MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — With his latest stance on beginning the college football season, Mark Emmert just may have drawn a dangerous line in the sand.
Whether he wanted to or not.
Other than the obvious factors, the NCAA does not recognize a difference between a student-athlete who thrives on team chemistry and a regular college student who simply studies chemistry.
That has been the organization’s stance for generations and it has created a super-sized rule book with the idea of making sure a school’s star quarterback benefits little more from the college experience than most regular students.
Emmert doubled-down on that sentiment with this statement from an interview on Friday:
“If you don’t have students on campus, you don’t have student-athletes on campus,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it has to be up and running in the full normal model, but you’ve got to treat the health and well-being of the athletes at least as much as the regular students. So if a school doesn’t reopen, then they’re not going to be playing sports. It’s really that simple.”
On the surface, Emmert’s stance makes total sense in terms of students’ safety, not to mention the safety of the general public.
But, no, it’s not really that simple.
We may not have a clear picture right now as to how a school like WVU can reopen its campus in the fall.
We know for sure, though, what WVU’s athletic budget would look like without a college football season.
The salary cuts announced last week by WVU athletic director Shane Lyons are expected to last for one fiscal year, ending on June 30, 2021.
“It could certainly go longer if there is no football season,” he said.
And likely much go much deeper if they were to be extended for a second fiscal year.
The blowback from Division I football schools on any sort of no-students, no-football stance could be tremendous around the country.
We’re not only talking the potential loss of millions of dollars for athletic departments, but also the loss of thousands of jobs around every campus.
All of that is basically understood, but what you could possibly see later this summer — especially from states and universities that are slow to reopen — is a major push to get football players back on campus come hell or high water.
And that, my friends, would be the uncovering of the final layer of the NCAA’s misconception that student-athletes are simply regular college students who also just happen to play sports.
This isn’t to throw WVU under the bus. All things considered, WVU is fortunate to be in a state that has fared better than most during this pandemic.
Any decisions made by the school to reopen its campus would be viewed as well-calculated.
That may not hold true for schools in New York, New Jersey, California and other states that are just as dependent on college football income as WVU is.
If doors are opened prematurely just to get football players back on campus, then you seriously can’t hold on to this stance that they are simply student-athletes any longer.
If the future of thousands of jobs around our nation’s campuses are so connected into playing college football, then these kids can no longer be defined as amateurs.
They are employees, pure and simple.
They don’t have to be defined as professionals. The star college quarterback doesn’t have to be paid like Tom Brady.
It’s simply time for the NCAA and college presidents around the country to give up this fallacy that college athletes are students first.
Some are. Maybe most of them are, and true, most of the college athletes out there aren’t involved in a sport that generates millions.
For the ones who do help generate those funds, maybe it’s time the NCAA either erase that line in the sand it has created or cross it.
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