“(I)n this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” – Benjamin Franklin

If you ever needed confirmation about the importance of college sports in our state, simply look at the men’s basketball game that took place in Tuscaloosa last Saturday.

Both teams could claim a number one ranking, depending on which national poll you referenced, and ESPN’s College Gameday showed up to add to the hype of the Southeastern Conference’s first ever matchup between the nation’s top two basketball teams.

Auburn, led by national player of the year candidate Johni Broome won, but Alabama fans are no doubt looking forward to the next time the two teams play in early March. Heck, they might even play one or two more times after that depending on how postseason tournaments shake out.

The state’s passion for college athletics is what makes these games fun and meaningful, but this passion can also sometimes lead us astray as fanbases search for any possible competitive advantage they can scheme up while also avoiding being disadvantaged.

Such is the case now in both Alabama and Georgia as both states consider eliminating income tax for college athletes on their compensation from NIL – or name, image and likeness.

We have discussed the pros and cons of NIL before as it is a relatively new development in college athletics. College athletes are allowed to receive money from outside sources, but not the universities themselves, and maintain their amateur status to compete for their universities.

To be fair to our own legislature, we can blame Georgia for starting this most recent round of silliness.

In recruiting college athletes, programs stockpile as many talented players as possible, and sometimes by any means necessary, to fill up the scholarship allotments in place for each sport.

As you might expect, some of the fiercest recruiting battles faced by universities in Alabama and Georgia come against the Volunteers, Gators, Seminoles, Hurricanes, and Commodores – or in other words, universities located in Florida and Tennessee.

While a vast majority of states collect a state income tax, it just so happens Florida and Tennessee do not. The citizens in those states pay tax revenue in other ways such as having higher sales taxes, property taxes and excise taxes.

Georgia State Senator Brandon Beach saw this situation as a threat where Georgia’s college programs could lose recruits enamored by the possibility of keeping more of their NIL income by playing in Florida or Tennessee.

As a result, Beach introduced a bill in the Georgia State Senate exempting college athletes from paying income taxes on NIL earnings. Not wanting to be left without a ride to the dance when it comes to recruiting, a nearly identical bill was introduced in Alabama last week.

This idea is similar to a concept in public policy called the race to the bottom where states will continually lower corporate tax rates and offer larger tax breaks to businesses in order to attract those businesses to states or keep them from moving out of state.

In states where college sports are highly valued, we seem to be pursuing a similar race to the bottom. In this case, though, it will not be the government that suffers greatly because of lost revenue, but the citizens themselves who lose out to college athletes who have special rules applied only to them.

University athletic programs will try to attract the best athletic performers. The best athletes will usually command the most money through NIL based on their market value. The more money an athlete makes through NIL, the less he or she should be in need of tax breaks.

This is what race to the bottom policies often do – provide the greatest benefits to those who have the least need for those benefits.

I think it will be difficult to justify to someone who pays state income taxes on a $35,000-a-year salary how college superstars who can make hundreds of thousands of dollars through NIL should not have to pay income taxes, even if that person is a huge sports fan.

The only fair way to deal with this problem, if you even consider it to be a problem, is to restructure how we collect taxes in Alabama to be more like Florida and Tennessee. But I would not hold my breath.

Try running the idea of eliminating income taxes and raising property taxes up the flagpole of public opinion, and then let me know how many four-letter words you receive as feedback.

So it looks like our best option is to continue to pay those silver-tongued college coaches a king’s ransom, and let them deal with it. Now that Alabama is the new Tobacco Road of college basketball, we have a high standard to uphold.