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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Our main story tonight concerns the fact that 1 of America's most sacred annual traditions is upon us. -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 2

00:11

Everything comes down to this. Oh, my goodness!

Speaker 1

00:15

-♪

Speaker 3

00:15

Trying to get the wheels in motion. Oh, yeah!

Speaker 2

00:19

Bring the noise. It goes! Yeah!

Speaker 2

00:23

As good as it gets. March is on. Wow!

Speaker 1

00:30

Holy shit! Yes, March is on. Fuck you, February!

Speaker 1

00:35

And April, I'll see you in hell. It's March o'clock, assholes! -♪ March o'clock, assholes! -♪ Oh, yeah!

Speaker 1

00:41

The first round... The first round of March Madness, the year's biggest college tournament, starts on Tuesday, and the entire nation will be watching, which means big, big money.

Speaker 4

00:53

March Madness now brings in over a billion dollars in TV ad revenue.

Speaker 1

00:57

A billion dollars. That's more than the Super Bowl. It's almost more than the entire NFL postseason combined.

Speaker 1

01:04

And that might seem like a lot, until you consider the number of ads they managed to pack in.

Speaker 5

01:10

Sponsored by... Lexus. AT&T at the half is presented by AT&T.

Speaker 6

01:16

Our game is brought to you in HDTV by HP. Coke 0 presents real fans of NCAA March Madness.

Speaker 1

01:24

Pretty soon, the only thing left to sponsor will be the sponsorships themselves. And now, Pepsi presents a Geico look at Nabisco's Toyota moment of the game, brought to you by Taco Bell. Because...

Speaker 1

01:36

Because you should know, everything about this tournament is branded. Even the famous moment where players cut down the net.

Speaker 6

01:45

Werner Ladder proud to donate to the general scholarship fund of every school in this year's Final 4. Werner, the official ladder of the NCAA Basketball Championships.

Speaker 1

01:56

Are you kidding me? A Werner ladder? Look, as a ladder enthusiast, I can tell you right now, Werner's a pure shit.

Speaker 1

02:04

Unless you want a broken back, in which case, by all means, go with Werner. But you'd be better off slapping on a pair of stilts and trying to balance on a yoga ball. I'm a DeWalts man, of course. I'm not a ladder idiot.

Speaker 1

02:17

Seriously. There is nothing inherently wrong with a sporting tournament making huge amounts of money, but there is something slightly troubling about a billion-dollar sports enterprise where the athletes are not paid a penny, because they aren't. And as the head of the NCAA, Mark Emmett, will tell you, they don't want that to change.

Speaker 7

02:35

There's not even a salary to debate. They're not employees, they're students. The fact is, they're not employees, they're student-athletes.

Speaker 7

02:41

I can't say often enough, obviously, that student-athletes are students. They're not employees.

Speaker 1

02:48

The only other people who say they're not employees that much are people who run illegal sweatshops out of their basements. They're not employees. It's a summer camp where they make the same T-shirt over and over again, thousands of times.

Speaker 1

03:01

It's summer fun year-round. And the problem is, when you don't pay people, there are consequences. 1 of the players who climbed the sponsored ladder last year was Shabazz Napier, who happened to let slip a startling fact after 1 of the games.

Speaker 8

03:15

You know, sometimes, like I said, there's hungry nights where I'm not able to eat, and I still gotta play up to my capabilities. They're all hungry nights that I go to bed and I'm starving.

Speaker 1

03:26

That's insane. Hunger games should take place annually in a dystopian future. Not every march sponsored by Coca-Cola on CBS.

Speaker 1

03:35

The NCAA insists that student athletes cannot be paid because they're amateurs. And though they've slightly softened their rules on food, among other things, in the last year, they still exercise a ridiculous amount of control over players.

Speaker 9

03:48

Before they're allowed to compete, athletes have to sign this form saying that they are amateurs. They give up any compensation for playing and promise to abide by all the rules in this 440-page manual.

