Before March was even given the chance to become maddening, Auburn University’s Varez Ward came under FBI interrogation because of a suspected point-shaving scandal during at least two of the season’s games. This accusation is something of a frequent issue in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
Though the association’s mission is to protect the well being of student-athletes, and the very integrity of intercollegiate sports, any athlete, bookie or college ball fanatic could say that these two sub-points constantly undercut one another in the increasingly unjust world of college ball.
In case you are not an athlete, bookie or fan, point-shaving is a method of game fixing to ensure the final score is of a predetermined outcome. Typically, an individual unaffiliated with either team approaches a star player on the “favorite” team. Depending on the individual’s request, this player could seize the moment to dribble out of bounds, allow an opponent to steal the ball or take part in other various, undetectable stunts.
The pace of the game is only partially responsible for the frequency of these scandals. The psychologically manipulative techniques the individual (often bookie) uses when addressing NCAA athletes are also to blame. Every scandal begins with the star athlete of the “favorite” team being targeted and offered a large sum of money: something as foreign to a college athlete as a 4.0 GPA.
Many student athletes have known nothing but poverty in their lives. Because the NCAA is legally permitted to offer only a (nearly) free education and the glamour of being a student athlete, athletes often accept the bribe. Since these young athletes are rarely asked to throw the game because of the points bracket, they may feel they are not letting their team down.
If every team with a player accused of point-shaving would just talk to the press, I am willing to bet their mantra would be something along the lines of feeling let down. Everybody feels let down, except for maybe the bookie that turned the bribe into an exorbitant amount of money.
This sort of behavior should not be tolerated. And it wouldn’t, if these student athletes were paid for their work.
An obvious first reason for this call to action should be a look at historical basketball scandals in the NCAA. Similar scandals have occurred like clockwork through most of collegiate basketball history.
Many point-shaving incidents began in the 1950s and ’60s, only four decades after the NCAA’s founding in 1906. From the Boston College incident, lasting nine games in 1978–79, to the Arizona State scandal of 1994 that ended with a one-year-and-one-day prison sentence of player Steven Smith.
Even Chris Webber has had his share of NCAA allegations—such as a money laundering scandal that boiled over in 1996. One of the Bay Area’s most prominent bookies has a tall tale to share: In Webber’s time at the University of Michigan, “he was talking to his buddy on the street trying to borrow $20 for a pizza and some gas, when they look up and see his jersey on sale at the school store for 70 bucks. It’s not a sport as much as it is business.”
This big business has overtaken the NCAA, and again the university system has mis-distributed the wealth.
A recent study titled “The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sports” shows that 85 percent of student athletes live under the poverty line, while their average “value” is anywhere between $120,048 and $265,027. Additionally, the coaches of teams that competed in 2010’s March Madness raked in salaries of $1.4 million.
The argument remains that these athletes are receiving an education as their payment: “True,” the bookie continues. “You are, but then the question becomes, how much is an education worth?”
As a bachelor’s degree becomes more and more meaningless, it is in everybody’s favor to hide these rhetorical questions from our athletes, even on the most egoist of levels, because to many, they bring school spirit and a source of entertainment.
Since being an NCAA athlete is not a requirement for an NBA draft, these students may practice their ability to make independent rational decisions at the expense of, well, everybody else.
In fact, if some sort of payment was initiated for NCAA athletes, episodes like the recent NBA lockout may cease to exist. As it stands, the NBA is the Emerald City to some of these college athletes.
After years of injustice, or what historian Taylor Branch has called “The Plantation,” athletes may perhaps feel, with NBA entry, that they’ve arrived—the moment when they can escape poverty and assist in their family’s finances as well.
To find salary caps and luxury taxes awaiting them at the gates could make anybody’s morale plummet. Not only in the NCAA, but also in the industry behind basketball itself.
Breaking the monotonous cycle of scandals and lockouts could be as easy as bringing these transactions to the other side of the table for these student athletes.