You’ve probably heard a million times that the NCAA is a "cartel." It’s the kind of thing people scream on Twitter or sports talk radio when a kid gets suspended for selling his own jersey. But back in 2012, Slate's Josh Levin dug into something much more specific and, honestly, way more predatory than just the "unpaid labor" argument. He called out what he considered the most evil thing about college sports: the fact that athletic scholarships can be yanked away for literally any reason, at any time.
Think about that. We are told these kids are "student-athletes" and that the "student" part is what matters. The NCAA loves to wrap itself in the flag of education. But Levin pointed out the massive hypocrisy in how the contracts are actually written. If a coach decides a player isn't "fitting the system" or if they just want to free up a spot for a shiny new recruit, they can effectively fire that student. Not just from the team, but from their education.
Why the One-Year Scholarship Was a Trap
For decades, the standard NCAA scholarship wasn't a four-year promise. It was a one-year agreement renewable at the "institution's" (read: the coach's) discretion. Josh Levin’s critique centered on the Power Five schools—the Alabamas and LSUs of the world—that fought tooth and nail to keep it that way.
Why? Flexibility.
If you’re a coach like Nick Saban or Derek Dooley, you want to manage your roster like a professional GM. You want to "cut" the dead weight. But in the NFL, when you get cut, you’re a free agent who already got paid. In college, when you get "cut" by having your scholarship non-renewed, you lose your path to a degree. You’re often stuck with a tuition bill you can’t pay and transfer rules that (at the time) forced you to sit out a year.
Levin basically argued that this made the "student-athlete" moniker a total sham. If the education was the primary "payment" for their services, then that payment should be guaranteed. You don't take back a salary after the work has been performed. Yet, schools were effectively taking back the promise of a degree if the kid didn't perform well enough on the field.
🔗 Read more: Texas vs Oklahoma Football Game: Why the Red River Rivalry is Getting Even Weirder
It’s cold. It’s calculated. And according to Levin, it’s the most evil part of the whole machine because it proves the school views the player as a piece of equipment, not a student.
The "Indentured Servitude" of the Transfer Portal (Before it Was Cool)
The system Levin described was a one-way street. Coaches could leave whenever they wanted for a bigger paycheck. They could "non-renew" a kid because he grew an inch shorter than expected or didn't have a "quick enough first step."
But the player? The player was locked in.
"College athletes are unpaid workers whose movements are strictly controlled by their employers. That’s not amateur sports. That’s something close to indentured athletic servitude." — Josh Levin
This was the core of his argument. The "evil" wasn't just that they weren't getting a paycheck; it was the total lack of rights. You have a multibillion-dollar industry where the labor force has zero job security, zero bargaining power, and can be discarded the second their utility drops.
💡 You might also like: How to watch vikings game online free without the usual headache
The Morality of "Roster Management"
We see it every year during "Spring Cleaning." A new coach comes in—let’s say Deion Sanders at Colorado as a modern example of what Levin was talking about—and tells half the team to hit the portal.
In 2012, Levin highlighted how schools like Alabama and LSU would rescind scholarship offers right before a kid's freshman year or "medical" players off the roster to make room for more talent. It’s a numbers game played with the lives of 18-year-olds.
Levin’s point was that if you’re going to claim these kids are students, you have to treat their education as a right, not a performance bonus. If a kid with a 4.0 GPA gets his scholarship pulled because he tore his ACL, the "student" part of "student-athlete" is a lie.
How Things Have (and Haven't) Changed
Since Levin wrote his seminal piece, the landscape has shifted, but the "evil" hasn't totally evaporated.
- Multi-year Scholarships: After a lot of public shaming (including Levin’s), many big conferences started offering four-year guaranteed scholarships.
- NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness): Kids can finally make money. This addresses the "unpaid labor" part, but it doesn't necessarily solve the "disposable athlete" problem.
- The Transfer Portal: Players have more freedom now. They can leave if they aren't playing.
But even with NIL and the portal, the power dynamic is still skewed. We still see "roster management" where kids are pushed out. We still see a system that generates billions for television executives while the actual performers are one bad injury away from being "processed" out of the program.
📖 Related: Liechtenstein National Football Team: Why Their Struggles are Different Than You Think
The Josh Levin Perspective: It’s About the Contract
What makes Levin’s take so sharp is that he didn't just focus on the money. He focused on the contract.
A scholarship is a legal agreement. For years, the NCAA made sure those agreements were as lopsided as possible. They argued that "amateurism" was a protected legal status that allowed them to bypass normal labor laws. Levin saw through the fluff. He realized that if you can lose your "job" (and your education) because you aren't "good enough" at the sport, then you aren't a student. You’re an employee without any of the protections of employment.
What You Should Take Away From This
If you’re a fan of college sports, you don’t have to stop watching. But you should probably stop buying the NCAA’s propaganda about "the purity of the game."
Josh Levin’s "most evil thing" is a reminder that college sports is a business that uses the veneer of education to justify exploitation. When you hear a coach talk about "culture" or "family," remember that "family" usually doesn't stop paying for your school just because you aren't a starter on the offensive line anymore.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Recruits
- Look for Guaranteed Scholarships: If you’re a recruit or a parent, the first question isn’t about the weight room. It’s: "Is this scholarship guaranteed for four years regardless of athletic performance?"
- Support Player Rights: The move toward "employee status" for athletes is the only thing that will actually fix the power imbalance Levin wrote about.
- Question the "Student-Athlete" Narrative: Every time the NCAA uses that term in a commercial, ask yourself why they fought so hard in court to make sure those "students" didn't have the same rights as the person working at the campus bookstore.
The system is slowly breaking. The courts are finally siding with the players. But the "most evil thing"—the idea that a kid's future is a disposable asset—is something the industry is still trying to hold onto. Stay skeptical.
To truly understand the current state of the game, you need to follow the ongoing lawsuits regarding "employee status" for Division I athletes. That is the next big domino to fall in the battle Josh Levin was writing about over a decade ago. Keep an eye on the Johnson v. NCAA case—it’s the modern version of this exact argument.