IV. The “Collegiate Model”
“Amateur defines the participants, not the enterprise.”
(Myles Brand, 2006 NCAA “State of the Association” speech)
In 2003, former NCAA president Myles Brand began formulating the “collegiate model” of college athletics to reconcile the profound, chronic tension between the amateur-based mythology of college sports and the undeniable business reality of big-time football and men’s basketball.
Under increasing pressure from courts, Congress, and institutional stakeholders, Brand debuted his “collegiate model” at the 2006 NCAA convention. (for a detailed analysis of the evolution of the “collegiate model” and its consequences, see Southall, R. M., & Staurowsky, E. J. (2013, August 21). Cheering on the Collegiate Model. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 37(4), 403–429.)
It included two key components—one definitional and another financial.
At the definitional level, Brand proclaimed that college athletics inherits its values from the university, which are rooted in education. Thus, education and athletics are the same and cannot conflict.
At the financial level, Brand argued that the increased professionalization of college sports was appropriate, necessary, and entirely consistent with how universities operate. He observed that some components of a university lose money, others make money, and that “massive redistributions of revenues” are foundational to university finances.
Brand distinguished the “input” revenue-generating side of the big-time college sports economy from the “output” side. On the “input” side, it was entirely appropriate—indeed necessary—to maximize revenue in football and men’s basketball so long as that money was spent on the “output” side in ways consistent with a university’s nonprofit mission.
Brand measured the output benefit as “participation opportunities'' for nonrevenue sports athletes.
Through this framing, Brand’s collegiate model presumes that the athletes whose labors generate the revenue have no legitimate claim to it.
The NCAA, conferences, and institutions claim exclusive ownership of football and basketball revenues. They, and they alone, have the authority to determine who will receive it and on what terms.
An unstated, practical truth of Brand’s collegiate model is that a labor force composed disproportionately of African American laborers is underwriting benefits that accrue to a disproportionately white and comparatively well-off class of stakeholders.
Brand’s collegiate model remains foundational to institutional and corporate beneficiaries of the $20 billion dollar-a-year sports-industrial complex.