The Lunacy within College Athletics

In 2014, the NCAA pulled in 989 million dollars of revenue on top of an 80 million dollar surplus (huffpost). The NCAA, by their own definition, is a “member-led organization dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes.” (ncaa.org). They are also, a non-profit organization and are classified as 501(c)(6) non-profit (Washington Post). This means that the NCAA is exempt from paying federal taxes on their earnings. Some other organizations classified under 501(c)(6) include: Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the Salvation army.

Every year, the NCAA ends with millions of dollars in surplus which they but into an “endowment fund” meant to “safeguard the institution against a financial catastrophe.” (Huffpost). The NCAA are also the beneficiaries of a 14 year, 11 billion dollar television contract for march madness (the yearly NCAA men’s basketball tournament), (Washington Post), a 12 year, and a 5.64 billion dollar contract with ESPN for the college football playoffs. This isn’t even taking into account the contract each of the major  individual conferences have with various networks. The BIG TEN conference, starting in 2015, is set to make an average of 440 million dollars a year over six years solely from TV deals, while the SEC raked in 515 million in 2015 on their current contract. (Forbes). When broken down, each SEC school is worth 37 million dollars in revenue while each Big Ten school is worth a paltry 31 million. (Forbes). Keep in mind this is solely from Television contracts and excludes all other forms of revenue.

The most lucrative school in all of college sports in 2015, the University of Texas at Austin, pulls in an average of 182 million dollars a year from athletics (business insider). On Average, a Division One (FBS) football program makes just under 32 million dollars a year in total revenue and the average Division One basketball program makes a little over 8 million dollars a year. All in all, the 231 Division One Programs generated 9.15 billion dollars in total revenue during the 2015 fiscal year. (Business Insider). As of 2014, the NCAA has amassed 708 million dollars in year end-net assets with 385 million in the aforementioned “endowment fund” (USA TODAY).

Listed below are the estimated values of the top ten NCAA football programs.

 

FALL 2017 RANK	PROGRAM	VALUE
1	Ohio State	1,510,482,000
2	Texas	1,243,124,000
3	Oklahoma	1,001,967,000
4	Alabama	930,001,000
5	LSU	910,927,000
6	Michigan	892,951,000
7	Notre Dame	856,938,000
8	Georgia	822,310,000
9	Tennessee	745,640,000
10	Auburn	724,191,000

In comparison, Ohio State Football would be the eight most valuable NBA franchise, the twelfth most valuable MLB franchise, and just under the Buffalo Bills’ 1.6 million dollar worth. (Forbes) These are all professional leagues whose bare minimum salary begins at 300,000 dollars.

WIth all 128 schools’ valuations put together, the NCAA Division One Football Conference is the most valuable league in the United States. All of the money goes directly into the coffers of the schools and the NCAA itself. Each year, according to the NCAA itself 1.1% of NCAA basketball players and 1.5% of football players make it into the pros. (NCAA)  The rest are left with nothing save the “lifelong lessons” and “intangible values” that NCAA athletics have imparted upon them. Lastly, I would like to leave you with this number. Of the 50 states that make up the union, the highest paid government employee is a college football or basketball coach. (ESPN). Of those thirty-nine states, the fifth poorest state in the U.S., Alabama, (247Wallst) is paying its head football coach, Nick Saban, 11 million dollars a year. Out of every single source of revenue, the labor, the player themselves, are a grand total of 0 dollars.

The Road to 25 Trillion

The Road to $25 Trillion: An Analysis of GOP’s new Tax Plan

Two weeks ago the GOP unveiled a bill that they fittingly called “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” It enacts sweeping tax reform for both corporations and individuals, with its supporters promising to revitalize the economy by cutting taxes on the American people. (Since I am focusing solely on the income tax facet of this bill, my opinion on corporate tax cuts will have to wait for another day. However I will address the estate tax as well.). The bill promises to simplify how the average U.S. citizen files their taxes, simplify the tax brackets, and lower taxes on the middle class. It’s main goals are perfectly summed up by a statement of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kevin Brady from Texas, in a speech introducing the bill. As he puts it: “This is a complete redesign of the code, so we can simplify it so much that 9 out of 10 Americans can file using a postcard-style system, lowering the rates, protecting more of the first dollars you earn,” (cnbc). This statement was followed up the very same day by Donald Trump who said that “it was going to make life very simple” for the average taxpayer (cnbc). Upon hearing these grandiose claims from both the bill’s sponsor and the president, one might be inclined to sigh in relief. According to a Gallup poll conducted in April of last year, about 57% of Americans believe their income taxes are too high. (Gallup) Furthermore,  according to a poll reported pew research center, 61% of Americans believe that the rich aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.

