Lavar Ball: the Unlikely Vanguard of Student Athlete Economics
- Cheolmin Im
- Mar 31, 2017
- 8 min read
If you don’t know who Lavar Ball is by now, then either you’ve lived under a rock for the past couple of months or you’re an alien. The father of three ballers (sorry, I like puns) has been hit with heavy criticism and mockery for his outrageous comments and unwarranted promotion of his three sons as a brand, “Big Baller Brand”. Naturally, the Balls have been labeled as the Kardashians of the NBA, quite deservedly so from the father’s comments about being able to dominate Michael Jordan in his prime, unwarranted criticism of Lebron’s kids, and demanding a $1 billion shoe deal from Nike in exchange for his 3 sons.
In my humble opinion, I think he has morphed into an attention-hogging nuthead with the rise of his oldest son, Lonzo, and has passed the point of return in terms of respect that he’ll elicit from people. But, there is a particular trend of Lavar Ball’s comments that is “interesting”, worthy of a few days of contemplation, research, and effort that a college student puts forth in these articles, worthy of a few minutes of your time for digestion and discussion with fellow sports junkies. What is it? It is the dormant volcano that is waiting to wreak havoc among the inhabitants of the amateur sports world. It was the hot issue that brought down the ‘00s gamers’ favorite, EA’s NCAA Football franchise (UGH). It is the issue of the economics of college athletes.
College athletes don’t get paid. College athletes are prohibited from marketing their success and receiving any type of profit. College athletes are supposed to be the embodiment of “amateurism”: “to preserve an academic environment in which acquiring a quality education is the first priority, athletic activities the second” per NCAA.com’s definition. This held true when NCAA was first conceived. The issue of pension for college athletes was nonexistent.
However, we now live in a highly market-based, market-catered society. Commercials of colleges are rampant, with the big selling point being the athletic environment that they provide. Sports networks make media deals with NCAA to broadcast and market the athletic competition over the radio, internet, and TV. Hell, even the student store sales are towering, and most of them come from sports related products. CFP, March Madness, College World Series, and more put profit over everything else. List goes on. Revenue that these schools receive from athletic competitions is ridiculous. Do you have any idea of how much the colleges and NCAA itself make? Over 28 schools had revenues of over $100 million in the 2014-2015 school year, and the NCAA itself has a total revenue of about $1 billion. That are towering figures of what were supposed to be “embodiments” of the “amateurism” that these institution were founded upon.
What do the college athletes get? You may say, they get athletic scholarships, so surely that must amount to something, right? Well, as a fellow college student myself, it isn’t as glamorous as you think. Average Division I scholarship for athletes is around $15k per year, and only 4 sports categories provide full scholarships at all, per scholarshipstats.com. I mean just students themselves can easily get about the same money or even more from scholarships. What the student athletes get is a bit laughable in that sense.
It is a penny’s worth to what the schools get in revenue from their athletes’ achievements. The revenues are almost solely contingent on the success of their athletic programs. The success of athletic programs largely depends on their athletes. Something is off.
People have tried to change it. The most recent attempt was the NCAA v. O’Bannon, where Ed O’Bannon, a former student-athlete at UCLA, and other then-current college athletes sought compensation for commercial use of their likeness in media, particularly the sports video games per NYTimes. It almost went up to the Supreme Court, but ultimately, the appeals court rejected a compromise pay of $5000 per year while also stating that the “amateurism rule” violated the antitrust laws. Both sides were and still are unhappy. Nothing really has happened since.
So, in comes Lavar Ball. I mean, even though the cause of this immense pressure on his kids is almost entirely his fault, he still is a father, who at his heart, cares for his sons and family, or at least should. Even if he is just plain crazy, the primordial instinct of needing to preserve the family bloodline, which is observed in every single organism on the earth, is driving his outrageous comments. Sure, they might not elicit wholesome reactions, but the Ballers are garnering attention that is fitting of superstar athletes, and that’s all that matters in the end. This is just my general observation of the atmosphere he has created. I haven’t even gotten to dissect the genius, underhanded business moves that he is serving up for his kids.
I’m particularly interested in the comments described in this
interview with USA Today:
He has said that they are looking for a packaged shoe deal of all three of his sons that would be worth $1 billion, at $100 million a year, with the big brands of Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and even the “Big Baller Brand” that Lavar has trademarked.
No one else but Lebron James and Michael Jordan receives that much money on a contract with a sports brand. Alright, let’s step back for a little bit: who in the right mind would dare to make these “pitches” to the most prestigious companies in the sports industry? Who in the right mind would even pitch this kind of offer now, when his youngest son won’t be eligible for compensation until 2020 at the very least? Who in the f*ck’s sake demands $1 billion straight up, and “settle” for $100 million a year in a “compromise” move? This nuthead isn’t even an agent making official contract negotiations; this dude is a father with no ambitions of being an agent. Like who does this kind of sh*t?
