Some of you may have recently read about former University of Southern California standout Reggie Bush having to give up his Heisman Trophy in response to findings that he received "illegal" financial support that went above and beyond his college scholarship. For some reason, someone in the NCAA decided that it should be illegal for athletes who earn millions for coaches and administrators to be fairly compensated for their labor. Rather than attacking Barack Obama for being socialist, perhaps the Tea Party should go after the NCAA, who forces Socialism upon athletes, but allows coaches and administrators to engage in the kind of greedy capitalist excess that would make Wall Street bankers blush.

I don't normally agree with Jason Whitlock, a writer in Kansas City. But Jason was right on the money when he recently wrote a piece explaining that Reggie Bush is effectively the Kunta Kinte of the NCAA. After finding a way to escape the confines of the inexcusably exploitative system of collegiate athletics, he had his athletic foot cut off when he was stripped of his Heisman Trophy. What's so interesting about this system is that none of the NCAA regulators who enforce the system would themselves be interested in working under such nonsensical conditions. The proceeds from their 14-year, $10.8 billion dollar television rights deal are earned on the backs of athletes, many of them poor and black. The money often ends up in the hands of wealthy, white administrators/coaches or students in non revenue-generating sports like tennis and golf, most of whom are white. This is a direct wealth extraction out of the black community. The reason the injustice is allowed by Congress is largely because people figure that black men should be happy with whatever they get.

Walter Byers, the former Executive Director for the NCAA wrote in his book (Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting the Student-Athlete) that college athletes were being harmed in a multitude of ways by the system of collegiate athletics. Byers admitted that he spent nearly three decades taking the organization in the wrong direction, and made it clear that college athletes should be fairly compensated for their labor just like the rest of us. In a world where child actors like Angus T. Jones (Two and a Half Men) earn over $250,000 per episode, why is it not the case that Reggie Bush, who drew more viewers and fans than Angus, can have his reputation destroyed over five or ten thousand dollars, while his coach rakes in over $4 million?

The NCAA is one of the most racist and exploitative systems in American history. There really is no way around it. At some point in the not-so-distant future, some attorney is going to make himself famous by winning a multi-billion dollar verdict against the NCAA for it's anti-trust violations and illegal restrictions on the labor rights of their fellow Americans. That will be the day when the world becomes a little fairer than it is right now, and so-called academic institutions can actually return to the act of educating young people, rather than pretending to do so.


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the Athlete Liberation and Academic Reform Movement (ALARM). To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.