Before looking at who exactly the proposed bill benefits, let’s look at how the “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” will impact the economy. Many independent firms and experts have examined the plan to figure out just that. The results have not been encouraging to say the least. According to marketwatch.com, the new plan estimated to cost the “federal government $2.4 trillion in its first 10 years, and give the biggest tax cuts to Americans with the highest incomes” (marketwatch). As of this moment, usdebtclock.org estimates the U.S, national debt at just under 20.5 trillion dollars (usdebtclock.org). The GOP’s tax plan will push America’s deficit to the the brink of 23 trillion by the end of 2027, not accounting for additional expenses incurred by the government. The amount of tax revenue lost would be staggering, as an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that the Trump Tax plan could cost between “$3 to $7 trillion over a decade” (crfb.org). This plan, much akin to the tax cuts enacted by former President Bush in the early 2000’s, has the makings of bringing on the next great recession, and the worst part? The tax cuts will mostly only benefit those who don’t need them.

The Tax Cut and Jobs act primary promises is to reduce taxes on average Americans and allow for them to spend more of their hard-earned money thereby improving the economy. It’s the tagline that the GOP keeps using, and its false. It isn’t a matter of political opinion, even basic analysis as shown by the the business insider graph below reveals that the main beneficiaries of this plan will be wealthy Americans, and more specifically, filthy rich Americans.

Another fun little clause introduced by the GOP is the elimination of the estate tax. Known to most as the death tax, the GOP tax plan is set to enact a repeal of the estate tax after six years of being enacted. IF you don’t know, the estate tax only affects individuals worth over 5.49 million. For me, this addition to the bill completely sums up the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Mr. Trump, and this is true, has mentioned repealing this “death tax” in many of his campaign rallies, promising to repeal it to thunderous applause. Every single person that applauds for him at his rallies will not benefit one bit from this, and Mr, Trump still uses it as one of his primary catchphrases. It perfectly sums up the bill, a lie to the American people, fraught with corruption and only interested in benefiting the super wealthy. If this all of this isn’t enough evidence of how deceitful and toxic the Tax Cuts and Jobs act is for the economy, consider this. Mr, Trump himself, is estimated to enjoy tax cuts of 1.1 billion dollars through this bill. And the average American taxpayer? more than half will end up paying more in the long run

How the Electoral College could be the Cause of World War Three

There are two number that perfectly encapsulate all that was wrong with last year’s presidential election, 2,868,691 and 64 (cnn.com). The first is how many more votes Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton received over her opponent Donald Trump. The latter is the number of electoral votes Mr. Trump received over Secretary Clinton. These egregiously incongruent figures represent the widest margin by which a presidential candidate has won the popular vote and lost the presidency. Sixteen years ago, a fiasco like this also rocked the presidential election. Back in 2000, republican candidate George W. Bush triumphed over democrat Al Gore whilst losing the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. By themselves, these two election results are statistical anomalies but together they represent the inherently flawed system that the American public has all but ignored until now. It is known as the Electoral College and it is the reason that the United States is about to go to Nuclear War with North Korea over Twitter.

The original argument for the Electoral College was based around three main points. First, it was to act as safeguard against the will of the mob and protect the country from electing a candidate clearly unfit for the office. Second, it was implemented so that states had some impact on the presidential election. (Huffpost). And third, as Yale professor Akhil Reed Amir puts it, because “Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates” (TIME). Back in the 1780’s these all seemed like valid arguments, the country was very spread out and information did not travel quickly. Presidential candidates would only campaign in the big cities and bypass rural towns for the most part. However, when political parties were formed in the 1790’s, the argument for voter ignorance was quickly invalidated. Presidential candidates were now linked to a set of ideals that were represented by candidates on the local, state, and national level. Now, a voter could know what the candidate stood for without actually hearing them speak. (TIME). The claim that the Electoral College provided a last line of defense against the will of the mob is also quickly debunked. Electors are lifelong supporters of their respective parties and will rarely vote against their party’s candidate. To this point, according to fairvote.org, there have only been 157 so called faithless electors (electors who vote against their party) in this history of U.S. presidential elections. (Huffpost). Keep in mind that there are 538 electors up for grabs – each election. This brings us to the third and final argument: the Electoral College allows for that states to have a say in the presidential election. A problem quickly arises in that smaller states would have very little influence on the election if the number of electors per state was directly dependent on that states population. To combat this, each state was given a minimum of three electoral votes regardless of their population. As a result, there is a disparity in the value of one’s vote depending on the state they live in. Take Wyoming whose three electoral votes are judged by a populous of 532,000 and Texas, which has 32 electoral votes for a population of 25 million. If you divide the amount of voters by the votes available to each state, a vote in Wyoming is four times more valuable than a vote in Texas. (Huffpost). Therein lies the problem at the core of the Electoral College: It is not proportional to the will of the people. This is because it is a winner-takes-all system in 48 out of the 50 states. A candidate only has to win the majority of a state’s vote to take all of that state’s electoral votes. That means that all the dissenting votes in that state are rendered meaningless because they gain no delegates. A prime example of this is Texas in the last election. Donald Trump won 52% of the vote compared to 43% of the vote won by Clinton. (NYTimes). However because Trump won the majority of the vote, he gets all the delegates. He doesn’t get 52% of the delegates, he gets all of them, and Clinton get nothing. All those millions votes for her in Texas are rendered meaningless. Furthermore, the extent to which a candidate can lose the popular vote and still win the presidency is simply astounding. According to fairvote.org, a candidate can theoretically win only 21.8% of the popular vote and still gain the 270 electoral votes needed to obtain the presidency. (Huffpost).

