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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Millions of viewers began tuning1 into college basketball's March Madness games today. Billions of dollars are paid for the TV rights.
Last year, an average of 11 million people tuned2 in throughout the month. And yet one question looms3 larger than ever: Should the players be entitled to compensation?
Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman, explores the issues this would raise. It's part of his weekly Making Sense report, which airs Thursdays on the "NewsHour."
ED O'BANNON, Plaintiff and Former NCAA Player: I saw myself on a video game.
PAUL SOLMAN: Former UCLA star Ed O'Bannon, MVP of the 1995 NCAA Finals.
ED O'BANNON: It was pretty cool to watch. I mean, the guy was left-handed, bald-headed. The jumper was good. So, I was very pleased about it.
PAUL SOLMAN: But the friend who showed O'Bannon the game was puzzled.
ED O'BANNON: What's funny about it is, he says, we paid X-amount of dollars for it, for the video game, and you didn't get one penny.
PAUL SOLMAN: It was this encounter that sparked a famous firestorm, Ed O'Bannon's eventual4 2009 lawsuits5 against the NCAA and video game maker6 EA Sports for blatant7 and unlawful use of student athlete likenesses to increase sales and profits, while denying college athletes any share of the revenues they generated, besides a full-tuition sports scholarship.
ED O'BANNON: Close to 15 years later, and they're still making money off of my image. I just thought to myself, there's got to be something wrong about this. If I was an entertainer of any other sort, would I have these same things happened to me, you know?
ED O'BANNON: Absolutely.
美国NCAA联赛正在变得更加企业化
PAUL SOLMAN: We'd come to find out what's happened to Ed O'Bannon and his suit, landing in Las Vegas, passing the Strip, more decked-out than ever, winding11 up in Henderson, Nevada, where O'Bannon works, lives, and helps coach basketball at Liberty High School.
He now coaches the NCAA-ers of tomorrow, who, if they're absurdly good and lucky, will play in a Final Four themselves someday. The rights paid to the NCAA to broadcast the tournament this year? Nearly a billion dollars. The players' take? Still zero.
New York Times columnist12 Joe Nocera has long made the case for paying so-called student athletes. It's starkly13 laid out in his new book, "Indentured14."
JOE NOCERA, The New York Times: They are fundamentally exploited by a system that makes not millions of dollars, but billions of dollars, and that enriches everybody around them except themselves.
PAUL SOLMAN: But athletes, if they make it, make millions of dollars.
JOE NOCERA: Sure. The very small 5 percent who make it from college to the pros15 will get — will get very rich. What about the other 95 percent?
PAUL SOLMAN: O'Bannon became one of the 5 percent. And yet, in college, he often went hungry for lack of cash.
ED O'BANNON: There were many nights when I went through the night without eating.
PAUL SOLMAN: You?
ED O'BANNON: Oh, absolutely.
MAN: It's simple, gentlemen. The little things is what's going to win us the game.
ED O'BANNON: Do what got us here. Have some fun. Keep us winning.
PAUL SOLMAN: Kyle Thaxton is one of the team's stars. Should college athletes get paid?
KYLE THAXTON, Liberty High School: If they're the ones playing and doing it on the court, then they should be the ones getting paid also. It shouldn't just be the coaches.
PAUL SOLMAN: Coaches who can make $6 million a year or more. And it's not just pay.
RAMOGI HUMA, President, National College Players Association: In NCAA sports, you have players who can be stuck with sports-related medical expenses.
PAUL SOLMAN: Ramogi Huma, who played football at UCLA, has been doing the lonely work of organizing players.
RAMOGI HUMA: Injured players can lose their scholarships. Graduation rates hover17 around 50 percent amongst the sports who are generating this money, and the NCAA's refusing to adopt the same concussion18 reforms that the NFL has adopted.
We're not advocating for professional salaries and things like that, but we're saying that, look, some of that value should be given in the form of basic protections like medical expenses and degree completion.
PAUL SOLMAN: NCAA President Mark Emmert declined an interview, but we caught up with him at a press conference.
Why not pay college athletes?
MARK EMMERT, President, NCAA: Because they're students and they're not employees. At the end of the day, you know, young men and women come to college because they want to get an education, because they want to participate in their sport as part of that educational experience.
PAUL SOLMAN: We relayed Emmert's response to Ed O'Bannon.
ED O'BANNON: The way that they run their business — and that's what they're doing, they are running a business — you can't possibly do that and think that your employees, because these athletes are employees, they aren't — they shouldn't get paid. That to me is mind-boggling.
PAUL SOLMAN: But it was time for the tipoff. In the playoff game, the home team seemed comfortably ahead. But big-time college sports is rarely comfortable, says Joe Nocera.
