What the market will bear
Video: History of Ivy League sports.
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
A suit by two basketball players, one a former Brown University player and one still playing there, alleges unfair, oligopolistic collaboration in sports programs by the Ivy League. The plaintiffs assert that the eight-college association’s policy of not offering athletic scholarships amounts to a price-fixing agreement that denies athletes proper financial aid and other payment for their services. The duo seems to have wanted to be treated as employees.
This case is absurd. These athletes have not been compelled to attend an Ivy League school. If they didn’t like these institutions’ long-established policies, they could have gone to many other places, some also called “elite,’’ in search of big bucks.
When the Ivy League as a formal organization was founded, in 1954, the ban on athletic scholarships was meant to be seen as fending off the corrupting commercialization of the sacred groves of academia and promoting the ideal, however naïve, of the “scholar-athlete
Complaints about price-fixing in the league go way back, spawned in part by the curious similarity of Ivy institutions’ tuitions. Consider this.
These schools charge what the market will bear, which is a lot when it comes to “The Ancient Eight.’’ Such is the American obsession with social status, they’ll continue to draw many more applicants than can be admitted, including top-notch athletes in search, above all of an education.