The NCAA gets $6 billion from CBS for the rights to televise the NCAA Tournament.
The players get free rings for playing in the tournament.The coaches get six-figure salaries.
The players get per diem.
The NCAA receives millions from ticket revenues.
The players receive free T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, shorts and shoes -- from a shoe sponsor, not the NCAA.
The NCAA and its schools make millions by selling licensing agreements, which allows retailers to make millions on the sale of hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts and a player's replica jersey with his name and number on the back.
The players get free airplane rides and a free stay in a nice hotel, plus tuition and books, of course.
Many coaches have clauses in their contracts that reward them if their team qualifies for the NCAA tournament.
Players get free souvenir NCAA tournament programs.
Coaches augment their income with outside jobs -- i.e. shoe contracts, radio and TV programs, basketball camps, endorsements.
First-year players are banned from taking jobs. All other players can have jobs -- but they're not allowed to earn more than $2,000 during the academic year. And that's only if they can manage a job between classes, practices, meetings, film sessions, weight training and study hall. Note: Until the 1999-2000 academic year, players weren't allowed to hold any job during the school year.
The IOC has nothing on the NCAA. In 1997, the Kansas City Star reported that the NCAA manual for cities hosting Final Fours required gifts to be delivered every night to the hotel rooms of NCAA officials. These mementos reportedly cost one host city an estimated $25,000. At a minimum, gifts for each official included a Samsonite suit bag, a Final Four ticket, a Limoges porcelain basketball and Steuben glass.
Eight players were suspended by the NCAA this past season for accepting gifts, ranging from relatively small amounts of money to shoes. One of them received a whopping $200 from an agent two years ago. One was suspended because an amateur coach paid for a summer-school course while he was in high school. Many of the players were punished because their tuition to a prep school was paid by a third party. Another player was provided living quarters while in high school. Under NCAA rules, players cannot receive a free hamburger from a booster. They cannot use the photocopy machine in the athletic department office, either -- that would mean free copies and free paper.
The NCAA likes to say its players are students first. Its employees are required to introduce players as "student-athletes" at press conferences. The NCAA considers itself -- officially at least -- an educational institution, not big business, even though it has its own marketing, real estate and licensing divisions.
"Student-athletes" are routinely required to play 10 o'clock games for ESPN on a school night. The Final Four is played on Saturday and Monday nights, rather than Friday and Sunday nights. The reason: more money. "Student-athletes" are, in effect, discouraged by the NCAA from getting degrees, because its suspensions and the rules barring them from earning an income cause many of the best players to leave school early or skip it altogether to go to the NBA, where there's more clarity and consistency of purpose.
NCAA officials used to fly to the Final Four and other destinations via their own Learjet. They used to fly businessmen in the plane, as well. (The NCAA put the jet up for sale a couple of years ago after a newspaper made it public knowledge.)
The NCAA forbids coaches from giving players cab money. The families of the players have to find their own way to the NCAA tournament at great expense. Two years ago the mother of Utah's Andre Miller had to take a bus from California to San Antonio and back again to see her son play in the Final Four.
The NCAA executive office alone makes about $270 million a year. NCAA members generate an estimated $3 billion annually. And they don't have to pay the stars of the show, or pay taxes because it enjoys nonprofit status as an educational institution. NCAA revenues increased 8,000 percent during the past 25 years. The NCAA has 933 member schools -- more teams than the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball combined -- and the athletic departments at some schools are worth more than a professional franchise.
But the NCAA is an educational institution, not a business.
And the players are just student-athletes.
That's what we're to believe in the wake of another basketball season as another school year nears the end.