This could have been the shortest column you’ll ever read.
Last week, this newspaper ran a story with the following headline: “Louisiana universities are paying athletes. Should the public get to see who gets how much?”
Here’s my response: Hell yes.
The end. That’s it. Feel free to stop there.
But of course that’s not how columns work. So for more of a rationale, please continue.
A bill currently working its way through the Legislature would exempt university payments to athletes from the public records law. This wouldn’t apply to NIL deals, which are already separate and not subject to public records laws, but to revenue sharing, the system in which the university pays public dollars to athletes.
Democratic Rep. Tehmi Chassion of Lafayette, the bill’s author, has argued that shielding these records is all about protecting athlete safety. In his discussion of the bill, Chassion cited his daughter, who was a walk-on basketball player for one year at the University of Connecticut.
“I don’t want anyone knowing what she makes,” Chassion said during debate over his House Bill 608, which passed the House Committee on Education and is now headed for the Committee on House and Governmental Affairs. “It shouldn’t be public information.”
Sorry, Rep. Chassion, that’s just wrong. Any person who gets the public’s money is a public employee, whether they teach classes, patch potholes or swish threes. And as public employees, their salaries are public record.
It’s as simple as that.
Houma Republican Rep. Beryl Amedée rightly expressed concern.
“This is really broad,” she said. “And I’m concerned that we’re expanding confidentiality so much that we’re losing necessary transparency.”
That is exactly what’s going on here. LSU is already facing a lawsuit from journalists over its refusal to disclose how much it was paying athletes through revenue sharing. And when a reporter for this newspaper made public records requests to several public universities in Louisiana, to disclose how much individual athletes are being paid.
And again, we are not talking about the name, image, likeness deals, which function like celebrity endorsements. We are talking about money generated by the public university athletic departments as revenue that is shared with athletes. That’s public money.
That this is even a debate is astounding. Taxpayers, the de facto owners of all public universities, absolutely deserve to know where their money is being spent. It shouldn’t even be a question.
First Amendment attorney Scott Sternberg, who is representing several media organizations in a lawsuit against LSU after the state’s flagship declined a request for revenue sharing payments to athletes, called this information “quintessential public records.” (This newspaper is not a party to that suit, though Sternberg does handle some legal work for The Advocate | The Times-Picayune).
LSU noted in a statement when the suit was filed that being forced to make that information public would put the university “at a competitive disadvantage.”
Of course, Louisiana’s public universities are in competition for recruits, on the field and on the courts. And having to disclose what they’re paying might make it harder for them to win in those arenas.
If people were able to make public records requests about what athletes were being paid, then those richer schools might just offer them more money.
University leaders also the athletes themselves knowing how much those across the locker room are being paid. Can you imagine the problems if athletes learned that others, maybe who were more highly rated recruits but haven’t produced on the field, were paid more?
This is what college sports is now: money, secrecy and competition.
I’m not calling for some return to the “good ol’ days.” Players should be paid. It’s only right that they should capitalize on the massive TV contracts, ticket revenue and merch sales that have, for decades, flowed in university coffers and coaches’ and administrators’ bank accounts. It's players, after all, that we are cheering on Saturday night.
College sports has always had that seedy underbelly, but now it’s the overcoat as well.
With their massive budgets, myriad revenue streams and labor costs, college athletic departments are run like big businesses.
And in business, the owners — in this case, you and me — have every right to know how the money is spent.
Shouldn’t Louisiana taxpayers have that same right when it comes to athletes?
Hell yes.