Mike Aresco, the commissioner of the American Athletic Conference (AAC), didn't hold back when asked about college sports moving in a direction where athletes were able to profit off their name, image and likeness.
The man partially responsible for the Big East Conference becoming a basketball-only league again, as he was busy chasing college football money by way of the Tulane Green Wave (or something), got brutally honest about his feelings with the Orlando Sentinel.
“You can’t have states basically trying to have a mishmash of laws dealing with what is a national undertaking,” Aresco told the Orlando Sentinel. “This is a national enterprise and it’s got to be governed nationally by the NCAA office.
“As far as I’m concerned, universities should have every right to maintain an amateur model, and if you don’t like it, go to the [NBA] G-League. It’s up to you, but it’s a choice you can make.”
As noted at several places, the O'Bannon v NCAA lawsuit is roughly a decade old, having provided the NCAA ample time to come up with their own solution to these issues. Nevertheless, Aresco was not here to make anyone's points known but his.
“There is such simplistic thinking about this and what it can mean,” Mike Aresco said. “No one is forced to go to these schools and enjoy a full scholarship and all of the other benefits that can run up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most students would certainly love to have that opportunity.”
So, ugh, most students aren't capable of playing Division I sports. Were they, the school would be offering them a scholarship to play the sport they bring value to, which inherently gives the school money via their value. Alas, again, Aresco clearly doesn't see it that way.
“What people forget too, and I wonder if these legislators in California even thought about this, we’re talking about the competition here. This isn’t the Olympics where people compete individually once every four years, this is competition across a broad spectrum of schools,” Aresco said. “You need to try and make it a level playing field.”
The current “level playing field” Aresco is referring to has some conferences making billions of dollars while others are making millions. Big time college sports has long been a land of the haves and have-nots. Were it any other way, you wouldn't see the same dominant blue-blood college basketball programs dominating the top of the rankings; or Alabama and Clemson regularly dominating football.
There's nothing wrong with that. Organizations that make money should be allowed to dump it back into their product. However, pretending it's a bunch of other things, such as helping with a fair playing field, is misleading.
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