In Kinesiology Review, Assistant Professor Kirsten Hextrum co-authored an article arguing for the abolishment of amateurism in college sports and the creation of a labor market for football players.
Kirsten Hextrum
By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager - November 20, 2024
Amateur college athletics generates over $19 billion annually, primarily through football and men’s basketball, where Black men are the main revenue generators, but are only two to three percent of the total college athlete population. Subsequently, colleges disproportionately recruit Black students, yet Black college athletes are the least likely to receive colleges’ educational benefits, by which the beneficiaries, including coaches, administrators, media, and corporations, are majority white.
Researchers, activists, and court filings have long-characterized the relationship between Black players and majority-white led athletic organizations as racial exploitation. Lately, college athletes have won new legal rights to their name, image, and likeness; to educational benefits; to transfer; and to earn compensation based on the revenue their labor produces.
A new argumentative article published in Kinesiology Review by Kirsten Hextrum, assistant professor in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, and Howard Croom, associate vice president at Portland Community College and former Oregon State University football player, uses critical race theories to examine if recent legal changes to how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) classifies amateurism will end racial exploitation in college football.
Ultimately, Hextrum and Croom argue that abolishing amateurism and establishing a labor market are necessary steps for securing meaningful and moral legal protections for college football players. It is also essential for combating anti-Black racism, which has been, through NCAA amateurism, baked into American college sports.
To support their argument, they intertwine the histories of racial desegregation of U.S. higher education and the rise of college sports. American versions of football and amateurism were imported from Britain through ongoing colonial relations. In the 19th century, British elites invented amateurism to prevent the working class from athletic competitions. Amateurism conflated sportsmanship, morality, and purity with class, prohibiting anyone who earned money through sports from participating. In the 1870s, students at northern universities invented American football by combining versions of rugby and soccer. Universities quickly took control of student games, forming regional leagues and standardizing regulations; simultaneously, universities began marketing the matchups and charging admission to build their reputation and fortify their operating budgets. The NCAA, created in the early 20th century after a rise in player deaths, notably excluded historically Black colleges and universities, while universities used restrictive admission practices to keep their campuses virtually all white.
“In the 1950s, we witnessed significant changes to the NCAA’s enforcement powers,” explained Hextrum, author of Special Admission: How College Sports Recruitment Favors White Suburban Athletes. “Television brought in more money and attention to amateur football as ever before, however, after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, amateurism gained legal backing, shifting the reproduction of anti-Blackness from exclusion and separation to exploitation, control, and surveillance.”
Universities began recruiting Black players to enhance their athletic programs and national profiles, yet, once on campus, Black players endured racial terrors as white students and fans resisted their presence. They also encountered discrimination within athletics, as they experienced inadequate housing conditions, racial slotting into certain positions, restrictive behavioral and dress standards, and racial harassment and slurs.
NCAA rule changes in the 1970s permitted coaches more power and control over athletes, including allowing freshmen to play football, reducing academic eligibility requirements and the number of scholarships, while moving to 1-year renewable contracts subject to the athlete’s ability to play (and not become injured).
College athletes challenged these new rules in court, but judges continued to side with the NCAA, granting the organization antitrust exemptions to control the market and enforce amateurism. Legal protections for amateurism have enabled the athlete/coach relationship to define much of a player’s existence in higher education. Coaches control scholarships, set curfews, control meals and nutrition, and even determine sleeping patterns; coaches supervise attendance at practice, in the dorms, and in the classroom, oftentimes through compulsory wearable technology. Coaches are more likely to hold higher standards of Black players and more likely to punish Black players for poor performance on or off the field. This level of control can make players feel more obligated to their coach than any other institutional relationship.
“We’ve seen a clear shift away from emphasizing education to upholding amateurism by the NCAA,” said Hextrum. “College football is a multibillion-dollar global industry, because of the increasing athletic demands and reduction of meaningful educational and career development opportunities for college athletes.”
Today, the NCAA’s decades-long legal deference has waned. Journalistic coverage and public opinion shifted in response to athlete activism, which has promoted federal and state-level congressional leaders to investigate the NCAA and draft legislation expanding protections for college players, including lifting limits on educational spending. Concurrently, athletes challenged amateurism in the legal system, suing the NCAA and bringing unprecedented rights and compensation to college athletes.
Hextrum and Croom advocate for removing amateurism so that athletes could hire agents, become employees, unionize, and barter for wages and benefits, including sharing profits from media rights and apparel contracts. Abolishing amateurism would lead football players to become university employees and/or earn greater freedom to pursue an education on their terms.