4

The Schools (And Coaches) Make Obscene Money, While The Athletes Get Nothing

Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images

"Student-athlete" is a term the NCAA crafted in the '50s to avoid paying their athletes, well, anything. After all, they're just students, not employees who make obscene amounts of cash for their bosses or anything. Just silly little kids playing a silly little game for a school, not a business. With that in mind, let's look at the jaw-dropping amounts of cash these schools are raking in.

As our football player source explains, "The NCAA basketball playoffs generated $1.15 billion in ad revenue. CBS has an $11 billion, 14-year deal that pays the NCAA about $740 million per year. ESPN will probably pay about $470 million each year for the right to broadcast the college football playoffs." The people playing these games, meanwhile, will only leave the game richer if they find a dime in the urinal.

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So where does the money go? Mostly it goes to athletic upkeep, and paying the coaches so goddamn much. There are no student-coaches -- these guys are full-blown employees, and make incredible money bossing around their sweaty, unpaid interns all day. Our football source says, "Many coaches pull in seven-figure salaries, and many more pull in six figures." In fact, almost 40 NCAA men's basketball gurus (and over 70 college football coaches) rake in at least a million. The athletes, meanwhile, may walk home with zero of these dollars, but they earned something much more important (at least in the NCAA's eyes) ... integrity. After all, we wouldn't want the money to corrupt the children, would we?

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3

Students Can't Earn Money Or Goods On The Side, Unless It Has Nothing To Do With Athletics

Electronic Arts

Not only must student-athletes play for free, they can't earn money from autographs, endorsements, or video game likenesses either (and the NCAA is going to legal war to ensure it stays that way). If that's not enough, student-athletes also can't receive anything -- and we mean anything -- even remotely related to being a student-athlete unless they pay for it. With the money they don't have, mind you.

Electronic Arts

As our football source recalls, "I once worked for my school's football camp by helping and evaluating high school players' technique and athleticism. Our program, kindly enough, paid all the players who worked." Guess what? That's against the rules! It involves sporting and school, so he wasn't allowed a single rusted penny of compensation. "We could have been severely punished," he adds, "but instead, the NCAA only made the players return all the money they had earned."

Mauricio Pastor/Wiki Commons

2

If Players Get Hurt, They're On Their Own (And Absolutely Screwed)

Eckhard Pecher / Wiki Commons

Sure, injuries are part of the game -- even Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights can't magically give you an indestructible body. You've got your concussions: Roughly 5 percent of college football players rattle their thought-goo at least once a season ... and that's just what's reported. Players and staff dismiss up to 26 times as many concussions so they can continue playing. And then you've got your broken bones, muscle tears, and busted ribs. Well, even the injuries that won't make you forget your last name can still make the "student" part of "student-athlete" way more difficult than it already is (try studying for your physics final while barely able to move or breathe). And if you get hurt, good luck getting anyone in the school or NCAA to give a shit about you.

1

Drug Testing Is An Arbitrary Joke

Drug Enforcement Administration

Despite a "banned list" lumping Ritalin, marijuana, and caffeine together with cocaine, heroin, and steroids, the NCAA doesn't actually give a fuck about drugs. If a pill, needle, or even snort (cocaine is shockingly prevalent, especially in lacrosse) makes the athlete better and grows that big pile of money the league spends all day gawking lovingly at, then the league is totally willing to look the other way.

Zxc/Wiki Commons

Of course, testing still happens, since the NCAA has to pretend they care about the integrity of the game. But they don't do the testing -- the schools are responsible for that. This results in a system that is completely arbitrary, with rules changing from school to school because the NCAA is too damn apathetic to write a hard, consistent policy and make sure everybody enforces it.

In our track source's case, somebody got caught with marijuana, "so the entire team was subjected to a drug test the next day." This came after a weekend of partying, so many weren't clean at all. Luckily, virtually everyone passed their pot quiz, because the team had, "a single athletic trainer watching over the entire process, and he was too busy collecting samples to watch how they were dispersed. So many of us weren't found out at all." Even the few busted students got off scot-free because "there was actually no drug code at all for our team." So nobody got in trouble, nobody was going to get in trouble, and the whole thing was just an exercise in bullshitting an organization that only cares about drugs when it wins them PR points.

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This collective emoji shrug goes triple for steroids. Right now, the current rate for positive tests is just a tick above zero. So why does every other athlete look like the Hulk's big brother? Simply put, it's because their school likely doesn't test for steroids. Or, if they do, they'll give the kids plenty of notice and time to clean up. So now, everyone's happy: The athlete plays, the school makes money, the NCAA makes money, and the health care system makes money after these kids suffer heart attacks and strokes at age 40.

So in conclusion: As long as you don't show up to the Orange Bowl higher than Scarface, your drug issues stay nobody's concern but your own. But don't sell the drugs, because then you're making money. And that would reveal a troubling lack of integrity.

Jason doesn't get paid to post on Facebook or Twitter, so he totally understands where these athletes are coming from. Follow him anyway, because all the cool kids are doing it.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Brutal Realities Of High School Football (From A Coach) and 5 Things You Learn Helping Rich College Kids Cheat (For Pay).

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