Professor Billy Hawkins of The University of Georgia has released a controversial new book that describes the experiences of NCAA athletes by comparing them to slaves on a plantation. According to the research of professor Hawkins, black athletes are exploited by the NCAA physically, financially and intellectually.

Hawkins cites the massive revenue earned by the NCAA via March Madness, which includes a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS sports. In spite of seemingly unlimited revenues to encourage athletes to stay focused academically, Hawkins notes that nearly one-fifth of the 64 teams participating in the NCAA tournament had graduation rates of less than 40 percent. Across the 36 sports monitored by the NCAA, men's basketball has the lowest graduation rates, where less than two-thirds of the players earn degrees.

The dismal graduation numbers for the NCAA support Dr. Hawkins' research, in which he argues and shows that black athletes at predominantly white institutions are being exploited while being neglected academically. In his book, 'The New Plantation,' the well-respected Professor of Sport Management and Policy uses a plantation model to present the black male athletic experience as part of a broader historical context.

"As we examine the structure of intercollegiate athletics, the athlete is not necessarily the property of the institutions, but the rights to athletes' labor and the profit off of their labor makes the plantation model appropriate in examining the experiences of black male athletes," said Hawkins.

In 2008, the NCAA reported graduation rates of black male athletes in football and basketball to be 49 percent and 42 percent, respectively, over a four-year period. This number is dramatically less than those of white athletes, in spite of the fact that black athletes make up the majority of players in most revenue-generating sports.


Although athletes are being pushed to ensure that they are on the field to play every week and are also expected to show up to multiple practices every day, universities neglect that they have the ability or responsibility to keep athletes in the classroom. All the while, the NCAA has become more and more profit-driven, with several coaches earning salaries as high as $5 to $6 million per year. Additionally, coaches who win games are given raises without regard to graduation rates, while those with high graduation rates and low winning percentages are typically fired, supporting the argument that academic performance is the secondary priority of many university athletic programs.

"Commercialization of the programs -- multibillion dollar TV contracts and multimillion dollar product endorsements -- has triggered the hidden agendas of the institutions, which often leads to the exploitation of the athletes' talents and neglect of their minds," said Hawkins. "Within this framework, where 'winning is the only thing,' academics will be given a 'lower' priority unless athletes take full responsibility in obtaining an education," said Hawkins.

Hawkins' work has its supporters. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for the NCAA to ban teams with graduation rates of less than 40 percent. If this measure had been applied to the last NCAA tournament, roughly 20 percent of the teams in this year's tournament would have been ineligible to play. That would have included The University of Kentucky, who was ranked #1 in the country when the tournament started.

Professor Hawkins also points out the fact that black male athletes are being used to subsidize sports dominated by white females, due to Title IX requirements for gender equity. These requirements are imposed on athletes, but not on coaches. Only 2.7 percent of the women who receive scholarships to play Title IX sports at predominantly white universities are black, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Therefore, Hawkins argues that the labor of black men is being used to subsidize the athletic opportunities for white females.

"Since Title IX has provided very limited opportunity for black females but additional opportunities for white women to compete and black male athletes make up the greater percentage of the revenue-generating sports that contribute to athletic departments' revenue, and thus their ability to support these additional sports, a recurring historical relationship between the white female and black male has been resurrected. I refer to this connection as the 'Driving Miss Daisy' syndrome," said Hawkins.

I agree with Dr. Hawkins' work. It is solid, and his book is one of the most significant books ever written about the experiences of black male athletes. Congress should investigate the NCAA and call hearings to determine if athletes' labor rights are being violated. They should also reconsider whether the NCAA should be allowed to blatantly violate anti-trust law by forcing all member institutions to compete under the same umbrella, giving athletes few options outside of this professional sports league. The NCAA earns more post-season revenue than the NBA, NFL or MLB, so perhaps it's time to stop pretending that the athletes are amateurs.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the Athlete Liberation and Academic Reform Movement (ALARM). To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.