The NCAA: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

our main story tonight concerns the fact that one of America's most sacred annual traditions is upon us everything comes down to this [Music] March is all holy yes March is on a queue February and I'll see you in hell it's not o'clock March Madness the year's biggest college tournament starts on Tuesday and the entire nation will be watching which means big big money March Madness now brings in over a billion dollars in TV ad revenue a billion dollars that's more than the Super Bowl it's almost more than the entire NFL postseason combined and that might seem like a lot until you consider the number of ads they managed to pack in sponsored by Lexus AT&T at the half is presented by AT&T our game is brought to you in HD TV by HP Coke Zero presents real fans of NCAA March Madness pretty soon the only thing left a sponsor will be the sponsorships themselves and now Pepsi presents a Geico look at the bisko's Toyota moment of the game brought to you by Taco Bell you should know everything about this tournament is branded even the famous moment where players cut down the net Warner ladder proud to donate to the general scholarship fund of every school in this year's final for Werner the official letter of the NCAA championships are you kidding me a Werner latter look as a ladder enthusiast I can tell you right now well as a pure unless you want a broken back are back in which case by all means go with Werner but you'd be better off slapping on a pair of stilts and trying to balance on a yoga ball i'ma do waltz man of course idiot there there is nothing inherently wrong with a sporting tournament making huge amounts of money but there is something slightly troubling about a billion dollar sports enterprise where the athletes are not paid a penny because they aren't and as the head of the NCAA Mark Emmett will tell you they don't want that to change and there's not even a salary to debate they're not employees they're students the fact is they're not employees they're student-athletes I can't say often enough obviously that student athletes are students they're not employees the only other people who say they're not employees that much of people who run illegal sweatshops out of their basements oh they're not employees it's a summer camp where they make the same t-shirt over and over again thousands of times it's summer fun year-round and the problem is when you don't pay people there are consequences one of the players who climbed the sponsored ladder last year was Shabazz Napier who happened to let slip a startling fact after one of the games sometimes like I said is hungry nights I don't I'm not able to eat in ice but I still gotta pay up too much you know I'm starving that's insane hunger games should take place annually in a dystopian future not every March sponsored by coca-cola on CBS the n-c-double-a insists that student athletes cannot be paid because they're amateurs and thought they've slightly softened their rules on food among other things in the last year they still exercised a ridiculous amount of control over players before they're allowed to compete athletes have to sign this form saying that they are amateurs they give up any compensation for playing and promise to abide by all the rules in this 440 page manual a 400 odd page manual of rules the only other thing that has that many Finnick little rules would be a sex party at Wes Anderson's house guests are required to wear lingerie of only a pre-war Andalusian vintage fellatio may only be accompanied by music from the kinks and early Cat Stevens and condoms shall be found nestled inside a small diorama of the sinking of the Lusitania now everybody the emcee rulebook is not just for show as a New Mexico player discovered a few years back a discount on a hotel ballroom is the impermissible benefit and se a minor violation their cost of all fin to be suspended yes that's right he was suspended for unwittingly receiving a two hundred and fifty dollar discount on a ballroom for his 21st birthday party and by the way a discounted ballroom are we absolutely sure he was turning 21 and not celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary with his lovely wife Marion because that would make more sense but the point is some rule enforcement's go from the petty to the downright heartless the late Rick Majerus when he was at Utah I had one of his players who lost one of his parents and he took him to lunch before putting him on a plane to send him home and the n-c-double-a said that was a violation because you can't give an athlete something you don't give another student oh sure I'll get that if you show one player basic human decency you have to show everyone basic human decency nobody wants that and to be fair to be fair the n-c-double-a claimed that while student athletes are not being paid they are being compensated with something incredibly valuable we provide them with remarkable opportunities to get an education at the finest universities on earth that's American universities and colleges yes athletes are paid in an education the only currency more difficult to spend than Bitcoin and a four-year education is undeniably valuable assuming that one you don't get hurt and lose your scholarship which can happen and to that you have time to study because if you're a student athlete playing top-level basketball or football that can be difficult listen to current NFL player Richard Sherman reminisce about his college days you wake up in the morning you have weights at this time then after weights you go to class and after class you go you go maybe try to grab you a quick bite to eat then after you get your quick bite to eat you go straight to meetings and after meetings you got practice and after practice you got to try to get all the work done you you had throughout the day I would love for for a regular student to have a student-athletes scheduled during the season for just just one quarter or one semester and and show me how you balance that he's right paying top college athletes with an education is sort of like telling a full-time nurse there's no salary for this