“So who will have the “Billion Dollar Bracket”? Maybe not me but NCAA does one every year and there’s no shame in their game.”

 John Oliver sees something is wrong here

March Madness is turned up to the max. Everybody is filling out their brackets trying win Warren Buffet’s money. In conjunction with Quicken Loans and Yahoo!, Buffet’s firm Berkshire Hathaway is giving 15 million people a chance to win a billion dollars. I’m sure you know all you have to do is get the whole 2014 NCAA Men’s Tournament bracket right. 1 in 9.2 quintillion isn’t bad consider you lose nothing but time, personal and mortgage information.

Brackets for Big Money Buffet’s billion (Say it 5 times fast!) (Nati Harnik / AP)

It’s happening at an interesting time in college athletics. For the past few years there has been a louder vocal push for players to be compensated more than a scholarship for their work. The reason is the amount of money made off the play of “athlete-students” is so disproportionate  to amount of the scholarship. The NCAA argues that the money is needed to cover expenses for other sports that don’t make as much money as the cash cow sports football and basketball. Thing is these major colleges make enough money to pay every player in every sport something, regardless of personal financial situations. Why? To start the NCAA has been questioned on many strange restrictions on athlete-students. From not being able to give jelly for a bagel to who can help a player in any capacity, let alone financially.  In light of recent events George Schroeder from USA Today Sports summed it up by this.

“Under the NCAA model, financial aid, better known as an athletic scholarship, is essentially capped at tuition, books, room and board. The power conferences have pushed the idea of altering scholarships to include full cost of attendance, and are currently seeking greater autonomy within the NCAA’s legislative structure in order to enact such measures.”

This is considered progress in the eyes of some but others would look at the system as a whole is broken. I’ve heard the current practices of the NCAA be described as a modern day form of slavery. Others see this as a privileged opportunity.  So the outlook is very different to different individuals and it’s just my assumption but I can bet these views can be tied to family background and socioeconomic status.

The recent news Schroeder was referencing is the lawsuit that was filed by four former athletes against the NCAA the day after Selection Sunday.

Jeffrey Kessler’s antitrust lawyer who filed suit against NCAA (Louis Lanzano/AP)

“The National Collegiate Athletic Association and its five dominant conferences are an “unlawful cartel” that has illegally restricted the earning power of football and men’s basketball players while making billions off their labor, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday that seeks to paint big-time college athletics as being in blatant violation of antitrust laws.” -AP

BOOM!

What a great way to describe the way the NCAA makes move, an “unlawful cartel”.  There are other lawsuits against the NCAA highlighted in the rest of the report. This one attacks the fundamental aspect of the business that is college athletics.

Speaking of the business I won’t dive into deep into the numbers but to highlight glaring examples on this issue you can look no further than this column from Bleacher Report that came out last year during March Madness; NCAA Tournament 2013: Breaking Down the Business Behind March Madness

“In 2010, CBS and Turner Sports partnered on a 14-year, $10.4 billion deal to buy the NCAA men’s basketball tournament rights. The deal is worth nearly $771 million annually, or 90 percent of the NCAA’s 2012-13 revenue. By comparison, rights to the women’s tournament are reportedly $17 million per year.”

This is just money the NCAA makes for the broadcast of the National Championship tournament. This doesn’t include regular season and conference tournament broadcasting contracts. Add that to tickets, merchandise, concessions, parking, and the all important of keeping the program running, (wait for it) fundraisers.

Coaches in this whole mess have pretty much taken the side of the players. They know these players personal situations inside and out. The coaches fit into the equation because of some the high salaries that the elite ones earn. I am a firm believer of compensating people for their energy and genius. If a school like Kentucky, feels John Calipari is worth $4 million a year then that’s fine. So if that’s what an elite coach is worth, the question is how much is an elite player worth? According to an infographic

H&R Block infographic

published by H&R block, a Duke Men’s basketball player is worth $1,025,656 and the scholarship given is about $2,000 short of covering the cost of going there.

So who will have the “Billion Dollar Bracket”? Maybe not me but NCAA does one every year and there’s no shame in their game (pun intended).  The NCAA will be be singing Hip-Hop artist Yo Gotti’s well known song “Got a Check” and we will watch the spectacle that is NCAA tournament turn some into stars. It’s great for the fans to get excited about their teams buts we can’t let go of the human element.

Just ask the four UGA football players who were recently arrested in Athens. They were taken away for trying to double cash their checks from the UGA Athletic Association. With each check totaling an earth-shattering $71.50, I wonder why these four would take such a risk?