The heated issue over whether or not NCAA student-athletes should be able to make money off their likenesses has been revived by a new California law that allows them to do so. According to one school of thought, collegiate athletics have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, and it’s only fair that the athletes share in the spoils. According to the other side, paying student-athletes would fundamentally alter the makeup of college athletics.
I’m not here to persuade you in any manner. The only purpose of my visit is to relate a tale of tragedy or possibly humor. To put it another way, it’s about a Division III golfer facing off against the NCAA. It’s about Jay Bilas, bureaucracy, and water risks in Florida. And to make matters worse, it’s my story.
My athletic career was destined to end during a single week in the spring of 2013. Our team at Williams College, a Division III school located in western Massachusetts, narrowly won our conference tournament over Trinity College by two nerve-wracking strokes. For the first time in my four years at Williams College, I attended the NCAA championship game.
Jay Bilas, an ESPN commentator who specializes in college athlete salary, spoke at Williams simultaneously. As a result, students and community members from all around the area came to see Bilas, who is a huge deal.
College players should be compensated, and that is Bilas’ overall position. At the packed Bronfman Science Center auditorium, He criticized the NCAA’s duplicity and the money via collegiate athletics. Non-athletes in college were likewise free to generate cash in any number of ways, he explained to me. Nothing would stop a college student from making money with their skills if they formed a business, painted a picture, or authored a book. Friends’ eyes widened at that point. A book I had written was due out in less than two weeks, and I hadn’t even thought about how that may affect my chances of winning. We, on the other hand, quickly forgot about it. It wasn’t like I’d done anything wrong; in fact, I was a DIII golfer! Nobody cared about what happened, and I thought so at the time.
Bilas brought up the absurdity of these regulations. What a mess they were. While I assumed this person was a point-misser, our sports department got a call from someone who said they’d heard I was writing a book and thought it might be in violation. As an author and student-athlete, I was contacted by our interim sports director, who was concerned about my well-being. Instead, she received an odd callback, which she relayed to me secondhand shortly afterward: I had been expelled from the NCAA.
It wasn’t addressed in detail, but my best guess is that the NCAA’s compliance offices were polled, and the decision was made quickly. I’d never heard from anyone (and never will), and I had no idea why I was being suspended, but it didn’t matter. It sounded like what I was doing might have been against the rules.
