Monday, January 20 is sure to be a day of pomp and circumstance that brings Americans of all political leanings together in celebration of the nation’s most cherished of institutions. We are talking, of course, about the college football national championship game in Atlanta between Ohio State and Notre Dame.
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There is a secret sauce that makes the spectacle that will unfold in Mercedes-Benz Stadium—and indeed the entire system of college football—possible. It isn’t the traditions, the pageantry, the religious devotion of fans, or the aesthetics of the game. It isn’t the rich coaches, bloated athletic departments, lucrative tv contracts, or NIL. It isn’t even the drunken tailgating.
No, the thing upon which everything else in college football depends–business and pleasure–is something entirely different. It is a phenomenon we call, borrowing from sociologist Jill Fisher, structural coercion.
It is often said that college football players “sign up” to participate in the sport, despite all its exploitative warts. That is, they consent or choose to play when in fact they do not actually have to. The only problem with that assumption is that it is almost literally and certainly figuratively wrong: for many players who participate in the sport, the decision to play is framed by socioeconomic factors within a system of profound inequality called racial capitalism.
The sad truth is that for many people in the United States, college football genuinely does provide a pathway to access resources and opportunities that are otherwise historically and systematically denied. It is, in that sense, a rational choice, albeit one that is coerced by circumstances beyond their control.
This is a problem not only because being coerced into making a choice is unfair, but also because of the sacrifice it demands of those who participate. For, unfortunately, it is now clear that participation in football has life-altering and sometimes life-ending consequences. Every 2.6 years of participation in the sport doubles the chances of contracting chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Even more disturbingly, already this summer, conservatively, at least six teenagers have died from participation in the sport. Football is inherently violent and as such necessarily inflicts violence on those who “play.”
What structural coercion means, then, is that young people are being systematically compelled by circumstances to participate in a sport that will cause them lasting harm in order to access resources and opportunities—such as higher education and connections to job opportunities and a professional career that might leverage class mobility—that should be available to all as a basic human right.
Everything in college football is about making money . . . except if you’re a so-called student-athlete. Then you can’t make any money. You’re not allowed to. You’re told you’re not a professional and can’t take a share of the money you are part of earning.
If that wasn’t bad enough, we must underline that those disproportionately suffering from structural coercion are Black Americans whose labor produces immense value for a largely white class of beneficiaries. The power four (formerly power five) universities responsible for the most value-production in college football are predominantly white institutions (PWI) that generally admit Black students at a disproportionately low rate relative to the overall population (as of 2019-20, only 5.7 percent of PWI students were Black).
Yet, Black football players were conversely massively disproportionately overrepresented at the PWIs of the power five, comprising 55.7 percent of players in the sport. At the same time, coaches, athletic department officials, university presidents, and members of the media, most of whom reap lucrative salaries from college football, are disproportionately white. Given that players are on the contrary “compensated” only in the form of scholarships by the university, this has accounted for an estimated annual $1.2-$1.4 billion racial transfer of wealth.
Players we anonymously interviewed for our book The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game were very clear that there was one primary reason athletes were willing to endure so much harm to sustain such an unjust and exploitative system: structural coercion.
One player told us in the book,
Everything in college football is about making money . . . except if you’re a so-called student-athlete. Then you can’t make any money. You’re not allowed to. You’re told you’re not a professional and can’t take a share of the money you are part of earning, you know? But the fucked-up thing is, bro, there’s nowhere else to go. They have created this system where you can’t go nowhere [else] to play football because there ain’t any options. So if you want to be a professional and get paid, you have to play in college or nobody going to notice you. How is that fair?
The main problem, however, is not just that there aren’t other options for playing football; it is that the reasons for playing football have everything to do with the terrible conditions produced by racial capitalism.
