Category Archives: Business and economics

What will NCAA choose to do now

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

At the Little Rock Touchdown Club Sept. 23, University of Arkansas Athletic Director Hunter Yurachek was asked about a California bill allowing college athletes to profit from endorsements.

He said he’d been told by NCAA attorneys not to comment but said the university invests its revenues in the athletes and that the student-athlete experience is the best it’s ever been. He also said this.

“Being a student-athlete is a voluntary activity. It’s a heck of a commitment, but no one is making you be a student-athlete. No one’s making you put your name on that line and sign that scholarship. That’s something that you do, and you understand when you sign your name … what comes with that and what doesn’t come with that. And so if there’s an opportunity for you to make some money … as a person off your name, image and likeness, right now that’s not as a student-athlete, and so you ought to take that opportunity and go somewhere else with that.”

In other words, the athletes knew the rules and still agreed to play.

But those rules will change, sooner or later. Thanks to California’s law, it’s probably sooner.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law the Fair Pay to Play Act, which bars the NCAA from banning participation by California schools whose athletes are compensated for using their name, image or likeness. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2023.

It applies only to California, but the NCAA and other college athletic departments will have no choice but to respond – by suing, of course, and by threatening California with expulsion.

It won’t work, at least not for long. Eventually the NCAA must find a way to share more of its billions with the athletes if it wants to continue existing. After all, if the best college athletes can make money only in California, that’s where they will play.

The NCAA and the college athletic departments want to keep the status quo because they benefit from the rules they wrote. Those rules haven’t changed much even as college sports evolved from an extracurricular activity into a multi-billion-dollar business. Generations of college athletes from poor and minority backgrounds have struggled to make ends meet while the rich old rule-makers made plenty. At one point, the NCAA even made money from video games featuring players’ names and likenesses – again, without compensating the players – until a lawsuit finally ended that. In 2015, the NCAA finally began allowing players to collect small stipends in addition to their scholarships to help pay for incidental expenses. But those are pennies compared to what the rule-makers are paid.

At the highest levels, college athletics is really becoming a farce. Big-time programs exist alongside rather than as a part of their universities. Coaches’ salaries dwarf the universities’ presidents’. It’s “amateur athletics,” but only the athletes aren’t being compensated – legally, anyway, because the system encourages under-the-table payments.

The status quo is most unfair to football players. The best 18-year-old basketball players can play in the NBA or overseas. The best 18-year-old baseball players can go straight to the minor leagues. But the best 18-year-old football players must go to college if they want to keep playing.

In signing the bill into law, Newsom said he knows it will have consequences, and the state wants to “engage” the NCAA. In other words, the NCAA had better make a counteroffer before Jan. 1, 2023. He pointed out that only athletic governing bodies can keep students from making money off their name and likeness. If you’re a student with another skill, the free market still applies.

Yes, college sports is a voluntary activity, but so is almost any adult endeavor. No one “makes” you work for a factory or a newspaper. That doesn’t give a powerful entity the right to act like the standards that apply to the rest of society don’t apply to it.

Perhaps this could have been avoided had the NCAA voluntarily shared revenues with athletes more equitably.

Or maybe this was inevitable. This America. If you own anything, it’s your name and likeness.

Regardless, the rules are changing. Soon it will be the NCAA that must adapt if it wants to keep playing.

Everyday low doctor bills at Walmart

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Neither lawmakers nor insurance companies apparently can (or will) find a way to control health care costs, so now we’ll see if the company founded by Sam Walton can help.

Walmart on Sept. 13 opened its first Walmart Health clinic in Georgia, offering primary care, mental health, dental, optical and hearing services. More clinics are coming.

The company that promises “everyday low prices” in its stores says the clinics will offer more affordable health services with upfront costs. Located beside a Walmart Supercenter, the Georgia clinic offers services such as adult physicals for $30 and dental exams with X-rays for $25, as reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Patients are told roughly what their visit will cost when they make the appointment.

The nation’s largest private-sector employer, which already subsidizes business and technology college degree paths for employees, also will help them earn health care-related degrees and diplomas. Some of those employees eventually will staff those clinics.

Walmart exists to make money, and there’s a lot to be made in health care. Continue reading →

Arkansas, don’t be like Great Britain

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In a democracy, any discussion of “Should we do something?” should also answer “How will we do it?” Otherwise, we start looking like Great Britain does now.

That country didn’t answer both questions regarding “Brexit,” and now it’s a mess.

On June 23, 2016, British voters were asked simply, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” Fifty-two percent said “Leave.”

Several factors played into the result. Voters wanted to maintain British sovereignty and identity in a country that never adopted the euro. Many opposed the EU’s open borders and immigration policies. The older the voters were, the more likely they were to support Brexit.

You might say they wanted to make Britain great again. Continue reading →

With that big hog farm, it was time to fold ‘em

By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

June 20, 2019

If you’re a red-blooded Arkansan, you know what words follow these: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to …”

In “The Gambler,” it’s “fold ‘em.” In politics and the legal environment, it sometimes is “settle,” as I’m sure Gov. Asa Hutchinson knows, along with the owners of C&H Farms.

Hutchinson and the farm owners realized it was time to walk away before it came time to run. So that’s what both sides did with an agreement to close that big hog farm near the Buffalo National River.

Hutchinson announced June 13 that the state would pay Richard and Phillip Campbell (the “C”) and Jason Henson (the “H”) $6.2 million to close the concentrated animal feeding operation located 6.6 miles from Big Creek, which flows into the Buffalo National River. Of that, at least $5.2 million will come from the taxpayers, with the rest coming from private donations through The Nature Conservancy. Continue reading →

Cold War’s end: No parade, but maybe a museum

By Steve Brawner

© 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

May 28, 2019

One of the United States’ greatest military successes came after it barely fired a shot at its enemy, and now the city of Blytheville has decided somebody ought to mark the occasion.

That success came in the Cold War, the defining conflict of my generation.

For more than 40 years, the United States and the Soviet Union stared across the oceans at each other, missiles at the ready. As a boy, I had nightmares about nuclear war.

We’ll never know how close it came. One example: In 1983, a Soviet computer system mistakenly detected a launch of five U.S. missiles. Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov’s skepticism (Why would the Americans fire only five missiles?) may have saved the world from accidental nuclear war.

Arkansas had its own near-nuclear accidents. As reported by historian Tom Dillard in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state was home to 18 Titan II missile complexes. One complex near Pangburn burned in 1965 in an accident that killed 53 of the 55 contract maintenance workers inside. The missile remained unaffected. Continue reading →