Fish and Chipps: NCAA, you have problems

When the clock strikes noon on Thursday, another year of March Madness will officially commence.

There will be upsets, buzzer beaters, diaper dandies, David, Goliath, rounds of hooky, bracketology and money — lots and lots of money. Let’s be honest. You’ve definitely bet way too much money on Kentucky over the last five years (one-and-done teams like Kentucky are way too tempting, but way too unpredictable).

According to the American Gaming Association, it was estimated that $9 billion was spent betting on the 2015 NCAA Tournament. Comparatively, just $3.9 billion was wagered on the 2015 Super Bowl. So yeah, this whole tournament is madness.

But here’s the real madness: When the first game tips off at noon on Thursday, billions of dollars will be going into the pockets of everyone except for the people who create all the chaos — the student-athletes.

Just as March Madness brings out the best in college athletics, it also exemplifies everything that’s wrong with it as an institution.

But instead of being a Debby Downer leading up to the most wonderful time of the year, I’ve decided to flip the script. Here’s a simple yet efficient model to change college athletics and fix the broken NCAA.

1. Fire Mark Emmert

Mark Emmert is the president of the NCAA, but I prefer to look at him as that stepfather who forces you to go to church on Sunday even though you’re Jewish and hate eating ham and cheese sandwiches.

He’s repeatedly said that athletes should not become paid employees, but under his watch, college coaches across the country have signed multi-million dollar contracts and endorsement deals. I’m looking at your recent $52 million contract, John Calipari.

Emmert’s reign has been clouded in controversy with recruiting violations, boosters’ involvement in athletic programs, class-action lawsuits and unfair drug testing policies.

According to USA TODAY, Emmert made more than $1.8 million in 2013. If you’re going to pay someone that kind of money, can you at least show some evidence to suggest that he’s genuinely helped the people he claims to represent? (Those are the “student-athletes” I’m talking about, in case you thought it was the conference commissioners and big-time sponsors.)

The man has no vision for the future of college athletics, and as long as he remains head of the NCAA, college athletes will be stuck in limbo while their coaches and administrators reap benefits.

#FireEmmert

2. Re-define the term “student-athlete”

“Student-athlete” isn’t just a nice little term that coaches and administrators use to sound politically correct. It’s a word that was formed in the 1950s when the widow of Ray Dennison, who died in Colorado playing football for Fort Lewis A&M, filed for workers’ compensation benefits and was denied it by the Colorado Supreme Court, citing that the college was “not in the football business.”

How ironic that more than 60 years later, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The NCAA has signed billion-dollar TV deals for the College Football Playoff and the NCAA Tournament, and not a penny of that money can be redistributed to the players because of a term that was deliberately ambiguous.

We need to ask what a student-athlete really is, because the logic here doesn’t make much sense.

If a player is spending up to 40 hours a week working as an athlete — which includes everything from training to rehabilitating to studying film to traveling and playing — is it realistic to think they can succeed as a student too?

During the season, let’s reduce the class load for players and give them as much time as they need to graduate. It can’t be humanly possible to master a complicated spread offense and the ideal gas law at the same time. Plus, do we really want our athletes thinking about that molecular genetics exam in the fourth quarter of a big game?

3. Unionize

Student-athletes have no power in changing the landscape of college athletics because they have no voice. Currently, there is no union to represent student-athletes in any capacity. The Northwestern University football team tried to become the first program to unionize, but last year the National Labor Relations Board voted and declined to assert jurisdiction on the case, which significantly hindered the chances of creating a real threat to the current model.

The players need representation not just because they are voiceless, but because they need a body of lawyers and former players who will fight to get student-athletes basic rights such as workers’ compensation benefits, lifetime health care for injuries, objective drug testing and lifelong scholarships.

4. Let players make money off their likeness

You have every reason to hate Johnny Manziel, but there is no reason he should have been barred from making money off of his likeness when he played at Texas A&M. Have you seen that $485 million renovation to Kyle Field? Much of the thanks for that goes to Manziel, who brought a new national face to the program and millions of dollars of revenue with it.

But when Manziel was accused of making money for signing autographs before his sophomore year, Texas A&M and the NCAA turned into Frank and Claire Underwood trying to shake down everyone who might have been a part of the autograph scandal.

It doesn’t make any sense for a player to be barred from making money off of his likeness. If he or she is so good that someone is willing to pay them in return for an illegible autograph, what’s wrong with that? Society seems to take no issues with professional athletes doing it. What’s so different with college athletes?

5. Compensate players

All of these issues have brought us to the truth: College athletes need to be paid.

The issue is complicated, but the logic is simple. Pay the players who produce the product you pay to consume. For most student-athletes, collegiate athletics aren’t a stepping stone to the next level — they’re essentially an unpaid internship.

You get a lot of “professional experience,” but you don’t get the benefits for providing the manual labor necessary to create the final product. Sound a lot like your unpaid internship from last summer?

If student-athletes have to wait three years before they can play in the NFL and they’re making millions of dollars for their coaches, athletic directors and universities, why shouldn’t they get a slice of the pie?

We need to find a system that fairly compensates student-athletes for the work they produce that we all take for granted. Yes, only two sports — football and men’s basketball — are profitable, but major college programs make so much money off of ticket sales, TV deal and merchandise that there must be a way to compensate the student-athletes.

Critics argue that the “amateurism” of college athletics is what makes it unique to the sports world, but I find it increasingly hard to call student-athletes amateurs when their faces are being shown on SportsCenter everyday and they become hashtags on Twitter. There is already such a blurred line between what is amateur and professional that it’s become almost impossible to distinguish the two.

So before you pick the winning bracket this year, just remind yourself that you have a better shot at cashing in on March Madness than any of the players competing in the 68-team field this year.

Isn’t that madness?