NIL “Reform” Fails to Address the NCAA’s Biggest Issue (original) (raw)
Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 2014
Utilizing a company-town metaphor, this paper analyzes the working and living conditions of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's basketball and Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football players within athletic departments at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs). After summarizing previous “neo-plantation slavery” and “sex-worker” analogies, this paper analyzes – utilizing Contemporary Theory of Metaphor (CTM) – the complex relationship between these athletes and PWI athletic departments. Drawing upon historic and contemporary legal, sociological and economic sources, we compare these athletes’ existence to that of oscillating migrant laborers in 19th and 20th Century US company towns. Specific elements of big-time college sport analyzed include: (a) the degree to which profit athletes’ daily burdens and obligations exceed those of other university employees, (b) the geographic migration patterns of profit-athletes, (c) a paternalism that suffuses the Collegiate Model of Athletics, promoting intensive surveillance of players' conduct, both in the work context itself and during their ‘free time’, (d) in-kind compensation (grant-in-aid) that is akin to scrip, (e) limited athlete representation in college-sport governance, (f) college-sport participation health risks, and (g) moral and character-based justifications for the Collegiate Model. Consistent with CTM, we contend this previously-unutilized comparison uniquely disorganizes the common-sense view of big-time college sport, producing an effectively reorganized metaphor that challenges NCAA hegemony and provides a context for improved communication and social action within the institutional field of US college sport.