Editorial: Former Northwestern QB Kain Colter Signals the End of College Football as We Know It

Written by Ryan Wright

Twitter: @RyanWrightRNG

Originally posted on Jan. 28, 2014

Editor’s Note: Momentum is again building for college players to get paid for their time and services in their given sport, primarily in football and basketball. Sure to add to the momentum is a thoughtful and informative segment titled the End of Amateurism by Gianna Toboni on Vice, which aired Friday, March 31 on HBO. While the segment was well-done and the narrative achieved, there is another side to the debate not included fully in Toboni’s piece – how would the monies be distributed (performance based, evenly, and/or for all student-athletes), where do the monies come from, and what are the possible effects of paying college athletes going forward?

The following article was originally posted on Jan. 28, 2014, after former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter attempted to bring forth a collegiate football players’ union in an attempt to pay college football players while providing medical insurance for players after their college careers ended. The purpose of the editorial is not to provide answers but to dig deeper into the questions that need to be asked and answered before going forward.

Worth noting, the big money deals the Power Five Conferences earned from their TV deals with networks like ESPN will not be there the next time around. ESPN reportedly lost one million subscribers over the months of October and November in 2016 – a loss of $15 million dollars, and 10 million subscribers since 2011, an estimated loss of $1 billion annually. The conference package deals are not paying off as hoped.

Editorial: Former Northwestern QB Kain Colter Signals the End of College Football as We Know It

Backed by the Steelworker’s union, former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter announced a collegiate football player’s union on Tuesday. The union, titled the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), seeks to provide monetary rewards for college football players going forward while securing medical insurance for players after their playing days are over.

Another security sought by the CAPA is guaranteed college tuition covered by the player’s university until said player completes their undergraduate degree regardless if the player leaves school early to pursue outside interest including heading to the NFL.

In theory the idea of paying college athletes is simple and easy, but all to what end?

Colter rationalized his stance of forming a union to protect players stating, “How can they call this amateur athletics when our jerseys are sold in stores and the money we generate turns coaches and commissioners into multimillionaires?”

The graduated Wildcats’ signal caller went on to say, “The current model represents a dictatorship. We just want a seat at the table.”

The motivation to help college football players is admirable, but asking for a seat at the table to rake in millions or even billions among 120 college football teams seems less than admirable. In the end it all comes down to greed.

A formation of a union is just the start to a thousand more questions, but none bigger than where does college athletics go from here?

The National College Players Association (NCPA) calls the non-payment of student athletes in football and basketball the “$6 Billion Heist,” but what information are the advocates for college players being paid basing their argument off of to support their stance?

Per financial statistics given by NCPA, $6 billion in monies will be lost to student athletes from 2011 to 2015. The average payout for a scholarship player over that time period is $456,612 for football and $1,063,307 for basketball players. The numbers are given without respect to how the purported payments are derived and how they are rewarded.

Per USA Today, University of North Carolina ranked No. 25 in revenues generated from all their competing college sports in 2012 at $82,424,430 while spending $81,921,783 in 2012, a net profit of $502,647; without benefit of a subsidy totaling $9,092,082.

Something does not add up. How is the NCPA coming up with their numbers?

If all things are equal in the eyes of a union, shouldn’t all college players be paid for their hard work?

Does anyone remember the passing of the Education Amendment in 1972 also called Title IX? Title IX was supposed to bring equality to education without prejudice… can we assume without prejudice to a given sport as well? After all education is supposed to be the foundation for the argument posed on how we identify student-athletes or student-employees, and the CAPA wants what is fair.

Why should football players or men’s basketball players receive a paycheck when others go without, regardless if their sport generates more revenue? All athletes are at risk of suffering a career ending injury while playing their given sport, an inherent risk that comes with playing any sport. Additionally, all student-athletes go through the same process to earn a college degree.

If the players on a given campus represent the school as a student-athlete, or employee per the CAPA, all should be treated equally; volleyball players, wrestlers, golfers (both men and women), baseball and softball players, track and field, rowing team members and any other sport that a university hangs their hat on when counting up conference championships along with NCAA championships?

May sound silly but what about cheerleaders (men and women), spirit teams and dance squads along with school bands? Do these student-athletes and student-musicians not add to the atmosphere of a college sporting event? Where is their cut from the union leaders? After all it is the event people are paying to watch in person or tune in on TV to see – the event in its entirety.

