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Imagine a world where college athletes would be getting paid by their universities purely based on athletic ability. The world of college sports has become very popular over the past 40 years and with great popularity, comes a great deal of money. The problem of paying collegiate athletes has been a conflict for many years because athletes believe that they should be getting paid more than their scholarships. Two sides of this conflict would be whether the athletes at Division 1 colleges should be getting paid in addition to the scholarship that they already received or not be getting paid in addition to the scholarships they have already received. There are many firm believers, like analysts, athletes, and families who think that these athletes are employees of their universities, and therefore should be getting paid.
On the other side of the conflict, many people also believe that those students are not just athletes of their universities, but they are student-athletes. Those students are not at big time schools like Alabama, or Duke University, just for football and basketball, they are at those schools to get a level of higher education. Playing a sport is just a bonus in the eyes of the administration of the universities and the NCAA. The idea of athletes being paid by an institution of higher learning because of their athletic ability is a touchy, and very controversial topic in our country right now. Although it is not wanted by the NCAA, the organization that runs college sports, it is wanted among the athletes themselves.
The controversy between the two sides is that the NCAA believes that paying the tuition of students is technically paying them to play, they also believe that giving athletes a free education (that would cost them thousands of dollars if they do not receive a scholarship) is enough of a pay for their services. On the other side, the athletes and their families feel that their sons and daughters need to be compensated more than they are because of how much time is put into their sport. The people in favor of “Pay-for-Play”, or paying collegiate athletes, believe that not only are the athletes students of the university, but they are employees.
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The athletes themselves even believe that they should be getting paid for their time as an athlete, because they bring in a lot of money for their institutions. For all the problems in the world, there are solutions, or compromises. Collegiate athletes should not be paid like professional athletes, but they should be given some sort of additional payment for daily living, such as going grocery shopping, buying clothes, and gas money. This compromise, in my opinion, will eventually happen due to such a high demand of athletes proposing this idea.
The NCAA, or the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was founded on March 31, 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt. The NCAA is the head honcho in all things that are related to college athletes and teams. It has three levels of competition known as Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3. Division 1 is the highest level of competition and recruits the best athletes nationwide. These athletes have the greatest chances of going into the professional level and making millions of dollars. The NCAA is a non-profit organization that does not get taxed under federal law. They do not record any profits because all of their profits get back into the schools and the athletic scholarships that those schools, such as Alabama, Oregon, LSU, Duke, and Kentucky, offer their potential athletes. In a journal written by Ryan Vanderford, he writes,
In 2012, the National Collegiate Athletic Association reported $ 871.6 million in revenue. In the 2012-13 fiscal year, the University of Alabama’s Athletic Department alone made $ 143.4 million, combining proceeds from ticket sales, donations to the athletic department, media rights, branding, and numerous other revenue stream. (Vanderford)
As a non-profit organization, the $871.6 million in revenue is not taxed and will be reimbursed to all the schools that the NCAA gives scholarships to. In Vanderford’s quote, he mentions that Alabama alone made $143.4 million of the $871.6 million that the NCAA made in total. Just by looking at those numbers, the schools are making a hefty amount just from contracts, attendance at their games, and branding rights.
In another journal, by Omar Bareentto, he explains, “The Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has never taxed athletic scholarships. Section 117(a) of the Internal Revenue Code dictates that a scholarship granted by an educational institution to a student is not gross income” (Bareentto). Since the NCAA only gives athletes scholarships, those scholarships are not considered to be “Income”. If the NCAA pays their athletes, then they will be required to become a for-profit organization and therefore get taxed millions of dollars.
Collegiate student-athletes are currently getting scholarships from the university they attend, and the NCAA. Some argue that that is enough, but a majority of athletes believe that they should be getting paid additionally based on how much money they bring into the schools that the athletes attend. In an article on CQ Researcher written by Reed Karaim, he states,
On the morning of April 25, the 76 scholarship players on the Northwestern University football team may have fundamentally changed college athletics: They voted on whether to unionize. The unprecedented vote followed a regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that, because of the demands of their sport, the players were employees of the university. (Karaim)
This is what “fundamentally changed college athletics” because it is the biggest act of unionization that has ever occurred for a college football team, ever. The NLRB, or the National Labor Relations Board, makes a good statement when it says, “Because of the demands of their sport [football], the players were employees of their university”. Essentially, the NLRB is correct, because these student-athletes are all employees. Typically, a full-time employee working for a company works 40 hours a week.
