{"id":179397,"date":"2018-02-22T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/22\/the-most-contemptible-people-in-the-world\/"},"modified":"2018-02-22T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T01:24:00","slug":"the-most-contemptible-people-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/02\/22\/the-most-contemptible-people-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Contemptible People in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

That would be the National Collegiate Athletic Association<\/a>, which is literally arguing that its “student athletes” are slaves:<\/p>\n

In the United States, college athletes \u2014 particularly those who compete at some of the largest football and basketball programs \u2014 generate not millions but billions of dollars for universities, brands, and television networks. In 2015, the top programs made a combined $9.1 billion<\/a>. The NCAA, for its part, just signed an $8.8 billion dollar deal<\/a> with CBS to air March Madness, the college basketball championship tournament. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

That very obvious dynamic undergirds a lawsuit filed by former NCAA athlete Lawrence \u201cPoppy\u201d Livers asserting that scholarship students who play sports are employees and deserve pay. The Livers case argues that student-athletes who get scholarships should at least be paid as work-study students for the time they put in.<\/p>\n

What the NCAA did in response to the lawsuit<\/a> is as vile as anything going on in sports right now. I had to see it for myself before I believed it. At the root of its legal argument, the NCAA is relying on one particular case for why NCAA athletes should not be paid. That case is Vanskike v. Peters<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Only there\u2019s an important detail: Daniel Vanskike was a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, and Howard Peters was the Director of the state Department of Corrections. In 1992, Vanskike and his attorneys argued that as a prisoner he should be paid a federal minimum wage for his work. The court, in its decision, cited the 13th Amendment and rejected the claim. <\/p>\n

The 13th Amendment is commonly hailed as the law that finally ended slavery in America. But the amendment has an important carve-out: it kept involuntary service legal for those who have been convicted of a crime. \u201cNeither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,\u201d the amendment says. It\u2019s that phrase \u2014 \u201cexcept as a punishment for crime\u201d \u2014 which allows American prisons to force their inmates to do whatever work they want or need them to do. <\/p>\n

The use of the case stems from several other law cases alleging unpaid labor<\/a>; two of them are previous lawsuits against the NCAA in which the case was cited as precedent, and the NCAA won.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

In their response to the NCAA\u2019s motion to dismiss, Livers\u2019s lawyers are arguing<\/a> that the precedent was mistaken for applying the 13th Amendment exception for unpaid prison labor in a case dealing with non-prisoners. <\/p>\n

\u201cDefense Counsel\u2019s insistence that Vanskike be applied here is not only legally frivolous, but also deeply offensive to all Scholarship Athletes \u2013 and particularly to African-Americans,\u201d Livers\u2019s rebuttal to the NCAA\u2019s motion says. \u201cComparing athletes to prisoners is contemptible.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 The NCAA is showing an incorrigible nerve to use this case, Vanskike v. Peters, as one of its justifications for not paying student-athletes. The Vanskike case has been cited in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 14 times before, but in each of those 14 cases there were prisoners arguing that they should be paid a fair wage for their work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet the NCAA wants to rely on this case and to call on the 13th Amendment. The body that runs college sports wants to use a justification for the slave labor of convicted criminals to justify its outrageous greed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have an idea for a sporting event, it would involve senior NCAA officials fighting each other to the death.<\/p>\n

We could call it the Hunger Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That would be the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is literally arguing that its “student athletes” are slaves: In the United States, college athletes \u2014 particularly those who compete at some of the largest football and basketball programs \u2014 generate not millions but billions of dollars for universities, brands, and television networks. In 2015, the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[450,364,407,503],"class_list":["post-179397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-employment","tag-evil","tag-justice","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}