A solution to the NCAA problem

The NCAA has a fairly serious problem, but I have an idea about how to fix it. I am a fan of college football. Specifically, I am a Georgia Bulldog. Yesterday, my favorite team won an exciting Peach Bowl game against the University of Cincinnati Bearcats on a last second field goal. If Cincinnati had won the game, pundits would have been called a stunning victory. However, Bulldog fans had a valid excuse ready if we’d lost–a number of NFL draft-eligible “star” players chose not to play in the game,

Now if Georgia had been contending for a national championship, it is far more likely that Eric Stokes, Ben Cleveland, Monty Rice, and other starting players who skipped the game would have been on the field. While many fans complain about these players missing a football game due to fear of injury, I would like to remind the complainers of the serious injuries suffered by the great South Carolina running back Marcus Lattimore, or more recently, the serious knee injury to Miami QB D’Eriq King in the 2020 Cheezit Bowl.

Those two examples prove the players have a valid concern, but there is a third injured player whose name I’ll never forget: Devon Gales, the inspiring young player from Southern University tragically paralyzed in Sanford Stadium while blocking on a kickoff return against the Bulldogs.

The NCAA is a very wealthy organization. There is a lot of money involved in college sports, especially college football, and players have demanded they get paid to play. The counterargument to their demand has historically been to point to the value of a college scholarship and the “free” education opportunities, but that is a separate argument…the NCAA needs to worry about how best to protect the players. The recent rule changes for targeting are all well and good, and seem to be making the game safer, but what about the risk of injuries? College fans don’t like watching their teams lose key contributors for bowl games. It would not have been fair to Cincinnati’s players to suggest they could not have competed as well against a Georgia team at full strength, but when a team is missing several players projected to be early round draft picks, how can such arguments be avoided? In addition to the players mentioned, the Peach Bowl MVP, Azeez Ojulari, originally announced he would also skip the game. Without his three sacks that caused two fumbles and a safety, it is no way UGA would have won the game.

Ojulari apparently cemented his status as a mid-first round draft pick with his stellar performance, but what if he’d gotten hurt? Quite frankly, it isn’t fair for these athletes to be asked to take unnecessary risks when the NCAA is raking the rewards in the form of billions of dollars per year.

But here’s the deal–as more and more players decide to opt out of their bowl games, the lesser bowls will continue to draw less interest, and sponsors won’t be willing to pay premium advertising dollars to be associated with mediocrity. In other words, less revenue to the NCAA. Sure, the big bowl games will still draw the interest of college football fans, but who wanted to see Florida play without four of their wide receivers and their star tight end? It was so ugly at least one Georgia fan felt a little bit sorry for the Gators, and that should never happen.

So, here’s my idea for a solution to the problem of players leaving their team before the end of the season: the NCAA should create a fund that acts as insurance for these student-athletes as they compete, with two aspects to it: for projected NFL players, they should be rated according to their potential and guaranteed money should they suffer a serious injury while competing in a bowl game.

Currently it is up to the individual schools to buy insurance policies for their star players, as Georgia did several years ago for star RB Todd Gurley–UGA purchased a five million-dollar policy for permanent disability and another five million for “loss of value” in terms of the NFL draft, so if the knee injury suffered in one of the final games of the year had ended his career, he would have limped away with ten million-dollars.

In my opinion, the NCAA needs to provide that catastrophic disability insurance policy for every player, so that seriously injured players like Devon Gales never have to rely on private fundraising or the generosity of the Bulldog Nation to guarantee a decent quality of life and hope for a brighter future. Surely they could negotiate some form of umbrella policy to cover every player, or the NCAA could self-fund it. God knows, they have enough money. They practically print the stuff. Any player who suffers a serious injury should be compensated. The amount of their compensation should also be increased depending on their loss of future value to NFL teams, as determined by independent third parties such as NFL scouts. Something along the lines of projected first round picks would get five million if they were unable to play pro football after pre-draft injury, second round picks would get four million, third rounders would get three million, etc. until the fifth round, and from there any draft able player unable to play pro ball due to injury would get at least one million-dollars to start their life after sports. Doesn’t someone looking forward to a lifetime of chronic knee, back, elbow, shoulder, or neck pain get something to make their lives a little easier, considering what they gave to entertain us?

Furthermore, the NCAA should incentivize the star college players to stay in school by allowing them to get a rating from NFL scouts to gauge their value. Some players who skipped their team’s bowl games and left school early were not even drafted. It’s a pretty safe bet that Georgia would not have won without Ojulari, and of all the players who skipped the game, he probably had more to lose, financially speaking. It shouldn’t be up to the individual teams to encourage their best players to play out the season because it is in the best interest of college sports on the whole.

As it stands, we college football fans can’t blame our favorite players when they make a cost/benefit analysis and decide the risk of injury isn’t worth the reward of winning one final bowl game, especially when their team isn’t competing for a national championship.

We can blame the NCAA, though. They need to fix this.