[Goose]

some thoughts:



allowing professionals did not ruin the olympics; far from it.

Matter of opinion. The quality of the competition certainly was improved by allowing professionals to play. The reason it was allowed was two fold. First, some "Olympic" sports, like basketball, became contests between ideologies. USSR "amateurs" for example, weren't. Second, many sports had a pro circuit that was undoubtedly much better than what was to be seen in the Olympics. Nobody who wanted to make a living was going to forgo the money, so the Olympics would have become third-rate.
In today's would, if you want the best, you are going to have to pay for it. Love of the sport really has little place. That is what was lost.

today, college athletes play without pay while administrators profiteer. it is not intrinsically a racial issue, but a majority of the top athletes - especially in the high-profit sports of football and baseball - are black.

True. However, many black athletes never got the chance at all before the late 50s/early 60s. That was a racial issue. What "fixed" it wasn't that social justice suddenly became in vogue, although that probably helped some. It  was more the desire on the part of the universities to win.

in america, slaves were overwhelmingly black. so it is not a stretch to make an analogy between college sports and slavery. 



perhaps college football is closer to indentured servitude (which was common for whites in the early days of america), as players have to work without pay for a time to become eligible to earn wages. 

Indentured servitude was an agreement where the individual involved agreed to work without wages for a fixed interval in return for other considerations. Those "considerations" were usually 1) transport to "america" 2) room and board during the period of performance. You weren't working to "become eligible to earn wages". You were working to pay off a debit that you freely incurred. The college athlete's situation is really quite different. They can walk away at any time. There is no mandatory period of performance.

There are other analogies present in the university system. A joke that made the rounds while I was at Stanford is as follows: Question: What is the difference between graduate students and slaves? Answer: Lincoln freed the slaves. As we have seen at other universities, graduate students have organized unions to negotiate their working conditions and compensation. AFAIK, it hasn't worked too well for either party. I suspect student athletes will go down a similar path. Obviously, there are differences in the risks and rewards offered athletes vs graduate students. However, the situations are more similar than different IMHO. Universities get piles of grant money for educating their graduate students. The university gets more grant money for research mostly powered by graduate students. These students provide valuable teaching assistants to help educate undergraduates. Stanford as we know it couldn't exist without them. Football could go away and Stanford would remain. If graduate students went away, Stanford would be in a world of hurt. Yet, the university still holds the upper hand. I doubt athletes will do much better.

[Goose]

some thoughts:



allowing professionals did not ruin the olympics; far from it.

Matter of opinion. The quality of the competition certainly was improved by allowing professionals to play. The reason it was allowed was two fold. First, some "Olympic" sports, like basketball, became contests between ideologies. USSR "amateurs" for example, weren't. Second, many sports had a pro circuit that was undoubtedly much better than what was to be seen in the Olympics. Nobody who wanted to make a living was going to forgo the money, so the Olympics would have become third-rate.
In today's would, if you want the best, you are going to have to pay for it. Love of the sport really has little place. That is what was lost.

today, college athletes play without pay while administrators profiteer. it is not intrinsically a racial issue, but a majority of the top athletes - especially in the high-profit sports of football and baseball - are black.

True. However, many black athletes never got the chance at all before the late 50s/early 60s. That was a racial issue. What "fixed" it wasn't that social justice suddenly became in vogue, although that probably helped some. It  was more the desire on the part of the universities to win.

in america, slaves were overwhelmingly black. so it is not a stretch to make an analogy between college sports and slavery. 



perhaps college football is closer to indentured servitude (which was common for whites in the early days of america), as players have to work without pay for a time to become eligible to earn wages. 

Indentured servitude was an agreement where the individual involved agreed to work without wages for a fixed interval in return for other considerations. Those "considerations" were usually 1) transport to "america" 2) room and board during the period of performance. You weren't working to "become eligible to earn wages". You were working to pay off a debit that you freely incurred. The college athlete's situation is really quite different. They can walk away at any time. There is no mandatory period of performance.

There are other analogies present in the university system. A joke that made the rounds while I was at Stanford is as follows: Question: What is the difference between graduate students and slaves? Answer: Lincoln freed the slaves. As we have seen at other universities, graduate students have organized unions to negotiate their working conditions and compensation. AFAIK, it hasn't worked too well for either party. I suspect student athletes will go down a similar path. Obviously, there are differences in the risks and rewards offered athletes vs graduate students. However, the situations are more similar than different IMHO. Universities get piles of grant money for educating their graduate students. The university gets more grant money for research mostly powered by graduate students. These students provide valuable teaching assistants to help educate undergraduates. Stanford as we know it couldn't exist without them. Football could go away and Stanford would remain. If graduate students went away, Stanford would be in a world of hurt. Yet, the university still holds the upper hand. I doubt athletes will do much better.