conclusion that as far as entertainment is concerned, there are not a lot of options outside of sports. In Kansas City, Missouri, the most important events of the year are Sunday night football games when the Chiefs play a divisional opponent. But outside of the Chiefs, the Royals and Sporting KC, the well runs dry for professional sports.
Colleges have filled in the gap for sports entertainment for the better part of a century in America. People let their loyalties lie with the school they went to or the school that their parents went to. As fan bases continued to grow with every incoming class, so did the need for the games to be broadcasted across the country, so people could root on their specific team. This demand for sports programing has created a vacuum for money making from merchandise sales, sponsorships and television deals. The NCAA, the organization in charge of all college athletics, closed the 2017 fiscal year with a listed revenue of $1.1 billion according to an article from USA Today. In the same article, the NCAA posted a total of $956 million in expenses, leaving a $144 million “profit” for the 2017 fiscal year. The problem being that the NCAA is a non-profit organization, which leaves room for corruption.
In Europe, rooting sports, especially football (soccer), has become second nature. Big matches such as Manchester United vs. Manchester City will absolutely shut down the entire city as every football fan in the city will be glued to the T.V. screens at the local pubs. Rather than having the universities provide lower tier athletics, the clubs themselves will have youth teams and farm teams that can help develop players into a possible first teamers. This eliminates the need for what we would call amateur leagues. The NCAA consider themselves an amateur league.
Amateurism in the NCAA has become a major issue as of late, as athletes are starting to asked to be paid for the contributions on the field and being a part of the product that produces over $1.1 billion in revenue. The NCAA maintains that by keeping an amateur status the athletes will focus more on an academic path than a professional sports path. This is why they maintain the title of student-athletes: Students first, athletes second. Anyone who knows anything about college athletics, knows this simply is not the case.
Besides our loyalties with the colleges we support, what is the point in supporting a program of corruption when there is a better proven option that gives athletes somewhat of a control on their career? Why should we continue to support school athletics with tax dollars when almost every program in NCAA loses money running their athletics. It’s just a pit we continue to throw money into for the sake of entertainment and loyalty.
