MAURICE CLARETT'S "VICTORY": Why shouldn't a 19-year-old be allowed to be an airline pilot--how dare the airlines keep 19-year-olds out of the cockpit? Numerous professions require minimum age, possession of degrees or minimum years of training experience for entry. Judges don't order airlines to allow 19-year-olds at the controls, even though age and experience rules clearly place restraints on the bargaining power of 19-year-old aspiring pilots. But then--judges fly on planes, so they don't want them to crash. Federal judge Shira Scheindlin, who yesterday ordered the NFL draft open to anyone regardless of age, knows that if the NFL crashes that won't affect her.
Scheindlin's poorly reasoned order will be appealed, but if it somehow ends up standing, she will accomplish a trifecta: she'll harm pro football, she'll harm college football, and she'll screw over huge numbers of young athletes, most of them African American. Quite a day's work!
First, harming the pros. Why has the National Basketball Association, the hot rising sport in the 1980s through early 1990s, been in free-fall for a decade--plummeting ratings, declining attendance, last year's finals the least-watched ever in prime-time? Because about a decade ago, the NBA began admitting teenagers en masse. Since then quality of play has fallen sharply. Today most NBA games are simply crummy games, and some are so poorly played they make you want to cover your eyes. Players who go directly from high school to the pros, as is suddenly common in the NBA, lack training in fundamentals. They won't listen to coaches, having been handed multi-million-dollar guaranteed no-cut contracts when much too young to appreciate their responsibility to keep the business successful and the revenue flowing. They launch crazy off-balance shots, refuse to do anything but go one-on-one, and endlessly try to mega-dunk like in the shoe commercials--but they miss ten shots for every one mega-dunk that succeeds. When the NBA began tapping high school, league management thought fans would be too stupid to notice the decline in quality of play. But everybody has noticed, which is why the NBA's popularity is falling.
Maintaining high quality is the NFL's legitimate reason for keeping out kids. The NFL continues to be the number-one sport by every measure--attendance, ratings, you name it--foremost because quality of play is so high. Judge Scheindlin's decision dismisses quality of play as irrelevant: "The NFL has not justified [Maurice] Clarett's exclusion by demonstrating that the [draft age] rule enhances competition." But Scheindlin seems to assume all football players perform exactly the same, and this is just an argument over who grabs the cash. As the decline of the NBA demonstrates, young players in some sports perform at a significantly lower level of quality. Yes, there are some 16-year-old tennis stars or ice skaters who are terrific; but they're not playing team sports. Performance in team sports requires maturity, which in this context usually means the early twenties. Football is also the most complex of sports; it simply takes longer to learn. Would a judge tell IBM that it can't require software designers to have engineering degrees because this creates a barrier against those too young to have yet graduated from college? Come on.
And the NFL is one single business entity, creating one product: its season. Scheindlin's order is written as if pro football were an open marketplace of multiple independent businesses--anyone could field a team and challenge the Packers to a game, the way anyone can market a chewing gum and challenge Wrigley. But a pro sports league is a single business entity with multiple divisions. In the case of the NFL, the league is a business entity with 32 divisions, all having a shared interest in keeping product quality high. Anti-trust law, called on in Scheindlin's decision, binds General Motors when it competes against Ford. But the Rams aren't competing with the Steelers in that same way--the Rams aren't trying to put the Steelers out of business, nor are they trying to win over the Steelers' customers. In fact, the Rams and all other NFL teams strongly desire that the Steelers and all other NFL teams stay in business, which is why NFL teams equally share television revenues, their main source of income. Scheindlin's decision treats the NFL as 32 separate businesses; she just doesn't understand sports economics.
Next, if the judge has her way, what will happen at the collegiate level? Quality of play will be harmed there too, as athletes who might have become college stars instead jump to the pros to become benchwarmers. Think about the high-school basketball players who became nobodies in the NBA but could have been stars in college. Three years ago, the Washington Wizards used the NBA's number-one draft pick on high-school kid Kwame Brown. He has gone on to be an embarrassingly awful NBA performer: seven feet tall, incredible athletic talent, and he's a terrible player because he never learned fundamentals in college and couldn't handle the pro pressure. If Brown had gone to college, right now he'd be a junior at Duke or Michigan or Auburn, an All-American playing magnificently, going to class at least occasionally, bathing in high self-esteem; then, in the pros, he'd be confident, skilled, and successful. Instead, entering the NBA too soon, Kwame Brown became just another interchangeable nobody. When Brown's guaranteed rookie contract ends, most likely he will quietly drift out of the league. Then, having no education, he will...?
Which leads us to how Scheindlin's decision shafts athletes themselves. High-school kids in the NBA are in the process of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. With NBA quality declining and revenues declining, payments to NBA players will inevitably decline; meanwhile, those who jump straight to the pros are missing their chance to gain at least some college education.
The NFL is better managed than the NBA, and so may simply ignore most too-young players. But to the extent any significant number join the league, quality will decline and the goose that lays the golden egg will be harmed. Meanwhile 18- and 19-year-olds, who all think they're the next Barry Sanders, will declare for the draft and not get picked, or be waived after a year on special teams, and then discover they have lost their chance at a free college education.
And please, don't tell me that the draft-age rule is some kind of conspiracy against African Americans because the suits running the leagues are uncomfortable with the thought of rich young black men. Since the majority of NFL players are African American, any 19-year-old black man who enters the league is likely only to displace a 27-year-old black man. Net monies paid to African Americans males will remain the same. The NFL players' union opposes allowing kids into the NFL in part on the worry that in the long term, kids will cause net monies paid to African American players to decline, by killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
As for Maurice Clarett himself--if you were an NFL coach, would you draft this jerk? He hasn't played in more than a year. He's a me-first head-case who spends all his time demanding special privileges; now he's surrounded by a retinue of assorted hucksters demanding that they be paid off; at Ohio State they wanted him to leave because Clarett's selfishness had such a corrosive effect on team chemistry. Now, lots of kids fresh from high school are me-first and immature, and gradually grow out of it. That's why a few years in college is in the interest of the player--another basic thing Judge Scheindlin doesn't understand. If Clarett went back to school and matured, he'd end up a number-one draft choice. If he's in the draft this year there's no way he will go that high, assuming anyone wants him at all. Then the retinue of hucksters will scream lawsuit again. But when I look at Maurice Clarett, I see Kwame Brown.
