(ThyBlackMan.com) Bob Stoops, the well-paid coach of the University of Oklahoma football team, thinks that it’s OK for his players to be broke and hungry. Stoops, who just signed a nice contract extension of nearly $40 million over eight years, expects that his players and their families should be happy to get whatever they receive.
When asked about his struggling players, Stoops said that being hungry is part of the game.
“I tell my guys all the time,” Stoops said, “you’re not the first one to spend a Sunday hungry without any money.”
Stoops then went on to explain to his athletes why being broke is simply a figment of their imaginations. He seems to think that they are being well taken care of in exchange for playing a sport that has them working over 60 hours a week, in a state of perpetual exhaustion, and also might leave them paralyzed at any moment without adequate health insurance.
“You know what school would cost here for non-state guy? Over $200,000 for room, board and everything else,” Bob Stoops said. “That’s a lot of money. Ask the kids who have to pay it back over 10-15 years with student loans. You
get room and board, and we’ll give you the best nutritionist, the best strength coach to develop you, the best tutors to help you academically, and coaches to teach you and help you develop. How much do you think it would cost to hire a personal trainer and tutor for 4-5 years?
“I don’t get why people say these guys don’t get paid. It’s simple, they are paid quite often, quite a bit and quite handsomely.”
Digging an even deeper hole for himself, Stoops tried to further explain his ill-timed remarks. Obtaining labor rights for collegiate athletes has become the civil rights movement of the 21st century, and Stoops is now positioning himself as the wealthy plantation owner who sees nothing wrong with indentured servitude. According to Stoops, he made the same sacrifices that his players made, and as massa once told the slaves, “You’ll get your rewards in the by -and-by (aka the afterlife).”
“Well, when I was 18 or 19, I wasn’t making this. Right? Because I played football at Iowa is why I’m here,” Stoops said. “I don’t think they’d have hired me if I didn’t have a football background. I don’t think I’d have had the career I’ve had without my football background at Iowa. And I didn’t have any money. But I got my Pell Grant money, like these guys do today.
“One of my players that’s 19 right now, he might be making $10 million when he’s 51. I didn’t just pop out of somewhere and they started paying me this. It’s because of my background at Iowa. My players will have the same opportunity. And what they do get is fact, and it’s significant.”
Where should I begin to explain just how remarkably ignorant, racist, classist and insensitive these comments happen to be? I just happened to speak to this issue this morning with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Attny Barbara Arnwine (Executive Director of Committee for Civil Rights Under Law) and sports commentator Dave Zirin, all of whom see the NCAA as an illegal cartel that is allowed to operate in a manner that would be disallowed in nearly any other industry in America. Politicians look the other way, largely because they are bribed with free tickets from their alma maters and taken care of in ways that would be illegal if they were actually on the field doing the work.
When individuals are put into a situation where they have no labor rights, abuses like these often occur, whether you’re talking about a five-year old working in a Chinese sweatshop or a young college student who can’t buy groceries for himself or his family back home. Men like Stoops are convinced that they are somehow the benevolent overseers of young men who should be happy to receive what they get, no differently from that five year old who wouldn’t have anything had the sweatshop not chosen to hire him.
Bob Stoops is certainly right that players are being compensated. But there is a big difference between being paid and being paid FAIRLY. While Bob Stoops seems to believe that players should be happy to receive their scholarships instead of the cash that many of them might need for the families they’ve left behind, I doubt that Stoops would give up his $40 million dollar contract in exchange for free tuition. The fact that athletes are not given the option of receiving all of these “valuable services” in cash is indicative of the fact that the university sees this spending as a mere investment in the athletic mules that they bring to campus to help them secure their millions.
Another interesting dimension to NCAA exploitation is the way the rules are so carefully designed to disallow athletes from securing any form of personal income, even if they are getting it outside the university. It’s one thing for me to say, “I’m not going to pay you,” and another thing for me to say, “No one else can pay you either.” It reminds me of the jealous boyfriend who says, “I don’t want you and I had better not see you with another man.” Many of the NCAA’s arguments for not compensating athletes stem from claims that they can’t afford to do so. If that’s the case, then why won’t they allow someone else to pay the athletes instead?
Bob Stoops might also want to realize that there is a huge racial undertone to his remarks. Sure, a small percentage of his players will get the chance to become head coaches after they graduate, but most of them will not, especially those who are black. The NCAA finds that African American athletes make for wonderful harvests of exploitation, but the league tends to spit them out like $5 prostitutes once they are done playing on the field. Most of the young athletes I’ve worked with over the last 20 years on major college campuses were never given the chance to coach anything other than their local Peewee league football team.
Here’s the deal: Athletes deserve labor rights. Part of the reason that the NCAA can pay Bob Stoops so many millions of dollars is because they not only strip athletes of their revenues earned on the field, they also annihilate their ability to earn money off the field. So, if a player wants to use his own name and likeness to go down the street to do commercials for a local car dealership, the NCAA says that he can’t do that. In fact, a wrestler with the University of Minnesota had his scholarship revoked for performing a hip-hop song on Youtube using his own name. The NCAA’s response? Why would you think that you own your own name? We own your name and we own YOUR LIFE.
Most of us have never watched an NCAA football game to see the coach. We only want to see the players, and they are the reasons that the NCAA can charge over a million dollars for a 30-second commercial spot. So, the idea that we’ve allowed our thinking to be morphed into believing that it should be illegal for an athlete to get paid for his labor is nothing other than beautiful brainwashing on behalf of the NCAA. Some think that coaches who pay athletes under the table are unethical, when in fact, the opposite is true: These individuals are actually the most ethical people in college sports, for they understand the simple idea of individuals being compensated in a manner that is consistent with their value.
Bob Stoops and his millionaire cronies might be wise to take time and realize that many of his players come from abject poverty. They have mothers at home in dangerous housing projects with bills stacked to the ceiling, and siblings being shot in the streets because they can’t find a place to live. Most of them will never make it to the NFL or any other massive payday that people believe they are going to receive, and most of them barely have time to study. They shouldn’t have to wait 20 years for their big payday to come, since they are earning billions for their universities right now. When most of us generate that kind of money, we expect a fair piece of the pie.
Stoops should be ashamed of his ignorant remarks, and his players should go on strike. Perhaps if college athletes were convinced to take a day or two off work, then their overseers might realize that they and their families deserve to eat too. Athletes should assume the power and occupy collegiate athletics.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.