N.Y. Times columnist JOE NOCERA appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Trevor Noah" last night to promote his new book, which he co-authored with fellow NYT writer BEN STRAUSS, titled "INDENTURED: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE REBELLION AGAINST THE NCAA." Host Trevor Noah asked, "Is it safe to say you are saying that the NCAA treats its players like slaves?" Nocera: "Indentured servants. ... They can leave. Of course, it wrecks their career, it wrecks their life, they can't get an education, they don't have a good life. But they can leave." Noah asked, "Do you really believe that the change needs to come in the form of them paying the players?" Nocera: "I do. I think they need more rights. I think they need due process and I think they need money. They get a scholarship, but they often don't get an education. They're making billions of dollars for everyone else. ... They take classes that are designed to keep them on the field as opposed to having a normal major like every other student. A lot of them aren't prepared for college work." Nocera said to the NCAA's stance by paying players they would no longer be amateurs, "So? What's their point?" Nocera, speaking to the NCAA's stance that paying athletes would compromise amateurism, said "lots of students get paid" working jobs in college. Nocera: "The only ones that don't get paid are athletes who, by the way, work 50, 60 hours. Their education is way secondary to being on the practice field and oh by the way, the coach makes $5 million." Nocera said Congress is "never going to do anything" and the NCAA is "never going to reform itself." Nocera: "But there is a way. ... If one team at the Final Four decided not to come out and just stayed in the locker room, you'd change the system in an hour" ("The Daily Show With Trevor Noah," Comedy Central, 3/15).
ROAD LESS TRAVELED: In Raleigh, Barry Jacobs wrote Nocera and Strauss' book "maintains an unrelenting focus on inequities characteristic" of the NCAA. Jacobs: "The antagonistic stance taken in 'Indentured' -- and the drumbeat of unfair actions it cites to illustrate NCAA insensitivity to the athletes it supposedly serves -- is neither surprising nor original." Where the book "takes a less-traveled path is in chronicling the rising tide of legal challenges to the system of NCAA governance and to the organization's function as a monopoly." The book "persuasively insists athletes should be paid, if only as a matter of economic fairness" (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 3/10). In Chicago, Bill Savage wrote Nocera and Strauss "demonstrate how the NCAA belies its own purported ideals in ways that betray fundamental American values." The authors "agree with many critics who claim that the NCAA is a cartel, an organization of economic entities that cooperate to fix prices or wages for its own benefit, beyond what is 'reasonable and necessary.'" Savage: "The strongest point in 'Indentured' is the way Nocera and Strauss make it crystal clear that the NCAA's injustices have an undeniable racial component" (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 3/11). In a special to FORBES.com, Ohio Univ. professor David Ridpath writes the book is the "equivalent of taking a Louisville Slugger to the head of the NCAA and the largely white, male minions that govern and profit off it, while the athletes themselves are continued to be restricted and controlled while increasing amounts of dollars flow into the system" (FORBES.com, 3/11).
