Whether it be Southeastern Conference (SEC) powerhouse Alabama or a lowly public high school team, amateur athletics is no longer an activity: it’s a business.
Recent court decisions, including those that found college athletes to be employees of the schools for which they play, as well as those which have allowed young athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness (NIL), have thrown the sporting scene into a massive period of overhaul.
On top of that, the so-called “analytics revolution” has been crucial in optimizing team performance but has come at a cost.
At young ages, athletes of all kinds are all too often abruptly thrust into the world of travel teams, often devoting their entire weekends to tournaments and games. This leaves very little time for practice and skill development which is critical for young athletes. Even more importantly, the purpose of participating in youth sports is no longer mainly for fun, according to USA Today.
Too much time and money is spent playing for teams where coaches deprioritize player development in favor of game plans that, according to the numbers, lead to meaningless wins. The system is completely backward and driven by greed.
By the time the next LeBron James or Patrick Mahomes reaches high school, they’ll be concerned with just two things: “W’s and O’s” (wins and offers). The result is an era where high school athletes are glorified free agents. There’s been an explosion in attendance at private and prep schools, many of which are entirely centered around sports and not education.
Whether that method is beneficial or not is up to individual players and families. However, in an attempt to stay competitive, public schools have begun to slyly recruit players to “move” or transfer to their school, often illegitimately, purely for the pursuit of their sport. With certain high-profile players, there have even been allegations of money paid under the table to keep players from transferring or to lure them in.
This completely undermines the already struggling public school system in the U.S. As great as sports are for opportunities and character development, they ought to stay secondary to the goal of ensuring graduates are prepared for adult life. With student-athletes whizzing around schools from year to year, the imbalance between schools in sports is not the only fallout.
Lower rates of academic achievement at schools in lower-income areas are a consistent trend throughout the nation, according to studies by the Economic Policy Institute. These patterns fall neatly in line with constant athlete motion, and that’s exactly where the line must be drawn. Wins under the “Friday Night Lights” pale in comparison to the importance of an educated populace.
These shifts are seen even more prominently in the college landscape. Recently, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) made history as the first U.S. university to directly pay their athletes. During the 2025-26 season, the basketball team will be paid out from a pool of between $4 and $5 million dollars, according to Sports Illustrated.
Other schools are likely to follow suit, and even those who do not are still at the mercy of NIL deals and the transfer portal. While at this level, it’s important for college athletes to be empowered and free from NCAA tyranny, which leads to a completely different set of issues than it does at the high school level.
As far as viewership is concerned, the allure of college sports is the loyalty and passion for one’s university, much of which is lost when teams are completely different each year and players compete for something other than school pride.
The ratings for the College Football Playoff semifinals were down 17% this year, according to Front Office Sports. This highlights the issue at hand, which is that the atmosphere around college teams will likely never be the same.
Moreover, in the wake of box office hits like Moneyball, professional teams have begun to invest heavily in analytics, using algorithms, statistics and even machine learning to optimize player performance.
This is great for teams and players who are making hundreds of millions of dollars to win games. However, when this practice trickles too far down into U13 games, it robotizes the game for amateurs who want to play sports for enjoyment.
Something has to give. Each year, players become more talented, coaches become smarter, teams become more efficient and games become less competitive and less entertaining. Sports are meant to be a release for both players and fans, not a source of societal contention and debate.
