Inter-Collegiate Football, Responsibility, Exploitation, and the Public Good
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Inter-Collegiate Football, Responsibility, Exploitation, and the Public Good J. Angelo Corlett 1
# Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract
This article presents philosophical-ethical arguments concerning the extent to which NCAA inter-collegiate (“American” or U.S.) football is a public good and some implausible implications of the claim that it constitutes a public good and ought to be publicly subsidized as part of a component of U.S. higher education generally as is currently the case. Underlying this main argument is one concerning who or what should have the responsibility for subsidizing the necessary costs of the sport, including its associated healthcare and medical costs. Keywords CTE . Exploitation . Healthcare . Inter-collegiate football . Leisure . Medical care . NCAA . Public good . Responsibility . U.S. higher education
Introduction In Corlett (2014b), it is argued that inter-collegiate (“American” or U.S.) football ought to be eliminated because it poses an unjustified cost to others in the form of healthcare and medical costs incurred especially related to players who suffer from CTE as the result of normal football play. This healthcare and medical costs to others argument is based on the argument articulated and defended in Corlett (2013b). In Corlett (2014b), it is argued that a telling concern is whether or not the sport ought to and will continue to function in light of the unjust healthcare and medical costs to others argument, a version of the undue exploitation of student This article is dedicated to Professor Myles Brand, friend and former President of the NCAA and who began, during his brief service to the NCAA, to devise plans to implement reforms with regard to how student athletes are treated by NCAA rules and regulations. For more on Brand and the role of athletics in U.S. higher education, see Corlett (2013a) in The Journal of Academic Ethics. I am grateful to the excellent referees for the Journal of Academic Ethics for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to the members of the philosophy department at the University of Louisville who provided incisive comments on an earlier draft of this paper: Thomas Maloney, Guy Dove, Avery Kolers, Robert Kimball, Andrea Reed, Andreas Elpidorou and Stephen Hanson.
* J. Angelo Corlett [email protected]
1
SDSU, San Diego, CA, USA
J.A. Corlett
athletes argument, complex considerations of responsibility and the public good, and in light of the increasing numbers of parents of high school student athletes who prohibit their boys and girls from playing football at the high school level, respectively, as this latter point has an indirect effect on the primary arena of recruitment of inter-collegiate football student athletes, which in turn has a tremendous effect on the recruitment of National Football League players. And this trend might continue whether or not the relevant brain sciences increasingly confirm that CTE is traceable to normal football play, and whether or not most or all such athletes experi
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