Watching the debate over the SCORE Act, which stalled in the House in May, and the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act (PCSA), now voted out of Senate committee, there is an undeniable throughline between the Trump administration’s attempts to weaken diversity, equity, and inclusion, its push to dilute Black representation through Southern redistricting, and the attempts to regulate college athletics.
Each is about cabining—a phrase Justice Kavanaugh used in his Alston v. NCAA concurrence—the economic power and voice of Black Americans. Kavanaugh may seem an unlikely ally in the fight for greater equality. But as a veteran of locker rooms in high school and college, he was explicit that the NCAA has been price fixing labor, plainly and purely, largely on the backs of the athletes of color who generate the greatest revenue in football and basketball. That’s why these attempts concern me now, as these bills seek to overturn a unanimous Supreme Court. I am quite familiar with the NCAA, both as a college basketball player at the first HBCU, Cheyney University, and at the NBPA. I’ve been around long enough to observe the NCAA’s exploitation and continued quest for free or now cheaper labor … also, by watching Texas Western’s all-Black five beat an all-White Kentucky team for the 1966 title; and seeing Bear Bryant bring an integrated USC team to Birmingham in 1970, exposing what his own all-White Alabama roster was missing. Each moment literally and figuratively turned the tide, using sports to open institutions and minds. Still, it took from 1971 to 2021, some 50 years from when Spencer Haywood won the right to seek a professional contract in yet another Supreme Court case as a 19-year-old, for the NCAA to recognize the rights of athletes to earn money from their names, images, and likenesses.
