• tebowheisman.com
• An Alabama coach from a different era, and a prized amateur prospect from the current era.

The USA Today preseason Coaches’ Poll was released this month, with Alabama predicted to repeat as BCS Champions. In the NBA, Las Vegas odd-makers have installed the Miami Heat as the heavy favorite. These two teams, on the surface, are very different: the Heat a composition of high-priced free agents come together to bring fun, flair and excitement to the NBA, and the Crimson Tide, a much more joyless and disciplined bunch captained by a taskmaster coach who would rather scowl than smile, glare than wink.

What unites them, though, are a series of news stories over the past month that revealed and complicated how we think about athletes in America and how to judge the complex relationship between players and the entities for which they play.

Two metaphors were used, each outrageous in its own way, that demonstrate how those who control teams and athletes still see them in highly problematic ways. Alabama head coach Nick Saban, bemoaning the role of agents in players’ lives, referred to them as no better than, “pimps,” while Jesse Jackson in response to Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s impolitic letter brought up the spectre of slavery.

Let’s consider the Saban example first: In order to fully appreciate this metaphor, we should be clear about what it is that a pimp does and is. A pimp is such an odious figure because he profits off of using the bodies of those he controls for the enjoyment of others. The abused give most of the money back to the pimp, and in the end will almost invariably end up washed up, strung out and used up, but this of no concern because there is a steady pipeline of new people to replace the old. Does this sound familiar? Indeed, from this perspective, Saban is right to point out the presence of pimpery in college football, but he should have pointed the finger at himself, not the agents.

Comparing and equating a well-known and highly successful coach to a pimp is an explosive charge to level, and the natural response is to point out just how shady these agents are, skulking about campuses trying to lure players to sign with them. Again, it bears mentioning just what it is that these purportedly odious agents do. The agents who find themselves in violation of NCAA rules usually get into trouble for giving players money in exchange for some additional consideration when they turn pro. To find this morally objectionable is to have thoroughly bought into the foolishness offered by the NCAA.

Put another way, in what other area of life is it wrong to give someone money as part of a bid to get them to sign with you? For example, law students at elite schools often take summer jobs paying them up to $2,000 a week, mostly to do a few easy assignments, play golf and go on firm trips, all with the purpose of trying to get that student to sign with the firm upon graduation, at which point they generally get a hefty signing bonus. Yale Law School, for example, does not decry the role of legal recruiters in spoiling their students, but the NCAA would want you to believe that a player agent who gives a college player money in order to convince them to sign a representation contract with them is somehow an odious and reprehensible person.

This naturally raises the question: What is the purpose of the NCAA rule prohibiting agents from contacting players or giving them money? These rules exist as a system of control designed to maintain the power of the institution over the players. Both basketball and football are littered with successful college coaches who failed at the professional level. These failures usually have much less to do with Xs and Os, and more to do with the fact that a professional athlete generating and earning millions of dollars will not tolerate a control freak yelling into his ear—nor should they.

If you look beyond even this narrow argument to the broader structure of the NCAA, you see myriad rules— concerning things like transferring to other schools and prohibitions against alumni giving players money— that are designed to put the player in a clearly subordinate position to the coach and the university.

This is not to revisit the debate about whether college athletes should be paid by universities. The money that players receive from agents does not come from schools, but rather circumvents the school, which is of course precisely the danger that the schools fear. A player with an independent source of income is not as easily controlled and is naturally less pliant to the demands of the NCAA, the school and his coaches. The natural retort is to point out that students are compensated well enough with a free education and room and board. Setting aside the fact that many of these athletes are in fact on partial scholarships and often have no spending money (because they are prohibited from working) there are two major points here.

First, there is the question of what is “enough.” Nick Saban is set to make $16 million over the next your years. At the University of Alabama, the cost of tuition, room and board is roughly $19,000, or $76,000 over the course of four years. To those of you without a calculator handy, Nick Saban’s compensation is 210 times larger than that of a scholarship player. I understand that coaching is a difficult job that requires very rare and specific skills (after all, Ice-T reminds us that “pimpin’ ain’t easy”)—but to suggest that Saban’s contribution to the success of the Alabama football team is 210 times greater than, say, Heisman Trophy-winning running back Mark Ingram is to strain credulity.

Second, compensation in the form of goods and services is not really a defense. The payment-in-kind argument that says because the athlete is fed, housed and taken care of he needs nothing more ignores the fact that he cannot negotiate his terms and smacks of a certain uncomfortable kind of servitude, which brings us to the related case of Lebron James…