job we're just going to be giving you free trumpet lessons which you'll be too busy to do but if you don't learn to play the trumpet you're fires I think that sounds fair and the education athletes do get is sometimes insultingly watered down last year an investigation revealed that the university of north carolina had for years held fraudulent so-called paper classes that boosted athletes grades football basketball players they would be enrolled steered - and enrolled in a paper class in african-american studies so we could have a football player who in the spring might have a GPA of 1.4 but in the summertime we put them in three paper classes and we get a a a - and lo and behold he's academically eligible to play football in the fall and that's how the system worked ok let's not pretend that isn't something offensive about an African American Studies course being an easy major at that school I just took this class investigating these social political and cultural complexities inherent to the black American experience it'll be a breeze because many student athletes at UNC also left with an unusual language credit what language did you study Swahili Swahili yes that come in handy since you're graduating No what language did you take I took Swahili Swahili yes do you speak Swahili a little bit as of right now now encouraging black student athletes to take Swahili courses is the kind of institutional prejudice which might well turn up in one of their African American Studies courses so let's recap student athletes don't get paid and sometimes don't even get educated but what they do get is the chance to learn from coaches who will take them under their wing and provide them with life lessons and valuable guidance that is now now that that is inspirational someone to grip someone should really put that on a cat poster [Applause] let's lift your spirits this mystery is happening huge money is being made and not just while they're students because sometimes the NCAA makes money off players years afterwards case in point a few years ago the n-c-double-a proudly license this video game a game who's selling point was authenticity crowd the noise the cheerleaders power the intensity of the game the passion of the game it's all about authenticity the level of authenticity that we go to is extremely deep to be honest I thought the only people that obsessed with how authentic something was like that were people from San Diego talking about Mexican food but I get it Kendall but there are avocados everywhere now okay we've all got them now in fact that game was so authentic it created a bit of an awkward moment for ed O'Bannon a former UCLA star player who currently works in a car dealership in Las Vegas I was with a friend and he said that his son at a video game with me in it hey you want to go check it out you know so yeah of course left-handed height weight skin color everything it was I'm thinking to myself wow they got me on the video game and while his kid was playing he almost whispers it in my ears like you know the crazy thing about this is you didn't get paid okay but first of all I don't know who that kid was but that's a dick move hey dad's pretty crazy how you got nothing for this right must be pretty humiliating right ed about you not getting any money but they said it's pretty annoying right ed are you annoyed ed are you annoyed right now ed is it annoying to you Ed actually they actually don't make that game anymore in part because ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA over their rules on compensating athletes and won the NCAA is currently appealing that decision which would allow players to be paid partly because as they often claim schools could barely afford it 14 schools out of the 1,100 last year actually had positive cash flow on of intercollegiate athletics it's anything but a money-making proposition for universities and colleges exactly we have sports for the same reason Mariah Carey has an acting career God knows it's not to make a profit it's for the love of the game okay that's the principle now he's not he's not wrong that many departments barely break even although that's a little misleading because for the schools that generate most of the money those losses are sometimes by design profits are what's left when you account for expenses they can come up with an awful lot of expenses an awful lot of salaries they find them a ton of ways to spend that's true in keeping with their nonprofit status some schools spend money to make it look like they're not making too much money it's like when your rich friend buys diesel jeans that already have holes in them come on Braden we all know that you can afford to have warm knees you're not fooling anyone B and when and when rich schools do this to move money around not so rich schools end up getting into an arms race to compete it's one of the reasons why the ten largest football stadiums in the country belong to colleges in fact the University of Michigan has claimed that on game days their stadium is the fourth largest city in the state of Michigan and incidentally also the one with the fewest rusted out auto plants now run by raccoon so they're doing their best but but stadiums are just the beginning Alabama made an MTV Cribs style video showing off their ludicrously opulent football facilities one of the really the best features I think of the locker room is the hydrotherapy area we have in there a hot tub and a cold tub and I really I used the term tub but really they're their pools okay I never thought I'd say this but Alabama stop showing off your ostentatious wealth okay and the crazy thing is it is not just buildings that school spends money on Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen was just given a raise pushing his salary to four million dollars a year seven million dollars a year for the next eight years that's Alabama coach Nick Saban's New Deal University of Kentucky announced a fifty two million dollars seven-year contract extension with head basketball coach John Calipari now before you get too shocked remember America has a long proud history of paying aging white men unconscionable