**A Wall Street Journal column pointed out the contradictions of the NCAA: college sports are very profitable, but schools cannot pay student athletes, so they have to spend large sums of money to build meaningless programs. Luxurious locker rooms and gymnasium.

A column in " Wall Street Journal " pointed out the contradictions of the American Collegiate Athletic Association NCAA: College sports are very profitable, but schools cannot pay salaries to student athletes, so they have to use large sums of money to build meaningless institutions. Luxurious locker rooms and gymnasium. Lanxiong Sports has compiled the article, reduced its length, and shared it with everyone.

In early August this year, I saw an interesting video on the sports media website The Players Tribune. This website was established by New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter and is an exclusive online paradise for athletes. , this time the website released the members of the University of Texas football team for the first time to visit their newly renovated and extremely cool... locker room.

In the video, Tom Herman, the head coach who just took office this year, stands outside the locker room door. "Kids, I promised you on the first day I took office that we would take good care of each of you and always put the athletes first." He said, "What I am going to present to you now is just the first step, enjoy it. !" After saying that, he opened the door in an exaggerated manner, and the players rushed in excitedly. The scene in the locker room was indeed surprising - the room was based on bright orange-red, flat-panel monitors, stainless steel equipment, fashionable lamps... …In my opinion, this locker room is better than my own first apartment. Instead of a dressing room with a few wooden benches in the past, this room is equipped like the USS Enterprise starship in the "Star Trek" movie.

This luxurious locker room was built to enhance the team's competitiveness. The so-called improvement of competitiveness means satisfying existing players and attracting new players, so that college football teams can maintain their place in this world of football and basketball where billions of dollars are frequently traded. If you don't provide these things to your players, your opponents are more likely to take advantage of these facilities and poach them. (It is said that the team showed its locker room to the candidate players before the actual roster was unveiled, which is equivalent to showing its trump card.)

In fact, the University of Texas is not the first to put up a locker room sign A small locker room on campus is unremarkable in comparison to a $1.6 million upgrade to Texas Tech's college team. A few years ago, the University of Oregon's football complex was built to include a barber shop, a new farm-to-table restaurant and a coaches' spa. The entire complex cost a total of US$68 million, but it has high-quality Brazilian wooden floors and table football equipment imported from Barcelona, ​​which is worth the money.

Recently, University of Central Florida announced the launch of the "Athletes Village" plan, which includes the creation of a lazy river, a common entertainment facility in water parks.

Yes, a lazy river.

This plan sounds indeed luxurious, especially for those of us who had second-hand quilts on our beds and ate instant noodles for three meals in college. It is simply ridiculous. It's really interesting to think about football coaches like Bill Bryant and Bo Schinbuckle performing locker room openings for The Players Tribune cameras, or taking players to visit the lazy river on campus. . However, these may help them earn nearly 10 million US dollars in 2017, who knows?

Times have changed, and we must keep up with it.

"The public may be asking, what is the use of these high costs for higher education?" said Gerald Gurney, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma who works in the school's athletic department. For nearly two decades, he is currently the general director of the Drake Society, an organization that has been committed to defending the academic and purity of higher education starting from the corruption of commercialized college sports.

Gurney said: "When complexes with barber shops and luxurious locker rooms are built on campus," Gurney said, "it no longer looks like an institution of higher education.”

Like TV show offers and coaching appointments worth hundreds of millions, these luxury sports facilities basically skew the economics of college sports in college. College sports are very professional: college sports teams sometimes make more extra money than professional teams. There are still many clubs, and the salaries of top college coaches are comparable to those of NFL and NBA coaches. However, schools still do not write checks and pay salaries to the group that really does the work-the athletes.

"This approach is really hypocritical," said a former college basketball player. Star Nigel Hayes said he was signed by the New York Knicks after graduating from the University of Wisconsin: "The school always said there wasn't enough money to pay the players. However, they have the money to build such luxurious facilities, so that they can make the players more committed to the school and make more profits for the school. "

Whether one agrees with Hayes's words or not, economists support his views. If college sports organizations continue to ignore the opinions of athletes, sooner or later this profit system will collapse.

