NCAA policies promote professional market

The term “free agent” is one that marks an athlete who can choose to play for the bidder of their choice and is generally used in association with professional athletics in the United States and throughout the world. Like so many other entities in a market-based economy, a free agent market’s primary aspect is money. But without money – that is, actual currency – can a free agent market still exist? And, if so, has the association employing that unnatural economy traversed from the realm of amateur and become professional?\nThese questions I pose in light of the current situation within the NCAA and the recent news that junior center Ben Allen will transfer colleges after two seasons as a Hoosier. Allen joins one in four student-athletes that will decide to transfer during their college careers.\nThis is not a criticism of Allen’s decision. He has both the right and, evidently for him, the reason to move to a new program, just as his former teammates and fellow transfers Xavier Keeling and Joey Shaw had the same rights and reasons. Best of luck to Allen and the others in all of their endeavors.\nHowever, that the option to transfer exists for players who receive the type of benefits given to college athletes bestows upon the NCAA an air of professionalism. That more than 20,000 athletes transfer colleges based at least in some part on their particular brand of competition gives the NCAA one of the largest free agent markets in the sporting world – they simply just do not allow money transfers.\nFor some, this absence of monetary gain for student-athletes is enough to allow the NCAA to escape the label of a professional organization. But other considerations must be taken into account before claiming the NCAA is completely amateur.\nIn its Division I manual the NCAA has 168 bylaws concerning in some way the issue of amateurism. Among the important rules that should be examined in determining the haze of professionalism that has been argued for are those that state those benefits that college athletes can receive as “actual and necessary expenses.” Among these are meals, lodging, apparel, medical treatment and transportation associated with team participation. It seems inherent that players would receive these benefits and I have no qualms with them. However, the ability of players to choose mid-education to change schools that give them such benefits makes transferring sounds suspiciously like shopping names professionally. That is not to say that the NCAA does a less than satisfactory job at enforcing their rules. Often it is heard that some player or coach is punished for recruiting violations or some other infraction. But the rules themselves create a free agent market in an association that claims to be completely amateur.\nIt is also necessary to point out that transferring student-athletes are required to sit out a year of competition when they make the decision to transfer as a possible deterrent from the NCAA gaining such a free agent market label. But incurring this penalty simply becomes part of the process of weighing costs and benefits when an athlete is deciding whether to transfer schools and a university is deciding whether to welcome transferring students into sports programs with open arms.\nAs the NCAA continues to rake in profits from athletic competition and allocate it accordingly among scholarship programs, universities and other areas requiring funding. The NCAA cannot remove the image of a booming business. The transfer ability of the student-athlete is simply a way of shifting numbers so that payment does not appear to be payment. For certain the NCAA is no amateur at shrouding its free agent market.