ESPN's "College GameDay" welcomed Arkansas Razorbacks head coach John Calipari to the show this weekend.
Things got heated.
ESPN college basketball analysts Jay Bilas, Jay Williams and Seth Greenberg got into a very heated discussion about the state of the game and what the NCAA needs to do moving forward to improve things.
The crew was asked if college basketball has essentially become a “professional sport,” but with a major lack of structure surrounding collegiate athletics at large.
Coach Cal and the "College GameDay" crew very much disagreed.
“It’s amateur basketball,” Calipari stated bluntly.
Bilas responded: “It was pro basketball before NIL, and I’ll tell you why. Amateur sports don’t make billions of dollars and pay their coaches and administrators millions."
He continued: “There is nothing about this that has ever been amateur once the money jumped up, and it started in 1984 with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed the conferences to sell their media rights. There is no difference between the media rights contracts with the NCAA from a media company like ours and the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball. Zero difference.”
Things got pretty heated, though
Calipari stood by his claims, though he wants players to be paid.
“I’ve been one that has promoted young people making money 15 years ago,” Calipari said. “Their NIL, they should be able to do this. We just gotta figure out, maybe it’s collective bargaining. Maybe it’s collective bargaining with the trade union, that the players and we come up with something. This is not sustainable.”
He added: “I do know this: the transfer and the length of eligibility— a 17-year-old playing against a 28-year-old is not healthy and safe."
Greenberg, meanwhile, stated where he stands, too.
“I just think we’re, we’re talking about the 1%. We’re not talking about the enterprise,” Greenberg said. “We have young people that are making this money, and that’s great. And they’re going to go to Europe and get fired. They’re going to come back. And you talk about mental health issues. We better be prepared to help these people and have someone build a bridge for them to cross, to help them navigate the rest of their life, not just these 3 or 4 years where they’re marketable.”
College basketball might not be truly professional or truly amateur, but it has problems to fix.