Speaker 1

04:02

A 400-odd-page manual of rules. The only other thing that has that many finicky little rules would be a sex party at Wes Anderson's house. -♪ ♪ -♪ Guests are required to wear lingerie of only a pre-war Andalusian vintage.

Speaker 1

04:17

Falacio may only be accompanied by music from the Kinks and early Cat Stevens, and condoms shall be found nestled inside a small diorama of the sinking of the Lusitania. Now, everybody, f***. -♪ ♪ -And... And look, the NCAA rulebook is not just for show, as a New Mexico player discovered a few years back.

Speaker 10

04:38

A discount on a hotel ballroom is the impermissible benefit and NCAA minor violation that caused Jamal Fenton to be suspended.

Speaker 1

04:45

Yes, that's right. He was suspended for unwittingly receiving a $250 discount on a ballroom for his 21st birthday party. And by the way, a discounted ballroom?

Speaker 1

04:55

Are we absolutely sure he was turning 21 and not celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary with his lovely wife, Marion, because that would make more sense. But the point is, some rule enforcements go from the petty to the downright heartless.

Speaker 11

05:10

The late Rick Majerus, when he was at Utah, had 1 of his players who lost 1 of his parents. And, he took him to lunch before putting him on a plane to send him home. And the NCAA said that was a violation.

Speaker 11

05:27

Because you can't give an athlete something you don't give another student.

Speaker 1

05:31

Oh, sure, I get that. If you show 1 player basic human decency, you have to show everyone basic human decency. Nobody wants that.

Speaker 1

05:40

And to be fair, to be fair here, the NCAA claim that while student athletes are not being paid, they are being compensated with something incredibly valuable.

Speaker 7

05:50

We provide them with remarkable opportunities to get an education at the finest universities on Earth, that's American universities and colleges.

Speaker 1

05:58

Yes, athletes are paid in an education, the only currency more difficult to spend than Bitcoin. And, look, a four-year education is undeniably valuable, assuming that, 1, you don't get hurt and lose your scholarship, which can happen, and, 2, that you have time to study. Because if you're a student athlete playing top-level basketball or football, that can be difficult.

Speaker 1

06:21

Listen to current NFL player Richard Sherman reminisce about his college days.

Speaker 12

06:25

You wake up in the morning, you have weights at this time. Then after weights, you go to class. And after class, you go, you go, maybe, try to grab you a quick bite to eat.

Speaker 12

06:33

Then after you get your quick bite to eat, you go straight to meetings. And after meetings, you got practice. And after practice, you got to try to get all the work done you had throughout the day. I would love for a regular student to have a student athlete's schedule during the season for just 1 quarter or 1 semester and show me how you balance that.

Speaker 1

06:52

He's right. Paying top college athletes with an education is sort of like telling a full-time nurse, there's no salary for this job, we're just gonna be giving you free trumpet lessons, which you'll be too busy to do, but if you don't learn to play the trumpet, you're fired. Does that sound fair?

Speaker 1

07:06

I think that sounds fair. And the education athletes do get is sometimes insultingly watered down. Last year, an investigation revealed that the University of North Carolina had for years held fraudulent so-called paper classes that boosted athletes' grades.

Speaker 13

07:22

Football and basketball players, they would be enrolled, steered to and enrolled in a paper class in African-American Studies. So we could have a football player who in the spring might have a GPA of 1.4, but in the summertime we put him in 3 paper classes and we get A, A, A-, and lo and behold, he's academically eligible to play football in the fall. And that's how the system worked.

Speaker 1

07:47

Okay, let's not pretend there isn't something offensive about an African-American studies course being an easy major at that school. Here, just take this class investigating the social, political, and cultural complexities inherent to the black American experience. It'll be a fucking breeze!

Speaker 1

08:02

Phone it in! Phone the thing in! -♪ ♪ -() And it gets worse. It gets worse because many student athletes at UNC also left with an unusual language credit.

Speaker 3

08:13

What language did you study? Swahili. Swahili?

Speaker 3

08:18

Yes. Has that come in handy since you graduated?

Speaker 14

08:22

No. Not at all.

