Must Be The Money: The Real Issue With The Protect College Sports Act [Op-Ed]

Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

There is something almost impressive about taking a fight over billions of dollars in college sports and deciding the most important person to put on trial is Deion Sanders.

Not the audacity of the NCAA that’s been cashing off of Black athletes for decades. Not the universities making millions from television contracts. Not the conferences. Not the politicians writing the rules. Not the people who spent decades insisting that the young people generating the money were somehow “student-athletes” instead of workers.

Nope.

Deion Sanders.

To be clear, Prime is absolutely fair game. A man who built an entire persona around getting paid shouldn’t have lent his name, image, or likeness to the Protect College Sports Act or anything that would cap how much the young folks behind him should be paid. But what was more troubling was that after appearing in the video fully supporting the bill co-sponsored by human vomit Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Sanders noted that he merely filmed it and “I haven’t thought about it since.”

So I get it.  

While Deion Sanders might be the biggest Black celeb doing those “support the system” videos, he’s not the biggest Black coach. That honor goes to Houston men’s basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. So making Sanders the face of this fight misses the bigger picture. Because this isn’t really about Deion Sanders. It’s about what happens when the little guy finally gets a piece of the money and all of the things big corporations will do to prevent it. And what happens when Black kids start making money and bucking back at the white university structures intended to keep them poor. And that includes getting Sanders to make a video saying he’s with them. 

But a good argument is buried inside Carron J. Phillips’ piece. The Protect College Sports Act deserves scrutiny, particularly because the people with the least institutional power are the ones whose money, movement, and ability to collectively bargain could be affected by the rules Congress writes.

But somehow, in the middle of a fight involving the NCAA, billion-dollar athletic departments, television networks, conferences, politicians and some of the most powerful universities in the country, Deion Sanders is the villain?

Come on, man.

Sanders absolutely deserves criticism for endorsing legislation that he doesn’t seem to know much about. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to question. But criticizing Sanders is like yelling at the guy who finally got a seat at the table while ignoring the people who own the restaurant. He is a coach who supports the bill. He is not the NCAA. He is not a university president. He is not an athletic conference. He is not Congress. And he certainly isn’t the person who invented the idea that college athletes should somehow be treated differently from everyone else who generates revenue for an institution.

This, as with so many fights in America, is about money.

Of course, many college coaches support the bill. A system that limits what players can earn also limits one of the biggest weapons they have in deciding where they want to play. And coaches understand something the rest of us sometimes pretend not to: Money matters. Donors matter. Boosters matter. Resources matter. The ability to put money in front of a talented 18-year-old can determine whether that player ends up at Florida or Alabama to play football.

That is what makes the sudden panic over “chaos” in college sports so interesting. For decades, schools and coaches operated in a system where they could recruit athletes, sell their jerseys, sign massive television deals, and build billion-dollar enterprises around their performances while the athletes themselves had little ability to participate in that marketplace.

Now the players have some leverage. And suddenly everybody, from coaches to Congressmembers, wants to cap the money. And that fight is much bigger than Deion Sanders. It’s challenging the decades-old decision that “student-athletes” would remain amateurs and therefore not be allowed to receive workers’ benefits. That’s what started this whole thing. Ray Dennison, a Fort Lewis A&M football player, died tragically after suffering a skull fracture during a game in 1955. Billie Dwade Dennison, Ray’s widow, filed a claim for death benefits, claiming that her husband worked for the University at the time of his death. 

So, to avoid paying the grieving widow, the NCAA crafted a legal strategy claiming that athletes who also attend classes weren’t employees; they were “student-athletes.”

That history matters. Because the fundamental question has never really been whether college athletes are students. Of course they are. The question is whether being a student should prevent them from being compensated when their labor helps generate enormous amounts of money for everyone around them.

For decades, the answer was effectively yes.

And now that the rabbit got the gun, everyone wants to change the rules.

There is more than enough blame to go around, but let’s not pretend the people who benefited most from the old system suddenly discovered an interest in fairness once the athletes started getting a piece of the pie. The rules were built to protect the system, and the system worked very well for the people who built it. And sadly or rightfully, Sanders is a part of that system. 

It’s been more than thirty years since Sanders wore a jheri curl and custom-made leather outfits and danced like M.C. Hammer. People grow up. They change. Their priorities change. Their understanding of the world changes. Sanders is an older man now. He’s a bladder cancer survivor, and you know what else he’s done a video about? Wearing Depends.

So if Prime Time wants to tell the next generation of athletes that he’s helping them “find their spotlight,” while he can’t even articulate why he’s supporting rules that could limit how much money they can make, then so be it.

That’s the contradiction. But he’s way less calculated than the others involved in this fight. Sanders is a guy who has spent his football life turning his name, image and talent into a business. He knows what it means to be the product. He knows what it means to get paid because people are willing to pay to watch you perform.

Maybe that’s why this is so frustrating.

Prime Time grew up. The problem is that the system he grew up in didn’t grow up with him.

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