JOE NOCERA: Really, being an athlete on a campus is a full-time19 job. The NCAA rules say it's only supposed to be 20 hours a week, but if you go on a road trip, they only count the time you're on the floor. So, when you're in the airplane, when you're in the hotel, that doesn't count.
PAUL SOLMAN: And on campus:
JOE NOCERA: You have weightlifting in the morning. Then you go to some classes. Then you have got practice. Then you have got more strength training. Then you have got enforced study hall. You know, you go to bed at midnight, you get up at 6:00, you do the whole thing all over. It's a full-time job.
And not only that. Let's be honest. There's a cartel that is suppressing the wages of a labor20 force, if you want to think about it in economic terms.
PAUL SOLMAN: "Cartel?" we asked the NCAA's Emmert.
MARK EMMERT: He's allowed his opinions.
PAUL SOLMAN: Turns out it's not just the NCAA that has a problem paying players, though.
Cardozo Law School Professor Ekow Yankah:
EKOW YANKAH, Yeshiva University: The more and more we treat them as young minor21 league professional athletes, the further they will get from the other things that we find valuable about college.
PAUL SOLMAN: Or, as Liberty High senior Kahlil Derouen put it:
KAHLIL DEROUEN, Student: We don't want the importance of being a student to be diminished more.
PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, Ekow Yankah asks, if you pay basketball, football and baseball players:
EKOW YANKAH: What does that mean for our water polo team? What does that mean for volleyball? There is a dangerous line here where the very natural thing to do would be to have three revenue-generating sports and get rid of all the others.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, Professor Yankah has an alternative for athletes who aren't students.
EKOW YANKAH: If there are young people who are not at all interested in being student athletes, and their life's project is to develop their particular athletic22 talent, there ought to be professional developmental leagues into which they can go.
PAUL SOLMAN: Right now, of course, the main option for young basketball players remains23 going to an NCAA college.
Do almost all of them think they are going pro8, that is, people who play in Division I college, let's say?
ED O'BANNON: In my experience, yes.
ED O'BANNON: It's a delusion, but I think it's the right delusion. You have to think you're going to go in order to get there.
PAUL SOLMAN: OK, so what happened to O'Bannon's Liberty Patriots? Hoop25 dreams dashed, theirs and by this time ours, they wound up losing 67-61.
ED O'BANNON: As the coaching staff, we tip our hats to you guys, because you played hard all season.
MAN: What you guys did today and these previous four years, you will get to further your education, and get it paid for. That's the goal.
PAUL SOLMAN: And maybe even getting paid extra in cash.
And so, in the end, what's happened to the lawsuits? Well, EA Sports actually settled for roughly $60 million, with thousands of players, past and present, getting, on average, about $1,600 each, the money finally awarded just this week.
In 2014, the court ruled the NCAA's refusal to pay players was an antitrust violation26, and also ordered up to $5,000 per student athlete be put in trust for using their likenesses. But the NCAA appealed, and the money award was reversed.
In Henderson, Nevada, this is economics correspondent Paul Solman for the "PBS NewsHour."
点击收听单词发音
1 tuning | |
n.调谐,调整,调音v.调音( tune的现在分词 );调整;(给收音机、电视等)调谐;使协调 | |
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2 tuned | |
adj.调谐的,已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 );调整;(给收音机、电视等)调谐;使协调 | |
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3 looms | |
n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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4 eventual | |
adj.最后的,结局的,最终的 | |
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5 lawsuits | |
n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 ) | |
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6 maker | |
n.制造者,制造商 | |
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7 blatant | |
adj.厚颜无耻的;显眼的;炫耀的 | |
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8 pro | |
n.赞成,赞成的意见,赞成者 | |
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9 royalties | |
特许权使用费 | |
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10 residuals | |
剩余误差 | |
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11 winding | |
n.绕,缠,绕组,线圈 | |
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12 columnist | |
n.专栏作家 | |
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13 starkly | |
adj. 变硬了的,完全的 adv. 完全,实在,简直 | |
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14 indentured | |
v.以契约束缚(学徒)( indenture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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15 pros | |
abbr.prosecuting 起诉;prosecutor 起诉人;professionals 自由职业者;proscenium (舞台)前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 );赞成的理由;抵偿物;交换物 | |
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16 patriots | |
爱国者,爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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17 hover | |
vi.翱翔,盘旋;徘徊;彷徨,犹豫 | |
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18 concussion | |
n.脑震荡;震动 | |
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19 full-time | |
adj.满工作日的或工作周的,全时间的 | |
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20 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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21 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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22 athletic | |
adj.擅长运动的,强健的;活跃的,体格健壮的 | |
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23 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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24 delusion | |
n.谬见,欺骗,幻觉,迷惑 | |
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25 hoop | |
n.(篮球)篮圈,篮 | |
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26 violation | |
n.违反(行为),违背(行为),侵犯 | |
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27 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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