What’s the big deal?
“Awful. Terrible,” was the reaction of Oklahoma University athletic director Joe Castiglione to CBS Sports’ decision to start using player names in its college fantasy games. Seriously? These fantasy games already exist and have for a while, and CBS isn’t the first provider to name the players. I played in a league last season in which I picked up Dennis Dixon, not Oregon QBs. (It didn’t ultimately help.)
Is it awful that the 12 SEC football coaches average $1.85 million in salary? Is it terrible that Florida basketball frontman Billy Donovan made more than half a million dollars from athletic shoe and apparel guarantees in the 2006-07 season? And this despite the fact that the large majority of athletic departments around the country lose far more money than they bring in.
“The NCAA exists to protect the integrity of its rules and to protect student-athletes from being exploited,” Amy Perko, executive director of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, told The Chronicle of Higher Education in the wake of CBS’ announcement. “It has a responsibility to make sure that its rules are followed for the benefit of the individual athletes.”
OK, I understand that there’s a big difference between the players and the coaches in the college games, but are the athletes really getting exploited by having their names included in fantasy leagues? No doubt, a fantasy host that names its players is bound to see more traffic than if it merely stuck with generic titles. That increased traffic improves advertising revenues. By extension, then, a fantasy site must be profiting from using the names of amateur college athletes.
So the Knight Commission — and, theoretically, the NCAA — is worried about players being exploited for financial gain. If that’s the case, tell me why when I click into the Clemson University apparel page in the shop on the NCAA’s own website, I’m met with jersey No. 28. That happens to be the number of C.J. Spiller, one of Clemson’s top two running backs and arguably its strongest NFL prospect and most recognizable player. Does that somehow fall outside of the realm of exploitation?
Oh, but the player’s name isn’t mentioned. Right. And I’m sure No. 28 was just randomly generated when I clicked to the page.
My point here is this: College sports have been big business for a long time. Multi-million dollar bowl games decide the final rankings during football season. CBS is in the middle of paying the NCAA $11 billion for the right to air its men’s basketball tournament at the end of every season. Millions more get thrown around for regular-season contests. Video games are released annually with every Division I school and the real numbers of the players in each team’s starting lineup.
To take specific issue with a few fantasy providers using the names of college players and bringing in a bit of ad revenue is to ignore much larger economic issues and threats to amateurism that face college athletics and have actually helped shape them into the games we watch today. (Do you really think Division I football doesn’t hold a playoff because it would interfere with final exams?)
The NCAA has yet to really challenge the now-emphasized practice of naming college players in fantasy games, but it still could. The governing body and its constituents, however, would be much better served by attention being turned elsewhere.
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