Another player thus explained,
I’m from a place where it’s number two in the world for homicide. Not very much people getting a better life coming out of there. With that being said, for my family, me getting out of the house and doing something positive was just the number one goal. Where we’re from, you end up dead or in jail. It’s literally a place full of statistics… If I didn’t get a scholarship, I wouldn’t have been going to school. I would’ve had to apply to work somewhere, because my parents could not afford it, period. Even then though, I was sending money back when I got my stipend and little things just to help. Like I said, I’m the oldest and it was always tight around the house. Anything I could do to make it less tight or make my parents worry less, or just aim that direction into the other kids and not me kind of thing, that was always my goal.
A third player explained,
A lot of the players that I played with that were African American had very, very tough financial situations… The system just kind of thrives on that, if that makes sense? I mean, there were people who would tell me that they grew up and they couldn’t afford to eat before college football, regularly… You’ve got a lot of people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds that are really dialed in because it’s like the biggest-bang-for-their-buck investment on their life’s work. And it does affect, I think, African American players more than it affects white ones, to be totally honest with you.
Even the dangers posed by CTE are not enough to counterbalance the possible opportunities offered by football in the context of racial capitalism. When asked about those risks, one of the players we talked to for the book explained:
It is in the back of your mind, but at the same time, we’re doing this sport for our families. [For] a lot of people that look like me and other collegiate athletes who don’t, this is our only way to attain a higher education and get a degree . . . we don’t come from a financially stable situation where [our parents are] able to pay. . . . It’s just like, let me make these sacrifices for my family.
Similarly, another explained,
Where I come from, bro, like, that’s one of the main ways you make it, is you play ball. If you don’t play ball, you go work at the factory. You go work at the gas station. One of my high school teammates, one of the coaches who expected him to get recruited, was like, “Yo, if you don’t come here”—I think was [head coach of an SEC school]—“then you’re going to be back at [home] pumping gas at gas stations.”
Indeed, a nationwide Ipsos poll conducted by The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland found that:
Black parents are more likely than white parents, by substantial margins, to believe that youth tackle football could lead to a college scholarship or an NFL career. Hispanic parents are also far more likely than white parents to see college scholarships and pro careers as a potential benefit of youth football.
The key feature of structural coercion is that it inhibits the freedom of young people to choose whether they are willing to take on the risks involved in college football. Thus, one player told us, “It’s a choice, but it’s a Hobson’s choice. Would you rather jump off a tower or eat glass? Like, give me the glass, but I don’t enjoy it.”
This is also why former Ohio State cornerback Marcus Williamson publicly declared in a Twitter thread in 2022, “Why don’t you leave? Quit? Most of us have only been athletes our entire lives. This is how we try to feed our families and children. It’s either play their game or have n0 chance at the lottery.”
So why is structural coercion a secret sauce? Why isn’t it widely understood to be a determinative factor in shaping college football? Why don’t we hear more players talk about it like Williamson did?
One of the players we spoke to for the book explained,
The locker room is sacred in ways. And I disagree with this, and I think it’s embellished. But it’s like a gang, or a unit. You keep everything in-house, “What happens here, stays here,” “We’re all in this together,” that type of thing. So when someone like Marcus Williamson speaks out, it kind of breaks that imagined circle of trust. Even if players know it’s true. And I’ve experienced this. . . . One on one, a player will agree with me, but publicly disagree with me. And it’s a little crazy-making. . . . Players won’t step out of line because it risks everything they’ve worked for . . . from your position, to money, to the coaches, telling scouts that you’re a troublemaker. So you do everything you can not to upset the status quo, because though you’re being exploited at the moment, there’s a chance for a payoff later. You know, figuratively and literally.
For most players, in the context of a punitive system of racial capitalism that denies opportunity and access to class mobility, there is little choice but to participate in college football if that option is available, regardless of the exploitation and harm they will be subjected to.
But that doesn’t mean it will ultimately pay off.
When asked if he would do it again, one player told us, “No, I would have never played football. I would say that’s probably the worst mistake I’ve ever made. . . . If I knew what I knew, I would have never played.”
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva new book is The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press, December 2024).
