Don Yee, Tom Brady's Agent, Elaborates On NCAA's Hypocrisy, Racial Inequality In College Sports
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- Every step of the way throughout the DeflateGate saga in 2015, agent Don Yee served as one of the most outspoken critics of the sham that was the process of investigating and punishing his client, Tom Brady.
So it wasn't entirely surprising that Yee was able to pen a provocative yet insightful op-ed in the Washington Post this week, a story which spotlighted the billions of dollars being generated by young athletes, the majority of whom are black and make no money. The recipients of this wealth are more often than not white men.
Yee noted that the College Football Playoff will generate more than $7 billion from ESPN over 12 years, that March Madness will generate $11 billion from CBS and Turner Broadcasting over 14 years, that conference commissioners make multi-million dollar salaries, as do coaches. He added that nine athletic directors haul in salaries of more than $1 million, and nearly 50 make $500,000 or more. He cited a 2015 study which said that 86.7 percent of ADs are white, 87.5 percent of football head coaches are white, and 76 percent of head basketball coaches are white.
With no player salaries to pay, Yee noted that schools are being forced to get creative with all of their surplus cashflow.
"The University of Oregon had so much money to spend on its football facility that it resorted to sourcing exotic building materials from all over the world," Yee wrote. He later added: "Paying players would cost money, of course, but with billions in TV revenue coming in, it shouldn't be impossible to find a way to spend some of it on labor instead of on exotic woods for new training facilities."
Some highlights from the column:
Why is this business model — unpaid labor, mostly by black athletes, generating riches for white administrators — still tolerated? Because most football and basketball players haven't acted on the economic power they possess — and no one in the NCAA universe is eager to change that, either.
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For talented football and basketball players, the NCAA's bargain is increasingly a bad deal: They are making enormous sums of money for everyone but themselves.
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Change, however, could come rapidly and fairly easily. If even a small group of players took a stand and refused to participate — imagine if they boycotted or delayed the start of Monday night's championship game — administrators would have to back down. There's too much money on the line, and no one could force the teams to play against their will. The schools and the NCAA would simply have to renegotiate the bargain with football and basketball players.
It was that last excerpt -- the part about players potentially boycotting or delaying the national championship game -- that caught the attention of many sports fans around the country. He certainly caught the attention of Doug Gottlieb, who invited Yee onto his show to further elaborate on these points.
When challenged, Yee essentially doubled down on his statements, going so far as to suggest that universities have no business running sports operations the way the system is currently run.
"What I'm trying to really bring to the forefront is this. This is what I really believe. I believe actually that none of the universities should be engaged in large-scale commercial enterprises such as college football and college basketball. I think the university's core mission should be educating students," Yee said. "I really am for either the university's having to completely get out of large-scale commercial sports, or if they're going to be in it, [they have to] acknowledge that these [college athletes] are making enormous sums of money for these universities, for the coaches, for the administrators, and hopefully they can develop a better system in which to reward them for that effort."
The full discussion is a compelling back-and-forth, and can be seen and heard below.
Yee got the final word, making his point in its simplest form: "I believe the players make the game."
