Schooled: The Price of College Sports

Filmmakers Ross Finkel, Jon Paley, and Trevor Martin's revealing documentary—narrated by Sam Rockwell—explores arguments that college athletes should be paid for playing sports, including (and perhaps especially) those attending school on a sports scholarship. If that sounds counterintuitive, consider the conditions under which college athletes play. Various former and current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) players interviewed here point out that schools are a de facto farm club for dozens of professional sports, but those not chosen potentially give up prime years of earning power in order to work for free while the NCAA takes in enormous profits. College athletes have no choice but to grant their skills, likenesses, and much else for the financial gain of institutions, while stipends for food are so low that many student players often don't have enough to eat. Administrators, coaches, and schools reap billions from games, marketing deals, video games, TV revenue, and more while athletes are monitored constantly and endure severely restricted personal liberties as spelled out by over 400 NCAA rules. Why don't more amateur athletes speak out? Because they need to remain eligible to go professional one day, a status that easily changes when the NCAA and colleges grow disenchanted with a student. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch's 2011 e-book The Cartel (which grew out of his Atlantic Monthly magazine article “The Shame of College Sports”), this hard-hitting film is highly recommended. (T. Keogh)