Why College Athletes Should be Paid.

College athletes around the country are working on the flaws in their game and trying to perfect their craft and for what? To make money for their school and the NCAA in which they get no money in return, and have to sustain good academics while working more than forty hours a week, all the while fearful that they can lose it in a heartbeat if they are injured. The NCAA has money to spare because it is a billion dollar industry. Being a college athlete is difficult already and they should be paid something but saying every athlete doesn’t get paid isn’t equal. 

            The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is a billion dollar industry that made most of their revenue from corporate sponsorships (Parker). The NCAA made $800 million from March Madness (Mama), a month long basketball tournament aired on national television, and they made 81% of that money off television deals and marketing (Jcoram). Colleges make millions of dollars off their athletic programs. To be exact, 24 schools have earned more than $100 million off their athletic program and Texas A&M earned $192 million off their program (Gaines). Schools make lots of money, but Mark Emmet, the President of the NCAA, said in an interview, “14 schools out of the 1,100 last year actually had positive cash flow [from] intercollegiate athletics. It’s anything but a money-making proposition for universities and colleges.” Schools have enough money they just spend it erratically, and by design schools. Schools purposely spend their money to make it seem like that they are not making money. Take the University of Alabama, a school that makes $148.9 million recently and just spent $9 million on their football locker room (Manfred) (Gaines). Inside the locker room, there are arcade games, a nutrition bar, a spa, pool tables, and a 30-foot long hot tub with four water fountains! (Manfred) (Dorset). Schools also pay their coaches handsomely because the average football coach is paid $1 million, and the highest paid coach is the University of Michigan’s coach Jim Harbaugh who gets paid $9 million this year (Mama). Schools have plenty of money to give the athletes and a number of hours they work to show it is a full-time job.

(Richard Sherman #9)

Managing an academic scholarship and playing a division one (D1) college sport is incredibly difficult. D1 Baseball has the longest season and the average baseball player practices 42.1 hours a week, basketball players give 39.2 hours, and football players give 43.3 hours a week (O'Shaughnessy). The athletes work around the same amount of hours as a typical 9 to 5 workday. In addition, as Richard Sherman, a football player who went to Stanford University, explained in an interview, he would wake up and do weights, and after weights, he would go to class. After class, he would get a quick bite to eat then he would have to go to meetings. Then he would have practice, and after practice, he would have to do all the work he was assigned in class (Volk). That was an average day for him and the amount of hours per week that they have to give is astonishing, and the effort they have to put forth to keep their academies up is outrageous, but it can all go away in a second if they get injured.

Kyle Hardrick

Some people claim that college athletes are paid with an education. One cannot deny that a full college scholarship is definitely worth something, but a college scholarship is hard to maintain when you work more than 40 hours a week and keep your grades up so you are academically eligible to play. When some schools go to March Madness or other tournaments student athletes may miss up to a quarter of their classes in the spring semester. (Edelman) College athletes don’t have enough time to balance being a student and an athlete. In some people’s cases, they can lose your scholarship if they are injured, such as, Kyle Hardrick, a basketball player, who committed to the Oklahoma University at the age of 14. He lost his basketball scholarship after one of his teammates fell onto his right leg, and tore his meniscus. Oklahoma would not authorize surgery for Kyle, but he later had the operation using his family’s insurance. The school didn’t renew his scholarship, and Kyle still suffers knee pains and is responsible for all of his medical costs (Strauss). Workplaces all across the country have some sort of health care for their employees and college athletes should have some health care, and if not that then they should be paid so that they can cover some of their medical bills.

If you play sports in college and you are very successful, schools can make money years after you leave. Take Patrick Ewing a former basketball player at Georgetown. When he played, Georgetown received 47% more undergraduate applications in the 1982-83 season and a forty-point rise in SAT scores during the next admission cycle (Edelman). Another example is Doug Flutie a former football player who played at Boston College. BC’s undergraduate applications rose up by 25% and their SAT scores increased by 110 points (Edelman). If the players aren’t being paid even though people come to watch them, it’s play is not fair. For years, the NCAA was making money off players likeness’s from their video games such as NCAA Basketball 09. Ed O’Bannon a former UCLA player sued the NCAA over the use of his likeness in the game back in 2009 (Solomon). In 2013, Ed O’Bannon received $15,000 from the case. (Solomon). Electronic Arts (EA) proposed a settlement that is up $40 million, which allowed some athletes to be slightly paid. The attorneys estimate players who appeared in video games since 2005 can be paid $166 to $951 for every roster appearance depending on how many people make claims. Some people think that the athletes should just be grateful for the fact they can play at such a high level.      

(Ed O’Bannon in the game)                                                         (Ed O’Bannon real life) 

Tom Van Riper wrote an article on why college athletes should not be paid and he makes some good points such as that there is no difference between college sports and his daughters CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) game and how parents would have to pay a dollar to get in (Riper). He argues that why should not his daughter be paid since she plays and people come in watch her play. However, there are some things wrong with this statement. No eight-year-old that I know works forty hours a week and has to manage academics. Secondly, CYO games do not fill up the stands and make millions of dollars. He later writes about how the NCAA helped Ed O’Bannon get drafted into the NBA. Yes, it did help him, but not every player makes it to the professional level. It is unlikely that the athletes are going to play on the professional level because 1.6% of kids get to play football and 1.2% from the NCAA to a professional league in basketball (Last Week Tonight). Some other people might just say that they agree that since they agree to the rules they should just do nothing about it.

            Some have argued that people shouldn’t complain because they sign the rules calling them amateurs, but the rule book they agree to is 440 pages long and filled with finicky rules (Last Week Tonight). Look at Stevie Tu'ikolovatu's case; he played in Utah and later transferred to USC. He arrived to practice early, but the NCAA prevents schools from providing benefits until a player is officially enrolled which meant he did not have a place to stay for the two months. He and his wife had to sleep in the car for two months, and for Steve,this might be uncomfortable because he is six foot one inch and three hundred and twenty pounds (Mott). There might be a way in which we can pay college athletes fairly across the board.

Stevie #96 

            One solution is that you pay division one athletes minimum wage plus commission during their season. “Who will get the commission?” you might be asking. That will be decided from ticket sale and attendance. Whoever brings in the most fans and money will get the higher commission. If this was to happen, college basketball players and football players will most likely earn the most money because they are the ones who bring the fans in and TV sponsorships (Wilbon). You might think this is not fair, but if you imagine a car dealership, there are two sales people, and one of them sells more cars than the other, don’t you think this would be fair to pay more to the one who sells one more. If anything, this might push the other athletes to win more, get that extra fan in, and sell more tickets. Furthermore, division two and three athletes would only get paid minimum wage with no benefits. I say this because I think it will push kids to work harder for that division one scholarship.

            Clearly, change is needed because the NCAA is an industry that earns billions of dollars, and does not pay the athletes. Schools benefit from great athletes years after they. The athletes work on their game for longer than the average workweek and have to get passing grades in their classes, or they will not play, or if they are injured, they will just lose their scholarship. The NCAA is an industry that does not pay their athletes to play, and the athletes agree to play, but they should not agree to this unfair treatment.

Citation

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