Jemele Hill wants to take college sports back in time for African Americans.
The former ESPN host turned The Atlantic columnist published a piece on Thursday titled, “It’s Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges.” Her misguided essay argues that so-called “white universities” are exploiting top black college athletes for profit. Hill insists that by choosing en masse to only go to historically black colleges and universities, black athletes “could disrupt the reign of an ‘amateur’ sports system that uses the labor of black folks to make white folks rich.” In other words, she wants black college athletes to self-segregate, because she thinks it would benefit HBCUs and all-black schools.
In her column, Hill correctly notes that “top black athletes used to go to black colleges,” that is, when racial segregation was still in place. Hill points out that before the famous Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision banning school segregation, the options were quite limited as to where African Americans could attend college in some states.
And even after Brown v. Board, Hill is correct that college football teams in the deep south began recruiting more black athletes after Sam Cunningham and the racially-integrated USC football team ran all over the all-white Alabama in a 42-21 victory in 1970. Consider how significant that is given that just seven years prior, Alabama Gov. George Wallace attempted to block the schoolhouse door at that same university to try to prevent an African American student from entering.
Does Hill really want to walk back some of that progress?
As a result of desegregation, black athletes have received scholarship opportunities and college educations while working together with players of different backgrounds to achieve common goals. They’ve been granted countless opportunities, and diversity at colleges and universities has been increased. Hill doesn’t appear to see this as a positive development.
Apparently not understanding the economics of college sports, Hill thinks there is a large pool of black athletes making schools rich. She correctly notes there are 30 college sports programs in the nation that accrue more than $100 million in revenue annually, but forgets that there are expenses as well, and that many college sports programs are a net loss for their universities.
In 2014, this was true of every NCAA Division 2 and Division 3 program, virtually all Division 1 FCS programs and all but 24 Div. 1 FBS programs. Of those Div. 1 FBS programs, the net revenue gain from athletics was $6 million.
Meanwhile, according to the NCAA that same year, the “median FBS school spent $14.7 million to help subsidize its athletics department.” The reason why a star recruit would likely choose not to attend a historically black college or university is because the list of HBCUs isn’t exactly loaded with Div. 1 FBS programs, and they want to compete against the best competition possible.
If Hill is so concerned about elite college athletes — of all races — being exploited by the NCAA, perhaps she should address real solutions to the problems, like allowing NCAA athletes to profit from their likeness or ending the nonsense requirements forcing athletes to attend college before they are draft eligible for pro sports.
Are there issues with the NCAA? Absolutely. Is black Americans playing on teams at white majority schools one of them? No, absolutely not, and it is nothing short of ignorant of Hill to suggest otherwise.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
