On Black College Football Players And Freedom
Did you know that right now, as we speak, the introduction of the transfer portal in college football may turn out to be just as important for Black athletes as the desegregation of Southern colleges and universities in the 1950s and 1970s, which suddenly gave them access to thousands of Black athletic talents previously denied to them? But before we go into that, let’s recap how we got here.
America, for better or worse, is a free-market, capitalist country where you’re free to market yourself to various businesses, get a job, earn a living, and live a life that, if not debt-free, is comfortable enough to pay for a roof over your head, food in your belly, and clothes on your body. In theory, our society is free enough that the truly innovative, through pluck and by valuing their worth correctly, can stand out and be paid extraordinarily well for their services.
That’s the spiel we’re all taught from the day we’re slapped on the ass at the hospital. Of course, our parents are also slapped with a hospital bill for services rendered, just like at the end of our lives when the undertaker lowers us into the ground, and then slaps the grieving survivors with a bill that tells us exactly who did the body. We accept it, for the most part.
Every aspect of society worked like this, except for one notable exception: college football. In college football, athletes, particularly Black athletes, were expected to be satisfied with access to a college education, while student-athletes is the term they literally coined for this, and were expected to work for free on the playing field.
College football is a unique sport, not just in the United States but around the world. No other country invests as much money, time, and energy in a college athletic contest as Americans do in college football. College football goes beyond the students and athletes and reflects several things: school and regional pride, displays of courage and cowardice, and the definition of manhood as physical and mental toughness.
To put it in perspective, the most popular soccer team in England, and arguably the world, is Manchester United. In Manchester, England, they play at a stadium that seats just over 74,000 people. In the United States, there are 17 college football stadiums larger than Old Trafford, including the University of Michigan stadium, which seats a mind-boggling 107,000 people.
College football is popular, but for most of its history, the revenue generated was directed to the schools and distributed as scholarships not only to the football team but also to the swim team, the gymnastics team, and every other team that didn’t try to carry a pigskin over a line while being pummeled by fast, strong men.
Like most brutal sports, such as boxing and football, Black athletes from the poorest regions of the country, such as Liberty City just outside of Miami in Florida, or any small town in Texas, where high school football stadiums look like not-so-mini college stadiums, but there’s no money to pay teachers, see football as their way out.
The riches were both real and illusory, as reaching the NFL would be transformational for both the athlete and the family. But the illusory part is that every college football team promised that they were the direct portal to that dream, even though the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and governing body ran commercials saying that “99% would major in something other than their sport.“
In essence, in a sport where nearly half the players are Black, Black labor was being exploited for free, with players having to earn their scholarships to attend the school on a year-to-year basis, as the school could pull them at any time. The school bookstore could sell a Black athlete’s jersey and profit, yet if the Black athlete did the same, they’d be declared ineligible.
And you couldn’t leave because the rules prevented athletes from transferring from school to school without a one-year penalty, restricting their ability to ply their wares like any other human being working in a capitalist system. In other words, in an exploitative system, Black athletes and white athletes alike were being exploited for their labor without recourse. There is no alternative market to sell their services, with the NFL using the college football system as its farm system.
But these restrictions didn’t limit college football coaches, who are nearly two-thirds white. They were free to sign contracts worth millions of dollars, pledge their allegiance to schools one day, and, hours later, get on a plane and take millions more from another job, ditching the players who’d believed them as they told their parents they’d act as guardians and builders of men.
No, the college football coach had the freedom of capitalism, while the Black athlete was stuck. Stuck, that is, until the courts in 2021 decided that restricting athletes from exploiting their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) and limiting a player’s ability to take their trade where they’d like was unconstitutional.
Black players suddenly had options. If they excelled, they could market their services to sling pizza, mobile phone plans, or luxury watches, and get paid for it. And, if they felt that the folks at Your Favorite University weren’t fully compensating their talents, then they could enter the transfer portal and let the market determine their worth, just like the coaches who had been doing so for millions for decades.
But there’s a curious thing that happens when millions of dollars suddenly hit the pockets of Black men who sweat, bleed, and suffer debilitating injuries. One of them is Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a common brain injury that has caused death or suicide among countless former players. Suddenly, people are concerned.
You hear statements like “chaos,” or the system is “unsustainable,” or that there needs to be a salary cap for players because the money being spent is “crazy.” Or there’s the paternalistic idea that young Black players might be irresponsible with the money, and “bad actors” are exploiting them.
And to protect colleges and universities, which suddenly have to be judicious with how they spend money since it’s not all going into their pockets but is being redistributed to the players, you hear about ideas like ‘salary caps’ and ‘collective bargaining’ as solutions to save institutions from themselves. And to all of that, I say one word:
Bullshit.
The old African American adage that it’s all fun until the rabbit’s got the gun couldn’t be more accurate. Now that Black athletes have the preverbal Uzi, they’re using it to make the same millions that administrators at schools like the University of Miami gathered from donors to build buildings. Those buildings were constructed by University of Miami Black athletes who broke their bodies on the field built through their touchdowns and championships, and yet didn’t get paid, at least legally.
Now that Black athletes can rock the same luxury cars or make enough money to transform the lives of their families, something that millions of non-athletic students attempt to do through getting a degree, people want to restrict them to a level of wealth that they artificially determine.
We are living in an age where Black college football players are finally free from being exploited by institutions and have the right to decide who to play for and why. If they’re just there for the bag, then so be it. That’s their right. If they’re trying to get to the NFL? Great. If they spend millions on new grilles, then make sure they have diamonds and find the best jeweler in town to custom-fit them.
In 1970, the University of Southern California, led by Sam “Bam” Cunningham, beat the brakes off an all-white University of Alabama football team. Legend has it that Alabama fans told the legendary coach Bear Bryant that “Alabama needed to get some n-ggers,” and viola, the dyke was open for integrating white schools in the South.
And for half a century, those “n-ggers” were running around for free, all to add billions to the coffers of their white schools. Today? Those Black athletes have agency, the ability to market their services, and the ability to make as much money as possible. Don’t let your fandom as a college football enthusiast cloud that fact. Something is more important than touchdowns and championships.
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