College coaches are a privileged lot

There’s a quote I first heard a few months ago that I haven’t tracked down the source, but I think it explains a lot of what’s going on in this country.  The quote is, “When people of privilege lose their privilege, it feels like oppression.”

You can apply this to so many situations, but I want to talk about college coaches, specifically this quote from UConn women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma:

“The majority of coaches in America are afraid of their players,” Auriemma said, via ESPNW’s Mechelle Voepel. “The NCAA, the athletic directors and society has made them afraid of their players. Every article you read: ‘This guy’s a bully. This woman’s a bully. This guy went over the line. This woman was inappropriate. Yet the players get off scot-free in everything. They can do whatever they want. They don’t like something you say to them, they transfer. Coaches, they have to coach with one hand behind their back. Why? Because some people have abused the role of a coach.”

College coaches have led privileged careers compared to pro coaches, or people in other professions.  If a player didn’t obey your every command, you could threaten to take away his or her scholarship, taking away their ticket to high paying pro jobs AND their ability to get an education.  You could block any student who wanted to transfer to another college because they didn’t fit into the system, or a better player was recruited after them, cutting their playing time.  Auriemma complains that students can transfer, but the reality has been that coaches can tell students and parents that they will make the student into a professional, and then leave the second a better school offers them more money.

Auriemma complains that players can transfer if they don’t like how they are being treated.  Imagine a workplace in the private sector, where if a boss is abusive the workers can quit and go to work at a rival company.  Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine that, it’s how the real world works.  Only in the rarefied world of college coaching can someone berate their underlings without fear that they will take their talents elsewhere.

Auriemma makes nearly $11 million a year to coach the UConn women’s basketball team and given his success one can’t quibble about the price.  But of course, the fact is the school is able to afford to pay him that because the workforce that generates revenue for the school is unpaid.  Oh, they players get a “free” education, but the marginal cost to the school of providing that education is close to zero (and, as I said above, the education gives the school leverage over the player).  Meanwhile, UConn men’s basketball players have complained about going to bed hungry because they couldn’t afford to buy food.  I bet Geno Auriemma never goes to bed hungry.

Not paying players to play is one thing, but the NCAA also forbids students from raising money off their names and their faces, things no one should have to give up their rights to in exchange for an “education” (said education usually lasting one year for basketball players headed to the NBA draft). As the Bard said, “Who steals my purse steals trash; . . . But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.”  Willie was not quite accurate, as colleges steal their student-athletes names and sell jerseys and paraphernalia featuring the name, enriching them; the students are, however, left poor indeed.

College coaches, Geno Auriemma included, have led a privileged existence.  But that privilege is shrinking.  They can no longer abuse their students (and college basketball players are, technically, students, even if many rarely see the inside of a classroom).  Someday they may have to allow students to make money off their name and their image, depriving coaches of the control they had over scholarships.  Someday they may have to stop treating student-athletes like slaves.

Geno Auriemma seems to think this is a bad thing.  But then he has 11 million reason to believe that.