Speaker 3

08:22

What language did you take? I took Swahili. -"Swahili?" -"Yes." Do you speak Swahili a little bit?

Speaker 3

08:29

As of right now, no. -$1,000,000. Encouraging

Speaker 1

08:32

black student-athletes to take bullshit Swahili courses is the kind of institutional prejudice which might well turn up in 1 of their African-American studies courses. So, let's recap. Student athletes don't get paid and sometimes don't even get educated.

Speaker 1

08:47

But what they do get is the chance to learn from coaches who will take them under their wing and provide them with life lessons and valuable guidance. I'll

Speaker 3

08:56

kill you,

Speaker 15

08:57

son of

Speaker 1

08:57

a bitch! You're a

Speaker 3

08:59

fucking bastard! Fuck

Speaker 6

09:03

you, and

Speaker 1

09:03

fuck me, and fuck everybody. That is fucking bullshit. Now, now that, that is inspirational.

Speaker 1

09:12

Someone should really put that on a cat poster. And while this mistreatment is happening, it's a good poster.

Speaker 16

09:21

Whilst this, Lift your spirits.

Speaker 1

09:23

Whilst this mistreatment is happening, huge money is being made. And not just while they're students, because sometimes the NCAA makes money off players years afterwards. Case in point, a few years ago, the NCAA proudly licensed this video game, a game whose selling point was authenticity.

Speaker 17

09:40

Crowd, the noise, the cheerleaders.

Speaker 1

09:42

-♪ Hey hey hey... ♪ -♪ Hey hey hey... ♪

Speaker 12

09:43

The intensity of the game, the passion of the game.

Speaker 1

09:46

-♪

Speaker 2

09:46

Hey hey hey... ♪ -♪ Hey hey hey...

Speaker 1

09:46

♪

Speaker 18

09:47

It's all about authenticity. The level

Speaker 15

09:50

of authenticity that we go to is extremely deep.

Speaker 1

09:54

To be honest, I thought the only people that obsessed with how authentic something was like that were people from San Diego talking about Mexican food. I get it, Kendall, but there are avocados everywhere now, okay? We've all got them now.

Speaker 1

10:08

In fact, that game was so authentic, it created a bit of an awkward moment for Ed O'Bannon, a former UCLA star player, who currently works at a car dealership in Las Vegas.

Speaker 14

10:19

I was with a friend and he said that his son had a video game with me in it. Hey, you want to go and check it out? You know, so, yeah, of course, left handed height, weight, skin color, everything.

Speaker 14

10:31

Ball hit it. It was yeah,

Speaker 1

10:32

it was

Speaker 14

10:32

it was me for sure.

Speaker 2

10:34

I'm thinking to myself, wow, they got me on the video game. And while this kid was playing, he almost whispers it in my ear, like, you know, the crazy thing about this is that you didn't get paid.

Speaker 1

10:46

Okay. First of all, I don't know who that kid was, but that's a dick move.

Speaker 16

10:52

Hey, Ed. Ed. Pretty crazy how you got nothing for this, right, Ed?

Speaker 1

10:58

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember about you not getting any money

Speaker 16

11:02

for this, Ed? Ed? Pretty annoying, right, Ed?

Speaker 16

11:06

Are you annoyed, Ed? Are you annoyed right now, Ed? Is it annoying to you, Ed?

Speaker 1

11:13

They actually... They actually don't make that game anymore, in part because Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA over their rules on compensating athletes and won. The NCAA is currently appealing that decision, which would allow players to be paid, partly because, as they often claim, schools could barely afford it.

Speaker 7

11:29

14 schools out of the 1,100 last year actually had positive cash flow out of intercollegiate athletics. It's anything but a money-making proposition for universities and colleges.

Speaker 1

11:40

Exactly. We have sports for the same reason Mariah Carey has an acting career. God knows it's not to make a profit. It's for the love of the game.

Speaker 1

11:48

Okay? That's the principle. Now, he's not wrong that many departments barely break even, although that's a little misleading, because for the schools that generate most of the money, those losses are sometimes by design.

