Our discussion about the bodies in athletics really spoke to me because if people knew the intense physicality it takes to play these sports, there would be an uprising. I have recently become aware of the world of collegiate women’s basketball, and it’s wild. It starts with a basic mandatory schedule. This includes 3 hours of practice, an hour of weights, and 2 hours of study hall daily, with one “Off Day” a week. The coaches make these schedules without input from the players, and players are expected to build around them. Players also have to participate in mandatory community service events scheduled by coaches. The university uses these bodies to prove they benefit the community. However, if the team returned from playing an away game the night before, they may not want to attend a 3-hour service event starting at 8 am. The lack of autonomy on a day-to-day basis feels like some sort of new-aged forced labor.

On top of that, a toxic mentality exists in the community of “proving that you want to be here” for the coaches to play one in a game. If they play, they can produce and prove they are valued enough to be invited back to the school and continue their job and education. However, if we break down what it means to “prove you want to be here,” it means exhausting your body beyond its means. With these tiresome schedules, it is implicitly expected for a player to fit extra workouts into their schedules and become straight-A students to show that they are mature enough to manage a work-life balance. Players are physically and mentally exhausted at the end of each day, and it seems impossible to do it all. They do this all while being paid an almost laughable amount of money. The person that I know plays basketball gets paid $500 a month in the cost of attendance money, which amounts to about $2.88 an hour. $2.88 an hour is nowhere near the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, and this does not include programs that do not get paid.

Most of the time, payment is treated as a privilege and not a right when programs complain about the rigor of their jobs. Almost as if to say, “Be quiet and behave because you get paid.” This would be a different response if the team’s racial makeup were not majority black. To pull concepts from Theresa Runstedtler’s article, there is a long history of black bodies being used and abused for white entertainment and profit, starting with slavery, transitioning into sports like boxing in the 19th and 20th centuries, and transforming into our current athletic industrial complex. These systems are so successful only because black bodies are at the bottom. There is something about black bodies working to the bone for very little that sits right with the American spirit. 

I’m not sure what this means for sports. I say this as a die-hard Ravens fan who finds community and city pride in talking football, especially when I am not in Baltimore. But it is impossible to deny the complex into which I feed: the sports industry, like most things, is built in a pyramid, and the bottom is being pushed beyond max capacity.