{"id":184687,"date":"2012-02-14T19:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-15T00:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/14\/while-joe-nocera-is-generally-a-waste-of-time\/"},"modified":"2012-02-14T19:24:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-15T00:24:00","slug":"while-joe-nocera-is-generally-a-waste-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/02\/14\/while-joe-nocera-is-generally-a-waste-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"While Joe Nocera is Generally a Waste of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I agree with him that the N.C.A.A. is little better than a cartel engaging in human trafficking<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The N.C.A.A. despises sports agents \u2014 hates them so much so that it once helped promulgate an anti-agent law. As of January 2010, according to the N.C.A.A.\u2019s Web site, that law had been passed by 40 states. A player who takes an \u201cimproper benefit\u201d from a sports agent loses his eligibility. A player who gets drafted out of high school \u2014 this happens in baseball as well as hockey \u2014 and engages an agent to talk to the pro team that drafted him loses his eligibility. Indeed, the mere act of signing with an agent is enough for a player to lose his eligibility. N.C.A.A. \u201cscandals\u201d involving agents and athletes are almost as common as recruiting scandals.<\/p>\n

The N.C.A.A. claims \u2014 as it always does \u2014 that it is acting to protect its athletes \u201cfrom exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.\u201d But this is classic N.C.A.A. Orwellian spin. Its true purpose in preventing athletes from engaging with agents while in college is to exacerbate their exploitation. The professional and commercial enterprise doing the exploiting, of course, is college sports itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about control,\u201d says Don Jackson, a lawyer who specializes in representing athletes who have run afoul of the N.C.A.A. Teenage athletes with agents are far more likely to make informed decisions about their lives than athletes acting on their own. Instead, athletes have to rely on coaches and athletic administrators, whose primary interest is the school, not the player.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just hockey players who have to make important life decisions at a young age. When a baseball player gets drafted out of high school, he has a hard decision to make. Basketball players are usually eligible for the draft after one year of college; football players after three years. Yet N.C.A.A. rules force these athletes to make these major decisions without an agent at their side. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At some point, enterprising lawyer is going to find is going to use RICO, or the tax code, or anti-human trafficking statutes, or some combination of all these and other laws, and these folks will get taken down ……… hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I agree with him that the N.C.A.A. is little better than a cartel engaging in human trafficking: The N.C.A.A. despises sports agents \u2014 hates them so much so that it once helped promulgate an anti-agent law. As of January 2010, according to the N.C.A.A.\u2019s Web site, that law had been passed by 40 states. A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,968,969,1057],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-education","category-evil","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184687"}],"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=184687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}