The only thing not professional about college football is how it treats the student-athletes.
Here is a shocker for some. College football is a business that is rolling in money and depends on cheap labor to keep the product going. Players make a deal in that they could get a relatively inexpensive educational opportunity in exchange for their services. But college sports has and continues to treat athletes as no more than meat on the hook, which was the title of a 1972 book about the University of Texas football team. Athletes are easily discarded. The grand poohbahs of college football have decided to expand the college football playoff tournament not because the players want to pay extra games or customers want more games. Nope, there is money to be made from television and streaming networks and platforms. The number of teams competing for the college football crown goes from four to 12 and the new playoff system can be in place by 2024 although it might start in 2026 after all there has to be a plan to make sure everyone is happy with how the TV and marketing money is doled out. There are hundreds of millions of reasons for that or rather hundreds of millions of dollars that need to be divided up.
But not one penny will trickle down to the players pockets. The student-athletes, the stars of the show. After all, without the players there are no TV and streaming dollars heading the colleges and universities way. Sure, some of the players can be paid through marketing deals which can be very lucrative but they cannot get the money unless there are other performers and some of those performers are not getting marketing deals. But everyone connected to the college football industry is happy as the money will flow in. The players should see some of that cash.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