amounts of money for screaming at people so there's precedence as I'm saying there's precedent there but all this makes it even harder to swallow when some coaches like Clemson's Dabo Swinney a man who makes over three million dollars a year insists that his players not get paid for paying players professionalizing college athletics that's where you lose me you know I'll go do something else because you know there's enough entitlement on this world as it is now like if you find that infuriating you might like to know that Dabo Swinney is an anagram for soybean wind which i think is fitting because he seems as pleasant as an edamame fart and the fact and it's a fact that his name is an anagram for soybean wind is not relevant to this discussion but I thought it was worth mentioning because it feels like something he'd be annoyed by and would not want people to know on a wide basis hashtag Sweeney has trademarked his name for use on shirts because he's allowed to do that the n-c-double-a manual explicitly states coaches are free to pursue endorsement or consultation contracts and players are acutely aware of this discrepancy his former University of Michigan basketball start Jalen Rose the revenue stream for coaches people underestimate you get paid from the school do you get paid from camps did you pay from a payroll company have a TV deal you have your radio show that's five revenue strange for the coach so when I come into practice and I miss a couple of shots and I dribble it off my foot and coach said Jana what's going on with you what's going on me my mother likes about to get cut off that's my problem that makes sense sometimes it must be tough to focus on your lights out shooting when your mother's lights are literally going out and if you're thinking well they'll all get rich when they become professional athletes that's true in a fractional number of cases because less than two percent of college basketball and football players go pro so if you're an athlete who dreams of being a Viking or a wizard you probably have about the same chance of becoming an actual Viking or an actual visit and all of this assumes that they managed to stay healthy because if they get injured a whole host of other problems can emerge fun fact the very first executive director of the NCAA stated that he crafted the term student-athlete in the 1950s explicitly to avoid workers comp for injured athletes and 60 years later that term is still working kyle hardrick was so good that Oklahoma offered him a basketball scholarship in ninth grade but after a knee injury during practice his freshman year he lost his scholarship and with medical bills piling up he couldn't afford to stay in school if it was workman's comp my son would have been taking care of for the rest of his life he would have been able to finish his college to be fair he was promised in education and he got one a first-class education in how little school sometimes give a about their student athletes this whole system seems fundamentally flawed and yet the NCAA constantly insists there is no way athletes can be paid even a nominal amount because the notion of converting a student to a paid employee is something that is utterly antithetical to the whole principle of intercollegiate athletics it completely changes the entire notion of what college sports is all about you know what I think you might be right if college sports is all about exploiting people then yes paying athletes would absolutely change the entire notion of what college sports are all about and look look no one is saying they need to be paid for hundreds of thousands or the same amount or even that every school needs to pay every athlete but to pay everyone zero when the kids selling their jersey at the campus bookstore gets $10 an hour seems a little bit strange and if it truly is all about the romance of amateurism that's fine give up the sponsorships and the TV deals stop paying the coaches and have teams run by an asthmatic anthropology professor with a whistle but if you are if you're gonna change nothing at least be honest about the business you're engaged in feel free to bring back your video games but in the spirit of all thank T City that seems to matter so much to you make them a little more accurate rated E for exploitative from LWT Sports March set is 2015 the most authentic college basketball game of all time because any game can give you the excitement of college athletics but that's only about 2% of your week for the first time you'll get to experience the other 98% you'll get to enjoy all the fun of being screamed at by a middle-aged millionaire while living in constant fear of losing your scholarship being from a career-ending injury accidentally accepting a free lunch when you're hungry or directly profiting in any way from the value of your work because making money is utterly antithetical to the whole principle of collegiate athletics but don't take it from us take it from the unwilling star of EA's NCAA basketball Oh 9 and O'Bannon this game is every bit as a real thing that you played your own player and enjoy not that a student athlete experience begins our game puts just as much emphasis on an education as a real n-c-double-a division 1 school does are you ready for your Swahili exam congratulations students you speak Swahili now back to the gym home it's the most authentic college game of all time as another unpaid star of NCAA basketball o9 gym and row will attest yeah that's pretty much what it's like and this year if you play L WT s n-c-double-a March sadness you can play in two new modes coach mode which consists mostly it's screaming at eighteen year olds or you can choose school administrator mode where your only job is speak around how to somehow remain a non-profit you want a stadium across from yours idiom how about a rocket ship but be careful because if you use a penny of that money to pay your players game over the point is no matter which mode you choose you're guaranteed all the joy of top level college athletics March sadness 2015 LWT sports it's an exchange this game is some you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 13,847,033