Speaker 6

12:01

Profits are what's left when you account for expenses. They can come up with an awful lot of expenses, an awful lot of salaries. They find a ton of ways to spend a ton of money.

Speaker 1

12:15

That's true. In keeping with their non-profit status, some schools spend money to make it look like they're not making too much money. It's like when your rich friend buys diesel jeans that already have holes in them.

Speaker 1

12:25

Come on, Brayden, we all know that you can afford to have warm knees. You're not fooling anyone, B. -... And when rich schools do this to move money around, not-so-rich schools end up getting into an arms race to compete.

Speaker 1

12:40

It's 1 of the reasons why the 10 largest football stadiums in the country belong to colleges. In fact, the University of Michigan has claimed that on game days, their stadium is the fourth largest city in the state of Michigan. And incidentally, also the 1 with the fewest rusted-out auto plants now run by raccoons. So, you know...

Speaker 1

12:58

-...they're doing their best. -...but... But stadiums are just the beginning. Alabama made an MTV Cribb-style video showing off their ludicrously opulent football facilities.

Speaker 15

13:09

1 of the really best features, I think, of the locker room is the hydrotherapy area. We have in there a hot tub and a cold tub. And I really, I use the term tub, but really, they're pools.

Speaker 1

13:20

Okay, I never thought I'd say this, but Alabama, stop showing off your ostentatious wealth, okay? And... And the crazy thing is, It is not just buildings that schools spend money on.

Speaker 6

13:34

Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen was just given a raise, pushing his salary to 4000000 dollars a year.

Speaker 3

13:40

7000000 dollars a year for the next 8 years. That's Alabama coach Nick Saban's New Deal.

Speaker 5

13:46

University of Kentucky announced a $52 million, seven-year contract extension with head basketball coach John Calipari.

Speaker 1

13:53

Now, before you get too shocked, remember, America has a long, proud history of paying aging white men unconscionable amounts of money for screaming at people. So, there's precedence. I'm saying there's precedent there.

Speaker 1

14:05

But all this makes it even harder to swallow when some coaches, like Clemson's Darbo Swinney, a man who makes over 3000000 dollars a year, insists that his players not get paid.

Speaker 17

14:16

As far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, I swear you'd lose me. I'll go do something else because, you know, there's enough entitlement in this world as it is.

Speaker 1

14:28

Oh. Now, wait, wait, wait. If you find that infuriating, you might like to know that Darbo Swinney is an anagram for Soybean Wind. Which...

Speaker 1

14:39

Which I think is fitting, because he seems as pleasant as an edamame fart. And the fact, and it's a fact, that his name is an anagram for soybean wind. It's not relevant to this discussion, but I thought it was worth mentioning because it feels like something he'd be annoyed by and would not want people to know on a wide basis. Hashtag soybean wind.

Speaker 1

15:00

And, by the way... -...the larger point is... -...the larger point is... Sweeney has trademarked his name for use on shirts because he's allowed to do that.

Speaker 1

15:09

The NCAA manual explicitly states, coaches are free to pursue endorsement or consultation contracts. And players are acutely aware of this discrepancy. Here's former University of Michigan basketball star Jalen Rose.

Speaker 19

15:22

The revenue stream for coaches, people underestimate. You get paid from school, you get paid from camps, you get paid from apparel company, have a TV deal, you have your radio show. That's 5 revenue streams for the coach.

Speaker 19

15:35

So when I come into practice, and I miss a couple of shots, and I dribble it off my foot, and coach says, Jalen, what's going on with you? What's going on with me? My mother's light's about to get cut off. That's my problem.

Speaker 1

15:46

That makes sense. Sometimes it must be tough to focus on your lights out shooting when your mother's lights are literally going out. And if you're thinking, well, they'll all get rich when they become professional athletes, that's true.

Speaker 1

15:56

In a fractional number of cases. Because less than 2 percent of college basketball and football players go pro. So if you're an athlete who dreams of being a Viking or a wizard, you probably have about the same chance of becoming an actual Viking or an actual wizard. And...

