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Caris LeVert, freshman guard from Ohio, takes a shot during Saturday's 61-56 win over Syracuse.
[Photo from UM Athletic Department]
The Michigan Wolverines won Saturday night, but I can't stop thinking about how much those young basketball players are losing.
With each jump shot, each dunk, each steal, Trey Burke and Mitch McGary and the rest not only moved themselves a step closer to the NCAA crown, but also further cemented the school's standing as one of the most coveted and lucrative brands in all of American sports.
College merchandising is worth $4.6 billion annually, according to the Detroit Free Press. And Michigan, the No. 5 university in terms of royalty totals, hauls in a hefty portion of that cash thanks to the sacrifices and hard work of student players who helped lead the program out of a 20-year struggle through the basketball wilderness.
Business writer Frank Witsil reports in the Free Press:
More than $10 million of collegiate-licensed merchandise -- T-shirts, hats, shot glasses, anything with a logo -- is expected to be sold during the tournament, according to Collegiate Licensing, a trademark licensing agency for more than 200 universities and athletic conferences.
A slice of those merchandise dollars -- usually 10% up to 15% of the wholesale price -- goes to Michigan and the other colleges playing in the tournament through royalties, said John Greeley, a senior vice president for Collegiate Licensing. And the euphoria of a championship can linger for a year, retailers say.
After winning the tournament in 2012, the Kentucky Wildcats set a record of licensing sales, taking in $1.2 million from royalties from the tournament championship merchandise alone, Greeley said.
"Licensing has become a major extension of a university's brand," he added. "Athletic success galvanizes the fans, alumni and boosters."
Yes, plenty of people are paying and getting paid. And yet, in what's probably the most obvious racket in modern big business, the actual athletes whose hard work and sacrifices generate that multi-billion-dollar success won't see a dime.
Thin Camouflage by NCAA
This needs to end. It's just not enough anymore -- if it ever was -- for the NCAA to hide behind that wafer-thin argument about safeguarding amateurism and "student-athletes."
Not when John Beilein, once named one of the most overpaid coaches in college basketball by Forbes magazine, will earn nearly $2 million this year for getting a team to the NCAA Finals for the first time in his career.
Not when an additional $1.7 billion in merchandising profits have poured in to schools and retailers and the NCAA in the last decade.
Not when universities sell Final Four tickets for more than $300 each and companies like StubHub are peddle them for as much as $50,000 for a spot in suite.
And not when the NCAA is negotiating deals worth nearly $11 billion for TV rights.
Time for Overhaul
It's no longer enough to say these young men should be content to have their tuition costs covered or to receive quality medical care should one of them blow out a knee, rip an Achilles tendon or worse. As the gruesome ordeal of Louisville guard Kevin Ware has revealed, even the medical-care dodge is shaky. Here's what Gillian Mohney reports at ABC News:
"When you watch Kevin Ware, after you're done cringing, you think, what's going to happen to this guy?" said Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, an advocacy group for college athletes.
Huma says many people watching the game don't realize players aren't guaranteed that all of their medical costs will be covered. And even if they are initially covered, students can later lose their athletic scholarships. And if they then leave the school, they would also lose that health care insurance.
"People are surprised [the University of Louisville] could have opted to leave him with medical expenses and leave him off the team," said Huma. "The fact that they have that option is outrageous."
For the most talented basketball and football players, colleges essentially serve as plantations nonpaying minor leagues into which they must be conscripted, for at least a year, before they can pursue that most American of enterprises: Getting paid off of what they do well.
Never mind that 14-year-olds can go off to play pro golf or that 17-year-olds can earn millions playing tennis.
And never mind that March Madness generated more than $1 billion in ad sales last year, slightly more than the NFL Playoffs and Super Bowl combined and far more than postseason revenues generated by the other major pro sports.
Crass Exploitation
Meanwhile, when it comes to big-money events such as the football Bowl Championship Series, the NCAA somehow manages to avoid paying not only the players but the IRS, too.
Thankfully, movements are afoot to end this crass exploitation. Even the kids themselves are catching on: Recent interviews with some of the young men on the McDonald's All-American high school teams reveal that more than half think college players deserve to be compensated.
And these are the guys who aren't even playing college ball yet.
I deeply doubt that they'll get their due before their college careers end, but I certainly hope so. Because it's well past time that the names on the back of these college sports jerseys got treated with the same value and respect as the names on the front.
