BlackDynamite310
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The Plot to Disrupt the NCAA with a Pay-for-Play HBCU Basketball League
What if I told you there was a way to pay men's college basketball players a fairer portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars they generate, boost the flagging fortunes of the nation's historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and stick it to the sanctimonious, self-serving quasi-monopolists at the NCAA?
If all of that sounds too good to be true, then you haven't yet heard from Andy Schwarz. A San Francisco–based antitrust economist, longtime critic of college sports amateurism, and—full disclosure—occasional contributor to VICE Sports, Schwarz has a plan to make it happen. It's a business plan, in fact, and while it's still in its early stages, it works, in a nutshell, like this:
Step 1: Form an HBCU-exclusive basketball league.
Step 2: Tell the NCAA to pound sand, and pay the nation's very best high school and college basketball players to be part of it.
Step 3: Profit. Oh, and also change the face of big-time campus athletics forever.
"One of the ways to bust up a monopoly is through disruption," Schwarz says. "That's the idea here."
The way Schwarz and his HBCU league co-founders—Ohio–based sports and entertainment attorney Richard Volante and Washington, D.C.–based author and historian Bijan Bayne—see it, the NCAA is a bit like a traditional taxi company, while their concept is akin to Uber or Lyft. The league would consist of at least 16 members drawn from the four current NCAA Division I and II HBCU conferences, institutions such as Howard University and Florida A&M; its athletes would be full-time students.
They also would be paid to play basketball, between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. Moreover, they would be allowed to endorse products, sell autographs, sign with agents, accept gifts from boosters, declare for the NBA draft, and even be drafted by NBA teams without losing their eligibility.
What if I told you there was a way to pay men's college basketball players a fairer portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars they generate, boost the flagging fortunes of the nation's historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and stick it to the sanctimonious, self-serving quasi-monopolists at the NCAA?
If all of that sounds too good to be true, then you haven't yet heard from Andy Schwarz. A San Francisco–based antitrust economist, longtime critic of college sports amateurism, and—full disclosure—occasional contributor to VICE Sports, Schwarz has a plan to make it happen. It's a business plan, in fact, and while it's still in its early stages, it works, in a nutshell, like this:
Step 1: Form an HBCU-exclusive basketball league.
Step 2: Tell the NCAA to pound sand, and pay the nation's very best high school and college basketball players to be part of it.
Step 3: Profit. Oh, and also change the face of big-time campus athletics forever.
"One of the ways to bust up a monopoly is through disruption," Schwarz says. "That's the idea here."
The way Schwarz and his HBCU league co-founders—Ohio–based sports and entertainment attorney Richard Volante and Washington, D.C.–based author and historian Bijan Bayne—see it, the NCAA is a bit like a traditional taxi company, while their concept is akin to Uber or Lyft. The league would consist of at least 16 members drawn from the four current NCAA Division I and II HBCU conferences, institutions such as Howard University and Florida A&M; its athletes would be full-time students.
They also would be paid to play basketball, between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. Moreover, they would be allowed to endorse products, sell autographs, sign with agents, accept gifts from boosters, declare for the NBA draft, and even be drafted by NBA teams without losing their eligibility.
