GeAnna Summers-Luaulu
Four Years a Slave
“You’re signing your life away,” one might say to the student-athlete signing their Letter of Intent, to go play the sport they love for the next four years. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) stated on their website that the “core purpose of the NCAA is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and ensure the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount” (NCAA.com). Student-athletes have a common lifestyle with slaves. The NCAA D1 basketball system is an undercover form of labor exploitation with their student-athletes. The NCAA considers themselves that they are a non-profit organization on their website, but how can a non-profit organization …show more content…
The Division I Basketball coaches are like the slave owners, and the student-athletes are the slaves. Just how slave owners were usually white, the NCAA Division I coaches were mostly white. In 2012, “Whites continue to dominate the head coaching ranks on men’s and women’s teams holding at least 85% of all head coaching positions,” (Lapchick, 2012). When you think of slaves you automatically think of African-Americans. In Division I men’s basketball in 2012, “African-Americans accounted for 57.2 percent of the student-athletes,” (Lapchick, 2012). Recruiting these Division I athletes is like auctioning off slaves. You twirl them around, see what they can do, and people auction the slaves off with money. In the recruiting world, athletes are being seen by these college coaches. College coaches go and watch these athletes at basketball tournaments all around the world. These athletes are put on a stage also known as the basketball court, to show off their skills, while slaves were being put on a stage to show off their body. College coaches try to persuade the student-athletes to attend their school, by auctioning off the campus, the facilities, and the student life to these athletes. College coaches basically flaunt their money around, to show how much money the school has by showing off their new facilities. The school that has the most to …show more content…
In 2015, “The NCAA roughly made over $1.5 billion,” (Gerencer, 2016). The NCAA receives most of its revenue from TV broadcasting. The NCAA broadcast their Division I student-athletes all day and night to make money but the athletes do not receive a penny. Slaves did not receive much compensation when they worked all day and night. Most of these D1 college athletes, including myself just want some money to go and get a bite to eat. Shabazz Napier, who is a former UCONN husky, stated “He goes to bed hungry at a time when millions of dollars are being made off of him,” (Ganim, 2014). From personal experience after a game, and it’s late night, and the school cafeteria isn’t open, you don’t really have a choice but go back to your dorm, and hope to find something to eat. Usually, there wouldn’t be anything to eat at your dorm, and you wouldn’t have any money to spend, so you just go to bed hungry, and wait until breakfast the next day. The NCAA President Mark Emmert believes that student-athletes should not get paid because, “They’re not employees, they are student-athletes,” (Morganteen, 2014). This is similar to slavery because they do not get paid also. So tell me this, how can the NCAA make money off of student-athletes, without giving the athletes of dime for their performance? That’s just like not paying NBA players for their athletic ability, and skills. Ed O’Bannon, who was