NCAA must improve athletic standards

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Author: Joe Siegal

The Grambling State University Tigers football team did something unprecedented last Saturday by choosing to boycott and forfeit its participation in Jackson State’s homecoming game.

The boycott came in the wake of complaints about the conditions of the squad’s facilities and perceived institutional mistreatment. With this major showing of solidarity, the issue of players’ rights in college sports has been brought back into the national conversation. While Grambling State overall has been in financial peril, according to Sports Illustrated, it has insisted on maintaining a Division I football program.

According to The New York Times, the school’s players have felt that their standards were not being met, lodging complaints about the conditions of their weight room’s floor, the general filth of their mold-infested facilities, and the sporadic cleaning of their uniforms, which they say puts them at risk for staph infections.

As a result, the Tigers sat out their game against Jackson State, demonstrating the lengths they were willing to go to in order to get the treatment they believe is warranted by a top-level collegiate football program.

“The significance of the Grambling protest is that players at a historically black college complained that the institution was treating them unfairly and was exploiting their muscle,” wrote William C. Rhoden of The New York Times. “The boycott targeted a system that exploits all players, whether they attend Grambling or Georgia Tech. The issues at Grambling are different from the issues at Georgia Tech, but players at each institution play by the same N.C.A.A. rules. Those rules prop up an outdated and exploitative system.”

When players from Georgia Tech and several other major programs joined the “All Players United” movement that gained some traction earlier this season, their goal was to advocate for widespread change in college athletics. At Grambling State, though, the demonstration was directly in response to the poor conditions and mistreatment of players who serve as the biggest advertising tool for the university.

Change is needed in college football. Players deserve to be compensated beyond the value of an athletic scholarship; they also merit facilities and training conditions that keep them safe. Grambling State did not provide training facilities that were up to standards, mandated that the team take buses to games over 700 miles away and generally decreased its commitment to the program, showing what can go wrong when a struggling institution of higher learning insists on fielding a football team.

The Tigers have been struggling financially by many accounts, and the school’s monetary woes ended up putting its student-athletes in a jeopardized situation. Reform of the NCAA is essential to the longevity of college football and the well-being of its players. It is important, though, that the process start at places like Grambling State where the glamour of big-time football is nonexistent, and where the most important issue is the physical rights of student-athletes.

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