The AAU, which stands for the Amateur Athletic Union, a US nonprofit organization that hosts a variety of different sports for youth athletes, has drawn attention largely for its influence over youth basketball. Many high-profile basketball players, including LeBron James and Luka Dončić, have taken issue with what they see as its harmful effect on the modern game.
The draw of the AAU is that it provides a venue for the best players in the country to compete during the summer in front of a slew of college recruiters; any player angling for a D1 (the top division of college sports) scholarship must work through the AAU basketball system.
The culture of AAU is hypercompetitive: athletes from the age of seven travel the country and play in shoe brand–sponsored tournaments — a far remove from the (more affordable) culture of pickup basketball long associated with the sport.
Year-round participation in nationwide competition, brand-sponsored tournaments, invite-only camps, and professionalized personal training has replaced an earlier model of youth sport in which athletes played during the school seasons but enjoyed a long offseason during which they often played another sport for fun.
For the players, the AAU offers exposure, putting not-yet-teenaged kids in front of college coaches, agents, trainers, handlers, and shoe executives. These individuals make up the informal rent-seeking class, which makes money by restricting kid’s access to big-time amateur basketball.
Their primary objective is “relationship building” with future stars, or what sports documentarian Mike Nicoll has referred to as ”juice proximity.” The aim of these individuals is to identify young talent, build up that talent’s brand, and funnel them to a set of specific college programs associated with their particular brand sponsor.
It is perhaps unsurprising that American sports are dominated by the same brand of gatekeeping and rent-seeking capitalism…
Auteur: Jack Bedrosian
