The NFL Sux

[JonLP24]

34. Lose credibility w/ your economic concerns

While you won't see much subsidies (imagine Oklahoma or Michigan threatening to relocate if they don't get new stadiums) they are a monopsonistic cartel. '

<snip>The most common type of cartel is an agreement among competitors not to sell their product below a fixed price that will generate monopoly profits for the parties to the agreement. But another type of cartel, termed monopsonistic (from the Greek words for “one” and “purchasing of food”) rather than monopolistic (one seller, versus one buyer in a monopsonized market), is an agreement among competitors not to pay more than a fixed price for a key input, such as labor. By agreeing to pay less, the cartel purchases less of the input (and perhaps of lower quality), because less is supplied at the lower price (and suppliers may lower quality to compensate, by reducing their costs, for the lower price they receive).

The National Collegiate Athletic Association behaves monopsonistically in forbidding its member colleges and universities to pay its athletes. Although cartels, including monopsonistic ones, are generally deemed to be illegal per se under American antitrust law, the NCAA’s monopsonistic behavior has thus far not been successfully challenged. The justification that the NCAA offers—that collegiate athletes are students and would be corrupted by being salaried—coupled with the fact that the members of the NCAA, and the NCAA itself, are formally not-for-profit institutions, have had sufficient appeal to enable the association to continue to impose and enforce its rule against paying student athletes, and a number of subsidiary rules designed to prevent the cheating by cartel members that plagues most cartels.

As Becker points out, were it not for the monopsonistic rule against paying student athletes, these athletes would be paid; the monopsony transfers wealth from them to their “employers,” the colleges. A further consequence is that college teams are smaller and, more important, of lower quality than they would be if the student athletes were paid.
- See more at: http://smartfootball.com/grab-bag/is-the-ncaa-a-coercive-cartel#sthash.jLzWbCwB.dpuf

Universities, coaches, television networks make big money off the backs of the ones that are the ones we pay to see. NFL & city shakedowns is a disgusting practice but the NCAA is far more disgusting. At-least NFL players can market their services but NCAA are locked into teams, paid the same as everyone else, and don't even get workman's comp if injured.