So the general idea per the unions that we are to understand is each sport is different and each athlete should be paid separately? Give me, give me, give me… mine, mine, mine.

There are always exceptions to the rule but what about injured players? What happens if a high school senior is offered a scholarship in August which he verbally accepts but suffers a career ending injury in October? If said university follows through with awarding the player’s scholarship after a verbal commitment so he can earn a college degree as promised, does this player get paid without ever doing any of the work?

This raises more questions. If a player does not contribute on the field of play during a season and/or career how can he expect to be paid? Are there different pay scales for starters verses second-, third-, and fourth-string players? Also, when does a player fall under the umbrella of protection from the union?

Will walk-ons be paid? Do walk-ons not practice and help prepare the team for games throughout the week, throughout their duration as a member of the team, talented or not, the same as scholarship players? Regardless if walk-ons play in the games they are part of the team. Many walk-ons contribute at major D-I programs, some even as starters before being awarded a scholarship at the end of a given season. How are they to be paid?

When will high school players start getting paid? Money is being generated at the high school level as well. How far does this roll downhill?

Another big question, how would the monies be distributed at the collegiate level? Would the monies based off revenues earned minus revenues spent be put into one big pot to be equally distributed among all 120 Division-I teams (in 2014)? Fair is fair, right? Why should a player at University of Texas be paid more than a player at University of Nevada Las Vegas? Both teams practice and play in the beating summer sun putting their personal health at risk playing football. Both teams have the same shot at winning the NCAA championship, in theory anyway. Why should popularity of a school, a state’s earning potential, and/or a state’s overall population reward one college football player over the other?

Or would each player be paid by the school after revenues and expenses are figured out? If this model was used talk about an unfair advantage plowing through college football changing the landscape and forever ruining the game as we know it.

In 2012, the University of Texas athletics generated revenue of $163 million with expenses of $138 million, thanks in large part to the Longhorn Network. If all players were paid evenly for their time and effort based on a university’s net profit this would generate an unfair recruiting advantage meaning the top paying teams more than likely would receive the top recruits year after year making college football an even more one-sided event year after year than it already is. Yay! for the top paying programs; goodbye to any sort of parity in college sports. By then who really needs the NFL?

Using the Tar Heels as an example, UNC has 12 men’s sports and 14 women’s sports; the most any Division-I school can have is 14 scholarship sports per gender, the rest of the teams are typically designated as field teams. Scholarship athletes allowed per sport by the NCAA is preset with 206.9 men’s scholarships and 173.1 women’s scholarships (2014).

If the Tar Heels athletic program filled all NCAA allowable sports with all possible scholarships awarded, based on 2012 financials of $502,647 net profit and 380 scholarship players being paid, an equal payment of $1,322.76 would be given to each UNC player… for the year. This is a Top 25 team in terms of financial ranking at a high-profile institution. Getting paid just hit a roadblock.

What happens at No. 32 ranked UCLA, a state funded college that broke even at $71 million in 2012? Or No. 36 ranked Kansas with revenues of $70.2 million and expenditures of $78.9 million. Do the Kansas players owe the administration money for not winning more games to generate more money that resulted in lost income?

How about crippling small D-I programs like San Jose State who generated $23.9 million across the board or Louisiana-Lafayette, a program that took in $17.4 million but spent $17.5?

And let’s not forget about D-II, D-III, and NAIA players. Should their time, play, and physical health after their playing days are over not be cared for as advocated for by the CAPA? One could argue players at lower division programs have more of a grind without the benefit of fanfare and national notoriety with grueling long bus rides over shorter jaunts on an airplane as taken for granted by AQ programs.

The lost focal point in the debate is the cost of a player’s college tuition and subsequent perks on a full-ride scholarship, which varies from school to school. Take for example the University of Auburn. For the 2013-14 school year the average cost of an in-state undergraduate student was $28,098; for an out-of-state student $44,610. If a Tigers’ player from the state of Alabama graduates in four years the cost to the administration is $112,392 or $140,490 for a fifth-year senior. An out-of-state student costs the university $178,440 over four years, or $223,050 over five years. This includes books, meals, tuition, and room and board along with reimbursements.

The average “flat cost” for a student attending University of Southern California is $68,865… per year, all expenses included. The four year cost to be a Trojan $275,460; five years $344,325.

