According to LSU’s Land Acknowledgement Statement, “LSU is a community of higher learning built upon the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous peoples.”
There’s a massive thread of stealing and exploitation that courses the arc (to use MLK’s phrase) of United States history — weaving its way from the extraction of wealth from mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and children and adults through slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries; to the extraction of wealth from Native Americans through mass removal in the 19th century; to the extraction of wealth from poor and working-class Black Americans through Black Codes and Jim Crow laws in the 20th century; to the extraction of wealth from college athletes in the 21st century through “amateurism.”
To build its empire in the early-to-mid 1800s, for example, the white imperialist United States government — epitomized by Merriwether Lewis and William Clark of the eponymous Lewis and Clark Expedition, and by Jefferson Barracks, located south of St. Louis, Missouri — stole land that belonged to Native Americans. (Not far from Jefferson Barracks was Camp Jackson, which was named after Missouri’s pro-slavery Democratic governor Claiborne Jackson and housed artillery in 1861 that had just been seized from the U.S. armory in Baton Rouge.) This was done through straight up Native American removal — desecration, relocation, and exploitation.
“Desecration” and “relocation” are the nice ways of putting it. In reality, this meant white imperialists massacred Native Americans and forced land treaties upon them. The common euphemism is known as “westward expansion.” Using and abusing Native Americans’ indigenous knowledge of the land, therefore unknown to European Americans, against them — that was exploitation.
In short, the United States steals and exploits. It’s an empire. And because of amateurism, the NCAA steals and exploits. It’s an empire.
If the arc of the moral universe inevitably bends toward justice, then allowing college athletes to benefit from their name, image and likeness is a step in the right direction. It helps bridge the gap between labor and revenue by allowing them “to make money from endorsements and sponsorships while retaining eligibility,” according to The Athletic. As something athletes have long been barred from doing, this new stream of revenue will surely benefit a lot athletes. But it’s not enough: We need a revolution.
In the words of the late Huey Newton: “Any conclusion or particular action that we think is revolution is really reaction, for revolution is a developmental process.” Allowing athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness is thus a great start. But that’s all it is: a start. We are sadly mistaken if we think this is the revolution.
No, the end goal is to ensure that college athletes are allowed to receive full compensation for their revenue-generating labor, not just piecemeal name, image and likeness table scraps meant to whet the appetite of a starving athlete.
In the interest of empire, our broken system has stolen from and permitted — nay, encouraged and ensured — the routine exploitation of those without power: Native Americans, Black Americans, brown Americans, poor Americans and minority Americans. In other words, Americans who aren’t rich and white.
Today, it’s no exaggeration to say that our broken system also encourages and ensures the exploitation of college athletes — hard workers, best friends, cherished partners and beloved sons and daughters. Most of all: individuals who deserve to be fully compensated for their revenue-generating labor.
Yet in the interest of empire, the NCAA fosters this broken system, stealing from and exploiting its athletes. These are athletes who engage in revenue-generating labor but fail to see their fair share.
LSU’s statement goes on: “At the heart of LSU’s campus are two earthen mounds, architectural remnants created by Native Americans and predating the pyramids in Egypt.”
Thus at the heart of LSU is land stolen from Native Americans. And at the heart of the NCAA — a billion-dollar empire — is stolen labor.
While athletes toil in the gym, on the court and on the field, it’s the imperialist impresarios of the NCAA — the coaches, athletic directors, and high-ranking administrative officials — who capitalize on it. How else can the empire’s president makes a base salary of $2.7 million and its coaches be the highest paid state employees, making tens of millions of dollars?
Did not athletes contribute to this billion-dollar empire? It’s incumbent upon us to call out this glaring inequality.
We prize the coaches who manage the labor more than the athletes who provide the labor. We prize those who manage the empire more than those who sustain the empire. Make it make sense.
By stealing and exploiting, the NCAA wins and its athletes lose. This plays out at LSU as well: in 2020, LSU’s football coach made $8.6 million and the basketball coach made $2.4 million. Athletes, what do your bank accounts look like?
Thus it’s a lopsided exchange: the athletes help generate over a billion dollars, and yet it’s everyone but them who get paid. Make it make sense.
LSU’s statement goes on: “As a University, we thank them for their strength and resilience as stewards of this land and are committed to creating and maintaining a living and learning environment that embraces individual difference, including the Indigenous peoples of our region.”
Thus Native Americans lose their land to empire, Black Americans lose — and are still losing — their wealth to empire, and athletes lose the fruit of their labor to empire.
While athletes are now allowed to profit from their name, image and likeness, they’re still not being fully compensated for their revenue-generating labor.
Without stolen land, perhaps there would be no LSU. Without stolen labor, there definitely would be no NCAA empire. We need to invert the empire: the NCAA should serve its athletes, not the other way around.
For without athletes, there would be no players to coach. And without any players to coach, there would be no NCAA. There would be no empire and revenue-generating labor to sustain it. In other words, pay the damn athletes.
In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”