Boola boola, not moola moola

THIS WEEK, sports fans will be treated to a celebration of the best in college football. You’ll see winners hugging each other and singing their school fight songs, and losing players holding their heads and weeping. You may spot older men, who once played, returning to watch their alma maters and reliving a time they consider the highlight of their lives.

The cynics will tell you this is all a mirage. College football is merely a business, and the players are the subjects of brutal exploitation. Their solution is to pay the players. This argument pops up periodically, most recently from the normally brilliant Matthew Yglesias, writing in the American Prospect.

I’ve noticed that those who want to pay college players tend not to be fans of the game. Now, it may be that they’ve been turned off by what they see as exploitation, but I suspect most of them had little interest in the game even before it aroused their social consciences. If they follow any game closely, it’s the pro game, and they see the college game as nothing more than a minor league version of the real thing.

Naturally, they misunderstand the sense of tradition and loyalty that runs through the college game. I’ve read innumerable interviews with former players from the University of Michigan -- my alma mater -- and perhaps the most common thing they say is that their college days were the most fun they ever had, while the professional game is a business. They receive a free education, free room and board, get to play a game they love and be minor celebrities on a college campus. Millions of young men would give anything for that opportunity.

The cynical response is that the players don’t receive a real education, and those who don’t make the professional ranks have been used up and tossed aside, their future prospects dimmed. But many players are serious students. I’ll concede that there are plenty of players who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten into college and don’t get much of an education. I still fail to see, though, how this amounts to exploitation.

The worst-case scenario is a player who spends four years on campus, learns nothing, gets no degree and doesn’t play professionally. How is that player any worse off than he would have been if he didn’t go to college in the first place? The only difference is that he spent four years playing a game he loves instead of spending those years working a menial job.

The cynics have no explanation as to why star players -- such as USC’s Matt Leinart -- choose to spend another year on campus rather than earn millions in the National Football League. Leinart said he was having too much fun in college to leave. Lesser players than Leinart could be playing in the Canadian league or in Europe, but choose to stay on campus. Are they all unaware that they’re being exploited?

The cynics’ biggest flaw is that they seem to have no grasp on how the economics of the game work. They seize on the fact that colleges make millions off the players. But what do the colleges do with the proceeds? They use it to fund nonrevenue sports. Most college sports lose money for the schools and only exist because there’s profit from the moneymaking ones.

So, in this Marxist exploitation scenario, the villainous man in the top hat twirling his mustache turns out to be the women’s volleyball team. If colleges paid football or basketball players, you’d be taking away scholarships for student-athletes who have no chance of professional careers in order to give money to student-athletes who might go on to riches in the NFL.

How exactly is this an advance for the cause of social justice? It’s not. Enjoy the games.