Speaker 1

16:14

And all of this assumes that they manage to stay healthy, because if they get injured, a whole host of other problems can emerge. Fun fact, the very first executive director of the NCAA stated that he crafted the term student athlete in the 1950s explicitly to avoid workers' comp for injured athletes. And 60 years later, that term is still working.

Speaker 18

16:37

Kyle Hardrick was so good that Oklahoma offered him a basketball scholarship in ninth grade. But after a knee injury during practice his freshman year, he lost his scholarship. And with medical bills piling up, he couldn't afford to stay in school.

Speaker 4

16:52

If it was workman's comp, my son would have been taken care of for the rest of his life. He would have been able to finish his college.

Speaker 1

17:00

To be fair, he was promised an education, and he got 1. A first-class education in how little schools sometimes give a shit about their student-athletes. This whole system seems fundamentally flawed.

Speaker 1

17:12

And yet, the NCAA constantly insists there is no way athletes can be paid even a nominal amount, because...

Speaker 7

17:20

The notion of converting a student to a paid employee is something that is utterly antithetical to the whole principle of intercollegiate athletics. It completely changes the entire notion of what college sports is all about.

Speaker 1

17:35

You know what? I think you might be right. If college sports is all about exploiting people, then yes, paying athletes would absolutely change the entire notion of what college sports are all about.

Speaker 1

17:46

And look, no 1 is saying... That they need to be paid millions, or hundreds of thousands, or the same amount, or even that every school needs to pay every athlete. But to pay everyone 0, when the kid selling their jersey at the campus bookstore gets $10 an hour seems a little bit strange. And if it truly is all about the romance of amateurism, that's fine.

Speaker 1

18:09

Give up the sponsorships and the TV deals, stop paying the coaches, and have teams run by an asthmatic anthropology professor with a whistle. But, if you're gonna change nothing, at least be honest about the business you're engaged in. Feel free to bring back your video games, but in the spirit of authenticity that seems to matter so much to you, make them a little more accurate.

Speaker 3

18:34

Rated E for exploitative.

Speaker 1

18:35

-♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 5

18:36

NEW YORKESE CLASSIC PLAYING ♪ New from LWT Sports. March 7th, 2015. The most authentic college basketball game of all time.

Speaker 5

18:44

Because any game can give you the excitement of college athletics, but that's only about 2% of your week. For the first time, you'll get to experience the other 98%.

Speaker 3

18:53

What are you, a f***ing idiot? I'm gonna f***ing kill you! You passed like a f***ing pussy!

Speaker 5

18:58

You'll get to enjoy all the fun of being screamed at by a middle-aged millionaire, while living in constant fear of losing your scholarship, be it from a career-ending injury, accidentally accepting a free lunch when you're hungry, or directly profiting in any way from the value of your work, because making money's utterly antithetical to the whole principle of collegiate athletics. But don't take it from us. Take it from the unwilling star of EA's NCAA Basketball 09, Ed O'Bannon.

Speaker 14

19:25

This game is every bit as f**ked up as a real thing.

Speaker 5

19:28

You get to create your own player and enjoy an authentic student-athlete experience Because our game puts just as much emphasis on an education as a real NCAA Division I school does. Are you ready for your Swahili exam? Congratulations, student.

Speaker 5

19:43

You speak Swahili. Now, back to the gym. It's the most authentic college game of all time, as another unpaid star of NCAA Basketball 09, Jalen Rose, will attest.

Speaker 19

19:54

Yeah, that's pretty much what it's like.

Speaker 5

19:56

And this year, if you play LWT's NCAA March Sadness, you can play in 2 new modes. Coach mode, which consists mostly of screaming at 18-year-olds. Assholes!

Speaker 5

20:08

Assholes!

Speaker 3

20:09

I'm gonna kill all of you entitled assholes!

Speaker 5

20:12

Or you can choose school administrator mode, where your only job is figuring out how to somehow remain a non-profit. You want a stadium across from your stadium? How about a rocket ship?

Speaker 5

20:23

But be careful, because if you use a penny of that money to pay your players, game over. The point is, No matter which mode

Speaker 1

20:45

you