Throwing Up A Prayer

When something you wish to happen will probably never happen, it is said that you don’t even have a prayer, like when a quarterback “throws up a prayer.” Setting aside how this phrase doesn’t say much about the power of prayer, I mention it here because after reading the Supreme Court’s decision on paying college athletes, I wish for something to happen that falls into the “don’t have a prayer” category. But I’m going to wish for it anyway. 

My wish is inspired by the college sports decision, but it has nothing to do with college sports. It has to do with how we govern our country.

The Supreme Court said that college athletes should be allowed to receive educational benefits beyond just scholarships – that they should be able to be paid as long as the pay relates to something involving their schooling. That gives the college athletes something – not quite half a loaf – more like a quarter of a crust. But it is movement in the right direction. 

The inspiration for my wish, though, is in what the Court used as part of its rationale. In analyzing the state of college sports, it recognized that much has changed since the same issue had been reviewed decades ago. In part, it said, “When it comes to college sports, there can be little doubt that the market realities have changed significantly since 1984.” It then cites to how there are new and higher limits on scholarships; how the amount raised by Division I football and basketball has increased from $963 million in 1985 to $13.5 billion in 2016; and how  CBS paid $16 million a year to televise March Madness from 1982 to 1984 but paid $1.1 billion in 2016. 

So, the notion that gives me hope is that the Court considered here how changed circumstances gave rise to a necessary change in the law. Why does that give me hope? Because my wish is that someday that same rationale will be applied to campaign finance.

Money has spoiled our politics. The only people who don’t think so are either those who are funneling the money into the system or those who stand in line overnight for tickets to a Tucker Carlson speech. The Supreme Court is to blame for this (not for Tucker Carlson – the misuse of birth control by his parents are to blame for that). The Court is to blame because it has said that money equals speech and that political contributions equal political speech and, therefore, the First Amendment prevents most restrictions on political contributions. This reasoning, in technical constitutional language, is called, “fucking nuts.”

The foundation of that ludicrous idea came in the 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo. The famous Citizens United case then carried that concept a few farcical steps further and applied it to organizations. And even Citizens United is over a decade old.  Things have changed since.

In the 1976 Presidential election, the total contributions to both political parties totaled $113,986,491.  That’s not enough today to even gas up Jeff Bezos’s spaceship. For the 2020 election, the Biden and Trump campaigns combined raised a total of $3.65 billion.

If the increase in the levels of money involved in college athletics now justifies a change in that law, why not in politics?  Come on, Supreme Court – what’s good for the quarterback should be good for the country.