But wait a minute. Hold up. What do you mean no one has done it until Lavar Ball? You said it yourself, he isn’t an agent representing the Ball brothers, he’s just a father making these comments. He’s got NOTHING to lose. So what if the big companies ignore his sales pitches? The media won’t. If you search up “Lavar Ball Nike Deal” on Google, you’ll get over 164,000 results. Sports networks have jumped on this and keep bringing this up whenever Lavar Ball gives his daily quota of outrageous comments. People are talking about this. There is legitimate discussion. And I’ve only made the assumption that the big companies don’t care about his pitches, what if they have given it thought already? What if this draws in secondary companies like Asics, Puma, etc. to jump on the “bluff” and strike a deal with the Balls? With just a few words from his mouth, Lavar Ball has opened up doors that were nonexistent before for his kids. He opened up financial opportunities that might otherwise have not been there. This guy is a genius. Insane, but genius.
But is there a deeper motive behind his mouth? I think so. It is a primordial instinct like I outlined a few paragraphs before: the motivation of preserving the familial bloodline. NBA is turbulent. College Basketball is turbulent. A baller’s career can be taken away in an instant. The uncertainty of the future drives athletes to seek “insurance” policies that often exceed millions in worth because they are fearful of the “what if”. What if they can’t play tomorrow? What will they do for a living? How will they survive? This doesn’t involve just the Ball family; this concern applies to every family of a student-athlete across globe.
A lot of these athletes come from underprivileged families. Sports aren’t just hobbies for them; they are their lifeline. Their families’ lives almost surely depend on their success on the field. It isn’t a competition; it is all out war during the games. If you’ve been to high school football games in a football town, you know the feeling. These guys put their lives on the line to get one more yard, to make one more highlight play, to stand out to potential scouts in the college. These games are packed. Any regular game will attract thousands of bystanders. A rivalry game? Oh man, you better move that game to a professional field, because you’ll have a couple ten thousand people all lined up to see the biggest stars in their town. And in college? Pressure is off the charts. Resources are far and few from their own families. This is where colleges must step in and help, but it is inadequate.
This isn’t particularly applicable to the Ball family, but this hits home to the average student athlete. They need the resources. They need the food. 18, 19 yr olds are constantly hungry, I know that myself. And they are expected to be at their top condition before every single game. How do you require that when you can’t even give them the necessary support? That $5000 per year for every student athlete in compensation of their actions on the field? Sure sounds good to me, and it damn sounds good to the student athletes.
And the sports world is changing. It is rapidly changing with the advent of esports, where teams compete in online games, such as League of Legends, to take home prizes. Market? Huge. Business? Skyrocketing. The barrier between “real” sports and esports is closing fast, and rightfully so. These athletes train as hard as the “real” student athletes do. These guys study film, strategize, practice, practice, and practice. They are deserving of the title “student-athletes”, and they are starting to get the attention that they merit in the media. Colleges are accommodating for the “student athletes” of the esports realm. This is where the issue pops in again.
And get this, UC Irvine already has a state of the art infrastructure for their student athletes, and is giving scholarships to its competitive team members of over $15000 per year. My school’s own team just won a five-month long Overwatch tournament and (here it comes) WON $45000 out of $100000 in prize money. Let me repeat, they WON monetary prizes in a competition. Does that sound familiar? Yes, it is reminiscent of what professional athletes do for a living. But these are college students. These are registered esports athletes in the database. They are receiving their due compensation for their performances in the gaming arena.
If we are to categorize the gamers as “student-athletes”, then why can’t the pre-existing categories of student-athletes get compensation for their work? As I’ve said before, the barrier is being removed, and there is little to no distinction between the efforts that the athletes in the two categories put in, no matter how much you try suggest otherwise. This is unfair. There is no logic to this. More you dig into it, the less it makes sense. It’s like those city building games where the infrastructure is just haphazardly built upon one another to create something that is barely functional.
I’ve come a long ways from the start, but the point is, Lavar Ball has consciously or unconsciously sparked the debate of whether or not student athletes should get paid. Lavar is aware of the economics of student-athletes as he was once before. Perhaps he is subtly calling to this issue and draw attention to the dilemma for both sides to reach a sustainable deal. Gamers already have broken the boundary; there is no reason that ballers should not be able to. Even just spending money like that of allowance that the parents give to kids does not sound all too bad. Who knows. Maybe in an alternate timeline, student athletes get paid their due, everyone is happy, and Lavar is better than Jordan. Let’s hope that we make that timelines ours (except for the last part).
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