In the first round of the NCAA March Madness tournament, the Oakland Golden Grizzlies defeated the Kentucky Wildcats in a stunning upset. The University of Kentucky has one of the most successful programs in college basketball history. Nobody knew anything about Oakland University, a smaller school located not in the Bay Area of California but in Oakland County, Michigan.
The star player for Oakland was a guard named Jack Gohlke. He made 10 three-pointers during the upset victory. After the game, Gohlke was interviewed on national television. He looked into the camera and brashly proclaimed, “We’re not a Cinderella.”
One day after the dramatic victory, Jack Gohlke inked an endorsement deal with TurboTax. Before the second-round game — before the Cinderella magic wore off — Gohlke filmed a TurboTax ad in his hotel lobby and posted it out to his social media followers.
Oakland lost the next game in overtime, ending their season. Gohlke’s performance, however, earned him another endorsement spot with Buffalo Wild Wings. The next day, he posted pictures of himself smiling, surrounded by a bunch of hot wings, with a message:
Sent the game to overtime so that meant more great times @bwwings AND six free boneless wings. This March Madness, order using Blazin' Rewards before the last game of the day goes into overtime to receive the offer #OvertimeDeal #NIL #sponsored
March Madness has always been a big money-making event for corporations, television stations, schools, and college coaches.
The new rules allowing players to make money only seem fair compared to the way it was before, when everyone was profiting except for the players.
Still, it feels kind of sad to see a college athlete hawking products on social media during the culminating moments of his athletic career.
This weekend, the Final Four will be played in Glendale, Arizona.
The last time the Final Four visited Phoenix was in 2017. That year, the estimated economic impact was $324.5 million, with more than 60,000 people visiting the state.
In 2017, the NCAA was busy promoting the image of the “student-athlete.” Back in those days, college basketball was an amateur sport. Players played for scholarships, for the love of the game, and to represent their schools on a national stage. There were many recruiting scandals involving illicit payments over the years, but the image of the student-athlete remained somewhat believable.
In 2024, after years of lawsuits, players are now allowed to capitalize on their name, image, and likeness (NIL). This can happen in the form of random endorsement deals, like the Gohlke example. But the experiments are just beginning. Schools can’t pay players directly (yet), but “collectives” of school boosters have emerged to ensure that players get paid. Most college athletes will barely make anything, but the top names at the best schools can earn six figures or more.
(If you’re wondering if any college basketball teams have tried to unionize, the answer is yes.)
Also, new transfer rules have opened up what’s essentially a free agent system for college athletes. Before, it was the norm for a player to sign with a school and play until graduation. Players did transfer here and there, but only for a good reason because they had to sit out a year. Now, players are transferring willy-nilly. The changed rules have created a situation where coaches need to be constantly re-recruiting their own players during the season.
All this adds up to a new reality: major universities are basically hosting minor league professional sports leagues through their schools.
Which is fine, I guess.
But there’s a reason why the NCAA fought so hard to maintain the image of the student-athlete. That image is wholesome.
Professional sports is entertaining, but it’s less wholesome.
Even less wholesome is the culture of gambling that has exploded onto the sports scene in recent years.
Many fans are now experiencing games not by rooting for a team to win or lose, but by cheering for specific bets during the game — on first half scoring, on total points scored in the game, on a team covering the point spread, or even “prop” bets on an individual player’s performance.
The total betting on March Madness is expected to reach a mind-boggling $2.7 billion dollars this year. That’s a lot of additional pressure on “student-athletes,” besides the normal pressure of trying to win for the sake of accomplishment.
From 13 News in Tucson:
Gambling experts said they have seen the amount of action on college prop bets increase over the past few years which has also increased the number of threats made against student-athletes.
“It really caught folks like myself by surprise, the sheer number of mental health impacts that gambling has on athletes. Whether they’d be targets of online comments, direct messaging, verbal threats, physical threats,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program.
A Supreme Court decision in 2018 overturned a federal law that prohibited states from legalizing sports betting. 38 states have now legalized it.
Arizona’s sports gambling law was enacted in 2021. Arizona law prohibits college prop bets, but it does allow other kinds of bets on college sports.
The NCAA president is urging all states to outlaw college prop bets.
Personally, I don’t bet on sports. Maybe a friendly bet for a beer or five bucks or something.
I wouldn’t mind the existence of legalized sports gambling so much except for the incessant advertisements to make wagers. You can’t watch a game — or follow sports in general — without seeing a constant stream of ads telling you how easy and smart it would be to download an app and place a wager. Even the television broadcasts will sometimes show graphics of the different betting lines.
The advertisements are even more concerning when you consider how many people get hooked on gambling and make a lot of bad decisions.
We live in a free country. Our representatives decided to legalize sports gambling. It’s probably too late to scale back this venture entirely.
But couldn’t we at least scale back the legality of gambling ads, like we did for cigarettes?
This post is not meant to be a killjoy. The March Madness tournament has been fun as hell to watch this year.
When the game is on the line and teams are trading baskets in the closing minutes, I don’t think about whether the star player is a 24-year-old senior who transferred three times and is making six figures in endorsement deals.
The college fans are still cheering for their teams. I don’t know how many of them are also checking their phones to see if their bets are hitting.
Maybe it’s better to enjoy the show without any pretense about it being educational.
I don’t know.
Good piece--I am also ambivalent. However, in a society which which professes to be "free market," the things we find disturbing are just part of everybody maximizing revenue in whatever way they can, and regulation is a four letter word, Pandora's box has been opened. Maybe there still is some hope in there???
Agree. I used to love college sports but now it’s like (as you mentioned) watching the minors. Now, it’s “show me the money”. I can watch big boy, big women sports. It’s a shame. Bad for the students, colleges and fans.