No Shirt for You...

Did you know that, if you bought one from the University of Georgia website, you could sell an A. J. Green jersey? If I bought one, I could too. Barack Obama could. Sarah Palin could. The pastor who wanted to burn a Koran could. The imam who's the spokesperson for the group that wants to build a mosque near the destroyed World Trade Center towers site could. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could -- but probably only the youth sizes, because he's a sawed-off little runt of a psychopath. Hugo Chavez could, but then he would likely order some soldiers to confiscate it back from you and keep the money.

In short, nearly all of the world's citizens, should they find themselves in possession of a University of Georgia Bulldogs jersey No. 8 with the word "Green" on the back, could sell said jersey for whatever their local market could bear. Unless, of course, that citizen happened to be A. J. Green, the guy whose work in that particular shirt makes it something someone would want to buy. Green can't sell it, even if it's one he wore himself and didn't just order off the school website. When he did so, he got suspended by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for the first four games of the season.

Get that? The University of Georgia can make all the money it wants off Mr. Green. If, in the process of playing full-contact football for them, he is injured or if he turns out to be not so great at the pro level or is a head case who can't get signed, he will never make any money. But even if he does, the University of Georgia will share none of their green with Mr. Green, despite the fact that they made it directly from his labors and his good name. They will, of course, claim they are giving him free room, board and tuition while he works towards a degree. Mr. Green, for the curious, is enrolled in the University of Georgia's Department of Housing and Consumer Economics, where he is pursuing a bachelor's in housing. You may read about this major here.

I like watching college football, and I have fun offering my hyperbole-laden recaps of my alma mater's football games. But the reality is that universities, coaches, conferences, TV networks, shoe companies, athletic apparel companies and the like all make mints of money off the unpaid labor of young men while offering them little more than food and a roof -- a situation I thought a Mr. Lincoln signed a piece of paper ending, back in 1863.

It may be that those in charge of the NCAA and its plantation -- I mean, organization -- didn't study history. But I bet they will, one day, get the Cliff's Notes version, thanks to some enterprising lawyers and a judge or two who did take that course.