Ralph Nader wants to “de-professionalize” college sports and remove scholarships

Stupid leftists. The one thing that completely escapes the leftist world view is that without incentives, people will not compete and will not attempt to better themselves. The profit motive creates incentives for businesses to develop new products and compete with their rivals in the marketplace. Incentives are also the reason why individuals, properly compensated, work harder and more efficiently to be better employees. 

The incentive created in high school athletics by the opportunity to earn a college scholarship creates better football, better basketball, better soccer, even better lacrosse players.  They work harder. They play harder. They study more film and learn the playbooks backwards and forwards. They make better grades in their high school coursework in order to qualify academically to play for a major college athletics program because they know that when their body of work in high school is good enough, their college is paid for.

This is a great opportunity for people in challenging social, geographic and demographic situations to overcome obstacles, gain a college degree, and break out of the mold that a leftist, overly controlling society has cast for them. It puts them at the same competitive level as people with many more advantages and in many cases, their athletic ability allows them to win a competition that they otherwise might not even be allowed to enter.

Ralph Nader doesn’t like young black men or young Hispanic women working so hard to better their lots in life. He calls that “professionalization,” and he wants to eliminate the incentives. He wants “needs based” scholarships to replace those awarded on a competitive nature.

Sound familiar?

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In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. – Karl Marx

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College athletics has reached the zenith it’s on primarily because of the competitive nature of the system and the ability of its players to better themselves through competition. Destroy those incentives and you destroy everything we love about college sports.

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