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College sports perfect for shady sports agents

Greg Jayne: Commentary

The Columbian
Published: October 24, 2010, 12:00am

Never mind Chip Kelly and his point-a-minute offense. Or the musical chairs version of conference realignment. Or Boise State’s Quixotic quest for a spot in the national-championship game.

No, the overriding story of this college football season is the layer of slime left behind by player agents.

Reggie Bush is stripped of his Heisman; North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and others face investigation; a former agent spills his guts to Sports Illustrated; and Nick Saban compares unscrupulous sports agents to procurement managers of another sort.

“I don’t think it’s anything but greed that’s creating it right now on behalf of the agents,” the Alabama coach said. “The agents that do this — and I hate to say this, but how are they any better than a pimp?”

Now, if there’s anybody who knows a thing or two about greed, it’s Nick Saban. So we should take him at his word.

Yet while sports agents rank somewhere below personal-injury lawyers and Congressmen in the court of public opinion, it would seem that the solution is rather simple.

Sure, you can suggest that college athletes should be paid in a free-market arrangement. Or you can shake a fist and declare that college sports are big business and should be treated as such.

But for all of the caterwauling about the ills of college football and big-time college basketball, nobody is asking the most relevant question: Why are colleges the de facto minor leagues for the NFL and the NBA?

I mean, is this what John Harvard envisioned for the American system of higher education?

The solutions to the problems in college sports have nothing to do with paying players or instituting piecemeal reforms. They have to do with treating colleges like academic institutions, which would seem to run counter to the established culture.

“One of the saddest charades in college sports occurs because many young athletes see college as the only route to the pros,” writes Andrew Zimbalist in his book, “Unpaid Professionals.” “Kids who have no academic talent and/or interest in attending college are compelled to be there. Schools prostitute themselves by accepting ‘special admits’ and offering them phony curricula.”

That’s not the case for all Division I athletes. That’s not the case even for a majority of them.

But big-time college athletics are laced with more than enough mercenaries who might or might not have more than a passing interest in the student half of being a student-athlete. And that’s where the real problem lies.

In baseball, if a top prospect coming out of high school would rather not sit through Greek Literature 101, he has the option of beginning his professional training in the minor leagues. No such opportunity is available in football and basketball.

And if I’m the parent who is paying tuition for a typical student, the thought of my kid sitting in class next to a disinterested athlete is aggravating.

The colleges have no reason to fight this system. Athletics can generate revenue and increase a school’s profile to the point where it boosts enrollment. They have a work force that can generate big money in exchange for the relatively paltry cost of a scholarship.

The NFL and NBA have no reason to fight this system. They have a vast employee-training system that costs them nothing.

The public has no reason to fight this system. It benefits from the thrilling entertainment industry that is big-time college sports.

And so we have a system that is predisposed to being a feeding ground for unscrupulous player agents.

Suggesting that there should be a minor-league system for football and basketball, apart from the colleges, is akin to trying to stop Oregon’s offense. It’s futile. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.

Greg Jayne is Sports editor of The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne

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