David Michael Miller
For Wisconsin sports fans it’s the time of waiting. We’re waiting to see how far the Badgers men’s basketball team gets in the NCAA tournament. We’re waiting to see just how good the Brewers really are. We’re waiting to see if the Milwaukee Bucks ever lose another game.
But while we’re waiting around, let me bring you up to date on one of my favorite topics: the outrages committed by big time professional sports — and I count the NCAA in the category of big time professional sports.
Let’s start with Jim Delaney. The Big Ten commissioner announced recently that he’s retiring — and getting a $20 million bonus on his way out the door. Now, I don’t begrudge Delaney his big pay day any more than I begrudge any other CEO of a major corporation their stock options, golden parachutes and what nots. And after all, Delaney led the Big Ten into the big East Coast television market by adding Rutgers and Maryland to the conference. Never mind tradition, geography, travel times for players, or quality of competition for fans. Delaney obliterated all that to line the pockets of Big Ten schools. So why shouldn’t they reward him for his bottom-line ruthlessness? Until we figure out some way to get a more fair income distribution in society, this is just the way of the free market. But when the guy who leads a nonprofit that claims to be dedicated to unpaid “student-athletes” walks away with $20 million, well c’mon people, can’t we pay the guys who actually play the games that produce all that wealth?
The biggest money machine for the Big Ten and most big schools’ athletic programs is football. But evidence just keeps piling up that the players who are making all that money for others are at increased risk for the lifelong impacts of brain injury. And, not surprisingly, this is resulting in higher-income, better-educated mostly white families discouraging their sons from playing the game while the sons of lower income, less well-educated mostly families of color are taking up the slack. As reported on the excellent, award-winning HBO program Real Sports, football participation rates are falling except among the poor. I keep thinking that it’s only a matter of time before Madisonians, who talk so much about social justice and racial equity, will finally start turning away from UW football. I keep waiting.
It’s hard not to conclude that there is an unholy alliance between the corporations that broadcast football games and the leagues to downplay the concussion problem. Bob Costas was an award-winning play-by-play announcer for NBC. But in late 2017 he committed the unforgivable sin of speaking out about head injuries in football and so NBC reduced his role and then a few months ago eased him out entirely. That’s because NBC Sports doesn’t want reporters or journalists covering NFL games. They want mouthpieces for the NFL’s version of football, free of any facts that might tarnish the shield. And that’s not exclusive to NBC. The see-no-evil attitude is standard among all radio and television broadcasts of professional and college games.
And then there’s Colin Kaepernick. There are all kinds of things to be outraged and disappointed about here. Kaepernick started the kneeling protests by some players during the national anthem as a way of bringing attention to police killings of unarmed black youth, as well as other related issues. It’s clear that the NFL clubs banded together to make sure he never got so much as a tryout with another team after he was cut by the San Francisco 49ers. But last month Kaepernick disappointed by settling his civil case against the league and agreeing to a gag order. That was curious since the whole point of his protests and his lawsuit was to speak out and chances are the trial would have yielded some unsavory things about how the NFL does business. It only seems to make sense if Kaepernick got a big payout to keep his mouth shut.
If Kaepernick has fallen in my view, then my new sports hero is DeMarcus Cousins. Cousins plays for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. He called the NCAA “crooked” after college superstar Zion Williamson suffered a minor injury when his Nike shoe fell apart during a game.
Williamson is a “one-and-done” player for college basketball dynasty Duke. He’s only there to bide his time and sharpen his skills until he is drafted (probably #1) by the NBA next year. He’s not the only one in that position. Duke has made a practice of using one- and-done players to great success. But it gives the lie to the whole notion of “student-athletes.” Duke and other teams that abuse this system (the UW basketball program, to its credit, does not) know that these players have no interest in completing college. They are pure athletes, not students at all in any real sense.
In an interview after Williamson’s potentially disastrous faulty shoe incident, Cousins noted that tickets to Duke’s games were going for around $2,500 per seat. “How much does Zion Williamson get?” he asked. “That’s who they’re coming to see. So how much does he get? Actually, who does it go to? How does it benefit any player on that team? But if they were to get $20 and a free meal, they’re this bad kid. They get a bad rep. ‘Uncoachable.’ They’re ‘thugs.’ Whatever the case may be. It’s [expletive].”
We need more former and current college players to speak out that boldly. And, while it looks like Kaepernick sold out in the end, he nonetheless gets credit for sacrificing his career for a more important cause. The same can’t be said for Kareem Hunt or Robert Kraft. Hunt is a star running back who was caught on video beating a young woman. When the video surfaced late last year he was dropped by the Kansas City Chiefs only to be picked up a few months later by the Cleveland Browns. And Kraft has been accused of frequenting a Florida massage parlor linked to human trafficking. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is always talking about “protecting the shield,” meaning looking after the image of the NFL. But what’s he going to do if Kraft, who is the most powerful of all NFL owners, is found guilty? Not much is a fair guess.
Kneel during the national anthem to protest a real problem in society? You’ll never play the game again. Have the audacity to mention the epidemic of head injuries during a broadcast? You’re fired. Get caught on camera beating a woman or participating in human trafficking? We’ll welcome you back behind the shield.
Look, I’m a sports fan. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be following all this stuff so closely or writing about it. But as fans it seems to me that we should be good, informed consumers.
The NFL, the NCAA, the Big Ten, and every pro team and big time college athletic department view us as commodities to be packaged and sold to advertisers. All right. That’s just the way it is. So, let’s not be passive consumers. Let’s take whatever values we hold dear in other parts of our lives and hold our teams accountable for those things. And if they don’t meet those standards, well, the most effective protest is very easy. Just don’t watch. Because there is nothing more valuable to a big-time sports franchise than the eyes of a fan.
