Letters to the Editor: The NCAA still has a ‘plantation mentality’ on student-athlete pay

To the editor: Those who abhor college athletes enjoying the fruit of their labor ignore the 1995 book written by the former NCAA head Walter Byers, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes.” (“This lawsuit has the NCAA staring down extinction. Is that a bad thing?” column, Nov. 29)

From 1951 to 1987, Byers reigned as the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s first executive director. Byers transformed the NCAA from a stodgy mom-and-pop operation into a money-gushing cartel, bloated by the signing of multiple television contracts.

Perhaps conscience-stricken, Byers wrote in his book that the treatment of college athletes was “the plantation mentality resurrected and blessed by today’s campus executives.”

Of course, Texas A&M University paying a football coach $75 million after he was fired is fine. But how do coaches navigate athletes capitalizing on their own name and likeness?

Way back in 2014, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the NCAA policy that prohibited athletes from earning money violated antitrust laws. Its arrogance aflame, the NCAA dug in, refusing to change its exploitative model.

Now, the NCAA laments its self-inflicted demise because of a $1.4-billion class-action lawsuit. The chickens have come home to roost.

Marc D. Greenwood, Opelika, Ala.

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To the editor: When I was a student at USC in the 1960s, the 50-yard-line seats in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum were reserved for students. At some later date, they were turned over to high rollers, and students were moved to the end zone.

That is the time the myth of college football as an amateur sport collapsed.

Hal Drake, Santa Barbara