Smith College economics professor and author Andrew Qi Andrew Zimbalist wrote in a joint book with Gurney and American Sports Fund CEO Donna Lopiano, "Under normal market conditions, the players themselves are the ones who should get the money most. , and today's universities allow them to spend money wherever they want, but they don't pay salaries to the players. "

Although the school does not directly pay players, players can receive scholarships as students. You know, full scholarships for four-year universities can reach up to 200,000 US dollars.

But in today's era, the website every March It costs nearly $1 billion to broadcast the NCAA college basketball league. College football has also discovered business opportunities and expanded its business to the playoffs. The concept of scholarships seems somewhat outdated in the rapidly commercializing college sports of the NCAA and its affiliates. The association claims that awarding scholarships is justified by law and sentiment, but these traditional remarks are indeed out of place from universities that show off their modern comprehensive facilities and high-priced coaching resources all day long, and it is difficult to be convinced.

, these luxurious locker rooms and complexes are a form of compensation for players. The school is unwilling to share profits with players, but it wants to attract them to join the team, so it turns the money into other forms of temptation

University of Chicago economy. Scholar Allen Sanderson believes that schools cannot pay players directly, at least not on the surface. “That’s why they invest heavily in hardware facilities and build the largest and most luxurious stadium facilities. "

This is why the Texas locker room video strikes me as ridiculous. I have no doubt that Coach Herman loves his players, but the way he opened the locker room was like he was treating it like a gift. It's not seen as a substitute for the wages players deserve.

"A lot of people call this spending 'gold-plated' because they know they have the ability to do it," Ford said. It’s like a high-level admonishment from the school: You’ve got enough! Don’t settle for less, you spoiled kids!

, a football quarterback studying at the University of California, Los Angeles, majoring in economics earlier this summer. Josh Rosen said in an interview that athletes in popular college sports will now find it difficult to juggle their studies.

"It's hard to juggle football and school," Rosen told Bleacher. Report's Matt Hayes. "Studying and training are like two full-time jobs at the same time. Some people are terrible at school, but they stay here because this is the path to the NFL. "

Rosen continued: "There are only so many hours in a day. One more minute spent in the classroom means one less minute of practice on the court. By the time you realize you can't keep up with your studies, it's too late. Sometimes schools have to think more about their players and help them achieve the same success outside of football."

Rosen's remarks sparked profound discussions in society. People are talking about what it means to be a college athlete. I'm kidding you, in fact, he was scolded badly.

Rosen was criticized by college sports. The group mocked him as lazy, ungrateful, and a spoiled schoolboy who couldn't balance his life as a student and a football player. But such criticism seemed untenable, as CNBC's Jack Novak said. As Jake Novak points out, the National Labor Relations Board found that current college students spend 40 to 50 hours a week at football games, a length of time equivalent to a full-time job. In addition, college sports authorities have also found that. Student-athletes have been criticized for the academic load they bear

Today, the "close to the mouth, be good game" is still the school's only response to the opinions of college athletes - sign it, continue your studies, and put your objections aside.

I know what you are thinking: Okay, Mr. Reporter, you are so good at pointing out the flaws of the system, can you tell me how to improve it? I think any innovation method is complicated and must be improved. There will be side effects, and it may require court involvement.

But Sanderson, from the University of Chicago, said the real solution may be much simpler than I thought: "The right solution is to be direct. Pay the kids. Let the market lead. Whichever school pays the highest price will get the best quarterback. "

If the public cannot accept this free market approach, Sanderson also proposed another solution. Schools that need to recruit players can establish a mutual fund to open an account for each player to store an equal amount of funds. After the players graduate, You can use the funds to start a small business or pay your own medical bills.

In the meantime, the school will undoubtedly continue to spend huge sums of money on the construction of stadium facilities, but I don’t think the athletes will remain silent forever. After all, such an imbalance is too big. Clearly, the Texas locker room video is telling. Earlier this year, the site published an article titled "Stop Shutting Up and Playing." , in which Hayes rejects the silence of athletes and quotes James Baldwin: “The paradox of education is exactly this: when a person receives education, he begins to have a sense of self and begins to look back at the society in which he is educated. "

Nowadays, if you want to examine the position of sports in a university, you don't even have to go to the classroom or stadium, just go to the locker room. It is a magical place.

Statement: This article was compiled by Lanxiong Sports from "Wall Street Daily", the original author is Jason Gay