One could argue college athletes, regardless of the sport, are being paid and cared for very well already if attending school on an athletic scholarship. The monetary figures do not include medical insurance costs or costs for medical treatment.

So, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on each player’s education and well-being is not enough coupled with the instructions received in the classroom and by out of classroom tutors along with instruction received by coaches to help mold their future potential earnings, more is need – more is wanted.

What about the licensing of a player’s jersey for sale, players names for video games, or a player’s image for profit? After all business entities, in this case college athletic programs, are not supposed to turn a profit according to CAPA. If an individual is separated from the rest of his teammates what becomes of the team concept?

Texas A&M Heisman winning quarterback Johnny Manziel was an electric player for two years while in an Aggies uniform. What if he were paid for his play based off jersey sales? What would then become of the players blocking for him or the receivers helping make him the dynamic player he became? If Manziel turned around giving some of that money back to his linemen and receivers rewarding them for their help, even if just paying for a dinner once a week, would that be a NCAA violation?

If the local or national media highlights one player from a team over the rest, that player “gets paid” at the expense of others. When does individualized play on the field become even more apparent? This potentially troubling trend would be even more harmful to college basketball… say goodbye to the assist, who would want to pass the ball over the potential to “get paid” for scoring more points? What about on the gridiron where a quarterback only throws to one receiver to help said receiver get paid?

If stats were a measure of financial success, no cheap shot truly meant here, Kain Colter would not be a high earner. Colter finished with 2,160 yards passing, 18 touchdowns, and nine picks… for his career at Northwestern, not an entire season. He was far more effective as a runner rushing for 2,180 career yards with 28 touchdowns. From 2010 through 2013, the span of Colter’s career at Northwestern, the Wildcats posted two winning and two losing seasons with an overall 28-23 record.

As a reader if you felt upset by me, the writer, singling in on Colter’s performance on the field as a measuring stick for being paid imagine how a backup in a coaches’ proverbial doghouse would feel being lost on the depth chart with no chance to make money if monies were performance based. Who’s to say battles for position spots don’t truly become battles with practice fights being started by backups needing to “get paid” by playing thus seeking to injure the starter for personal gain? Who wins then, the players, the fans, the school… nobody wins in the end.

As well thought out as any plan may be to help the players get paid, only a fool would believe colleges would not cook the books or use crafty accounting to limit payments to players if responsible for cutting paychecks based on net gross. Financial gains in one column would end up in another column on the ledger showing a loss at the end of the season, despite a healthy bank account for most D-I programs, meaning players, per the CAPA, would get the short end of the yard marker on being paid and have to settle for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are sunk into their education and privilege to play college football.

One closing question to throw out there – how is the CAPA being funded once up and running? I’ve never heard of a union that does not pay dues. If student-athletes are so broke how can they afford the union dues? Over the long haul will college players end up sharing “their money” with union heads and union lawyers to represent their interest leaving even less money for the players?

How do every day hardworking men and women within the Steel Workers Union feel about paying dues that are in turn being spent to help fight the legal battles of privileged college athletes in a completely unrelated “work” environment?

Little, if anything, is being mentioned about how cutthroat playing college football, or any sport, could become if labeled a job. Players late for meetings could be fined or, even worse, fired over the smallest of things. “Scholarships” could become one-year “contracts”, or even semester by semester contracts, that could be severed for no other reason other than to make room for a younger up and coming player who could contribute to the team before said player. The aftermath is a once hopeful college student-athlete now without means of making money or earning a college degree by no fault of their own in a negative way, they just were not perceived to be as good of a player as someone else.

What happens to Division-I football as we know it if players are paid? Mid-Major programs more than likely would drop out of Division-I football reforming in Division-II just to be competitive. Some Power Five Conference programs could suffer the same fate leaving, for arguments sake, 30 Division-I teams competing against one another year after year. All the monies from the network deals signed with each Power Five Conference the union wants a cut of would then be gone, or significantly reduced, cutting more players out of the paid loop while limiting more opportunities for student-athletes across the board.

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Even from the early beginnings of a union for college players it is hard to figure out who is truly winning, other than the lawyers, but it is much clearer to understand who all is losing and what all can potentially be lost. Like most good ideas, the devil is in the details with the individuals within corrupting the idea over greed, money, and power.

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Photo credit: San Diego Union Tribune; Kain Colter CAPA press conferencev