NCAA logoARLINGTON, Texas – When Kentucky and Connecticut tip off tonight’s NCAA championship game a few minutes after 9 on CBS, the focus will be on basketball only, on which of these two unlikely finalists – eighth-seeded UK and seventh-seeded UConn are the highest combined seeds to ever reach the final – will finish No. 1.
But on Friday afternoon, as Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan conducted his media interview inside AT&T Stadium, a question arose that could become bigger than the tournament itself, which generates more than $700 million a year for the NCAA.
“Coach,” the sports writer asked, “do you feel like players deserve more benefits than they’re already getting?”
Replied Donovan, who has experienced his sport’s biggest stage as a player at Providence, a Kentucky assistant and four times as the head coach of the Gators: “I think the players do deserve more things. … The idea that a kid can’t get a free hamburger somewhere doesn’t make sense to me. What’s the big deal? … There’s some common-sense things that we can do to insure that from a normal student activity life they can have money in their pocket and be able to do things.”
When the Chicago regional office of the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of a group of Northwestern football players’ right to form a union on March 26, the compensation and rights of student-athletes everywhere suddenly became a very big thing. So much so that NCAA president Mark Emmert and a panel of college administrators even held a special press conference Sunday morning to address both the NLRB ruling and other concerns.