Rating: 4.8872609 out of 5

Keywords: hbo, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (TV Program), ncaa, Shabazz Napier (Basketball Player), Jalen Rose (Award Winner), march madness, Ed O'Bannon (Basketball Player)

Id: pX8BXH3SJn0

Length: 20min 53sec (1253 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/moffattron9000]

Hey South Carolina, you've been given Soybean Wind. Please use it liberally.

[u/Ometrist]

It's sort of like telling a full-time nurse, "There's no salary for this job, we're just gonna be giving you free trumpet lessons, which you'll be too busy to do, but if you don't learn to play the trumpet, you're fired.

Great analogy. Translation, for those who didn't watch the whole thing or don't see the corollary... It's like telling an athlete that they'll get a free education, which they have minimal time to allocate towards, and if they don't [have good enough grades/lose ability to play] they can get their scholarship pulled.

[u/[deleted]]

TLDR; Former student athlete. The NCAA can lick my taint

I'm a senior who just finished eligibility. This is spot on. What Richard Sherman said is 100% true and I wish was harped on more. You can't take advantage of the free education because you can't work during the school year, can't do a summer internship, can't do a coop, and your GPA is gonna get boned. I majored in biomedical engineering, but 75% of student athletes major in a "jock degree". They are not smart enough to major in a serious degree because they do not have the time for extra studying due to poor preparation from inner city or rural high schools. 15% major in business or liberal arts (history, pre law, polisci, etc). This is difficult to get a solid job in because in finance, marketing and accounting it's all about your summer internships which you can't do because you have to be on or near campus for workouts. The other 10% major in a STEM degree. Premed, chemistry, biology, engineering. Again, you can't do an internship and AT BEST your gpa will be 3.0-3.25. Enough to get a job with an internship or coop, but not enough to cold call interview with a company.

They also didn't mention the drug tests which though "random" are administered to the same group of people generally. During this drug test you drop your pants, lift your shirt, lift your manhood, spin around, then urinate into a cup while a 60 year old man stares at your Johnson from 4 feet away. They then measure the sample for temperature, salinity, and specific gravity to ensure it did just leave your body which was being stared at by the administrator. I get the need for drug tests but at any other profession they check your pockets and send you in a bathroom. It's just humiliating. Also as a white male I had to be tested for sickle cell anemia (a trait which has only been exhibited in peoples of African descent) before I could practice. Again I see the need for mandatory testing, but come on.

[u/[deleted]]

Coverage like this may actually end up having an impact. The NCAA may not give a shit about people writing letters or small scale boycotts, but bad publicity like this reflects badly on the sponsors. That will get their attention.

[u/GoBuckeyes3]

Solid rant, I do enjoy me some Jon Oliver humor. It's obviously presented in a one sided fashion but it's getting increasingly harder to argue against athlete compensation. Part of me sees these discussions and thinks how awful things are for the players... Then my student loan paycheck goes out and I get very bitter about players getting "paid"

That being said the whole "starving athlete" stuff is bullshit. They get the student meal plan for free every year they're there and that's what the vast majority of students live on.

[u/thyming]

It's really weird how some people in here try to rationalize the current system.

If we currently paid players and the NCAA proposed not paying players and stating that the education was enough, you'd think they were crazy.

[u/CowboyColin]

Mike Leach!!!!

[u/KudzuKilla]

Richard Shermon. I'd take you up on your offer of having a athletes schedule for one semester if i can also have an athletes scholarship, free food, clothing and board for one semester. Its like people dont understand how many regular college students there are out there working to pay rent and for food while going into debt just to have a chance at a decent job out of college.

[u/Tsquared10]

Yeah Alabama, stop showing off your ostentatious wealth haha I mean what kind of program would do something like that