It is quite obvious that the Electoral College is a deeply flawed system and with last year’s election results, it is also obvious that the problem can no long be overlooked. However, I believe there is a solution that would not require a complete repeal of the Electoral College, which mind you would be nearly impossible. (Washington Post). If the system were to be altered so that electors were given based on the percentage of the vote a candidate wins in each state rather than the winner taking everything, the electors would directly represent the will of the people. There would be no discrepancy between the electoral vote and the popular vote and the system would still be in place just in case someone completely incompetent was elected for President, Ironic as that may considering our current Commander in Chief,

Burst Your Bubble

The internet is king, it is all-consuming and all-knowing. Today, about forty percent of the world- more than three billion people – use the internet (internetlivestats). Compare that to eighty-four percent of American adult citizens who frequent the internet and the staggering eighty-eight percent of the total populous that accesses the World Wide Web (internetlivestats). Of those eighty-four percent, thirty-eight percent get their news predominantly from online sources, almost double the percentage of those who say they obtain it from print sources (pewinternet). What’s more is this number is on the rise, and fast. As more and more of the older generations die off, the number of internet denizens seeking news will inversely increase. The internet is far faster, more efficient, and increasingly more accessible than any other form of media, and is truly the most convenient way of obtaining information. It’s available any time, right when something happens, and can be accessed from your pocket in less than two seconds. What’s the problem then? Why complain about something that has streamlined our world like nothing in the history of our species.

The simple answer: it’s being mistreated and misused. This mistreatment is referred to as the “filter bubble,” a term brought into the public eye by internet activist and ted-talker Eli Pariser. This “bubble” refers to the vast amounts of information that the “gatekeepers” of the internet – Google, Facebook, Oracle, Twitter and other tech titans – filter based on the likes and interest of each individual person. This is to say that search engines and social media platforms use a series of algorithms to curate what information one encounters based on what the said algorithms determine will be most interesting to each that respective viewer. The result is an information diet that allows less ability to learn, provides no dissenting opinions, or news, for that matter that is not congruent with our preferences, and overall traps one in their own personal bubble of information. Ok, so what? Why does a personalized Facebook page pose any threat to the foundations of our democracy? To begin, a stunning thirty percent of U.S. adults name the world’s largest social networking site as their primary source of news. Furthermore, over sixty percent of millennials sight Facebook as their go-to news site (pewinternet) There are more people currently obtaining news from Facebook than all other print publications combined. The difference is, newspapers don’t calculate what content is most pleasurable for your viewing, and for the most part, report news from a bi-partisan standpoint. The populous has both dissenting and re-enforcing opinions when viewing print publications, and as a result, gain a better chance of viewing the country’s most pressing issues from all sides.

Now, with the dramatic ascension of digital media, we are in danger of losing this crucial facet of our democracy. An article from the MIT Technological review puts it best stating the filter bubble causes one to “surrounded only by people you like and content that you agree with”.  This in turn can “polarise populations creating potentially harmful divisions in society” (MIT Technological Review)That would certainly explain the up-tick in the growing extremes of both political parties, as well as inception of extremist groups such as the alt-right and ANTIFA. Now more than ever we must have an open, unfiltered stream of information to help both sides of our country begin to understand the other. If one always read about how awful or despicable an opposing candidate or party is, he or she can often lose themselves in pit of their own self-confirmation. As many important movements do, the cry for an unfiltered internet must be one of the people. We must pressure the government to change these laws so that our populous can gain a better and more complete understanding of today’s most pressing issues.

Image credit: Chris Madden