Every day in African America we turn on our TVs and see college sports teams’ in primarily basketball and football field All-African (descent) teams. The Top 10 ranked division I programs in basketball (as of today) currently field starting lineups that are 84% African-American. 5 of the top 10 teams have ALL African-American teams and only two teams (Duke and Purdue) field teams with less than 4 out of 5 in their starting lineup. Concurrently in football’s wealthiest program, University of Texas roster contains 55% African-Americans. The University of Texas this year also leapfrogged Notre Dame’s football program as the most valuable football program in the country according to Forbes’ Magazine. The team is valued at $119 million to the university (asset) and produced $59 million in PROFITS.

In economics, absolute advantage refers to the ability of a party (in this case the African Diaspora) to produce more of a good or service than competitors, using the same amount of resources. Capitalism in and of itself creates wealth for ownership of labor not the labor itself. This is the difference between Phil Knight the owner of Nike who is worth almost $10 billion dollars while Michael Jordan whose shoe built Nike into what it is today is worth approximately $500 million. About 20 times LESS than the man that owns the Jordan image, shoe, and brand.

When an 18 year old African-American male athlete and his mother, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, at least 70 percent of all African-American households are headed by single mothers, are sitting in their living room entertaining major college coaches about where her son will spend the next four to five years of his life rarely does the realization that the decision they make impacts could turn around the African-American community. The reality though is these young men could be the very key to the rebirth of African-America.  

We must understand that universities and colleges are more than places where students go to class. They are economic anchors and wealth generators in their perspective communities. They are where ground breaking research takes place that is monetized into businesses (former MIT professor now earns 1.5 Billion a year running a hedge fund founded on quantitative principles). Also where BP (an oil and gas conglomerate) gives $500 Million to UC Berkley to research green energies that it will in turn take and monetize in the future to the tunes of billions of dollars.  Universities and colleges are where small mom and pop businesses form to serve the needs of the thousands of students, faculty, and visitors looking for places to spend money.  The economics of “college towns” has long been an overlooked importance in African America. Some of the most expensive and highest growth areas of real estate in Texas lie in Austin, Texas and College Station, Texas homes of UT and Texas A&M.  But what does this have to do with my 18 year old son saving African America? Prairie View A&M just completed a capital campaign in which it raised a reported $30 Million in six years. UT’s football program made profits of $59 million in one football season. After the 2005 national championship, led by Vince Young, the money made during that season allowed UT to build an extension on to its stadium. Prairie View & Texas Southern have not seen new stadiums in over 50 years and neither have annual research budgets that exceed $15 million while in comparison both UT and TAMU exceed $400 million annual research budgets.

After the 1999 college football championship between Florida State University and a relatively unknown school hidden in the mountains of Blacksburg, VA by the name of Virginia Tech University led by a phenomenal quarterback by the name of Michael Vick  the school would see its admissions applications skyrocket in both quantity and quality. According to their senior associate athletic director at the time Sharon McCloskey “The national media coverage –you couldn’t get enough money together to pay for it”. The rise of not only applicants in admissions but also the quality of academic professorship talent also began to rise at the school. A direct impact on the quality of student the school would produce into the world as well as the amount of research dollars the school would garner. And did I mention Virginia Tech was in the midst of capital campaign of $250 million but instead they raised $330 million and the athletic department saw a 66% rise in donations as well.  All this over a pesky football game where the majority of the athletes chased a ball made of pigskin around for three hours.

As it stands approximately 10% of African-American high school students eligible for college attend HBCUs. The value of African America’s tuition revenue stream is approximately worth $54 billion.  The value of Africa America’s application fee revenue stream is approximately $87.5 million. Ninety percent of both go outside of our very own African American institutions ($49 billion and $79 million respectively). That leaves about $6 billion in revenue to spread among 105 HBCU institutions ($57 million per school).  Just to put this in further comparison the University of Texas generates approximately $590 million in cost of attendance revenues (excluding application fee revenue).

So when you and your 18 year old son are sitting in a living room with a coach (UT’s Mack Brown earns $5 million a year) in front of both of you the world and that he will be the next NBA/NFL superstar even though less than 1% make it and even though the wealthiest people in America all make it with their minds and not their bodies (Top 3 men on Wall St. earn a combined $7.4 billion v. Top 3 athletes earn a combined $200 million or 37 times LESS). Remember that the decisions impact not only you and your family but our entire community for generations to come. And that your son could be the catalyst for shifting the paradigm of power economically back to our own communities giving us the resources to finally address some of the social ails we are facing. Some will say that’s a lot to ask of a 18 year old but it’s a lot less dangerous than when we asked little boys and girls to have fire hoses and dogs turned loose on them. Like any great team we all have a part to play. At the end of the day as African America we must understand the economic system we are in works. Capitalism doesn't reward hard work. It rewards ownership of the hard workers. And the ownership of our black muscle is currently in the hands of institutions that do not represent the interest of African America.