In the same article, Karaim writes, “The regional NLRB director concluded that the time Northwestern players spend on football -40 to 50 hours a week during the season, even more during training camp — and other special demands placed p-ar on them mean they are not primarily students who play sports, but laborers working for the university” (Karaim). He makes a valid point, a Northwestern football player who spends on average 40 to 50 hours a week on his sport, physically and mentally can not perform as well as an average student. Those athletes are working the same amount of hours that the staff of the university works.
Not paying collegiate athletes does not just affect the lives of the athletes themselves, but it affects the university, collegiate teams, and professional teams as well. Athletes who are going to play any type of Division 1 sport all have dreams of taking their talents to the professional level. There are rules set forth that do not allow athletes to get drafted in the NBA and NFL. According to Frank Deford, “in the NFL, a player must be three seasons out of high school before he can be drafted”. An athlete that is pursuing his dreams of playing in the NFL, National Football League, must compete in collegiate athletics for three season prior to being drafted.
The athlete must spend three seasons, without pay, playing for a collegiate team. If this athlete gets hurt in midseason suffering an ACL tear that ends his season should he be compensated for what he is losing out on in the near future? According to StopSportsInjuries.org, “Knee injuries in football are the most common, especially those to the anterior or posterior cruciate ligament (ACL/PCL) and to the menisci (cartilage of the knee). These knee injuries can adversely affect a player’s long-term involvement in the sport” (Stop Sports Injuries). The NFL and NCAA are both at fault here.
The NCAA is not fairly compensating the players that put their bodies on the line and compete day in and day out, and the NFL is requiring that these athletes spend three years out of high school to get drafted. A torn ACL can drop a potential number one draft pick into the late rounds and even into unrestricted free agency. With the set-up of the NFL Draft, the higher an athlete is drafted, the more money he will be making. If an injury sustained in college causes an athlete to lose millions of dollars, then someone should compensate that athlete for what he has lost.
According to Ryan Vanderford, “a recent study found that a college football player at the University of Texas is worth, on average, $ 578,000” (Vanderford). An athlete is at University of Texas is worth over half a million dollars, but does not get a cent (Other than scholarships that cover tuition). Not only does the paying of athletes at the collegiate level affect college football, it also affects college basketball. Louis Barbash, who writes for Ten Miles Square, states that,
For years, NCAA basketball was the only game in town for players with ambitions to play in the NBA. Now, dozens every year desert the college game for something they can’t get in college the chance to share in the revenues their performances create and their departures have fractured the college basketball cartel’s hold on its sport. (Barbash)
College basketball is going downhill, because the NCAA refuses to pay its athletes. College basketball players can enter the NBA Draft after one season out of high school. If a basketball player has a phenomenal year and makes himself known to professional teams, he can be making millions of dollars instead of attending a school that is not paying him anything. If the NCAA chooses to pay the athletes for their work than these athletes would stay in college, obtain a degree, and then go into professional basketball.
With there being pros to paying collegiate athletes, there must also be cons. The first idea that comes to mind is which athletes are going to get paid, and how would the NCAA determine how much to pay each athlete? Some athletes may argue that they want to be paid like professionals, and some may not. The phrase, “student-athlete” was made to imply that these individuals are students before athletes.
The athletic director of Ohio State University, Gene Smith said, “If you want to go pro, go pro,’ … ‘If you want an education, if you want to grow and mature in this incubator called higher education, come to us”” (Vanderford). Going into college should not be all about playing a sport. It should most definitely be about obtaining a degree and receiving a higher level of education. Getting a scholarship to attend a college or university and receive free education should be considered enough for athletes because there are non-athletes that have to take out loans and pay for college for the rest of their lives. Paying male collegiate athletes would also mean paying female collegiate athletes.
Robert Grimmett-Norris, a Saint Louis University School of Law student explains what Title IX is. He writes, “Title IX provides that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal funds” (Grimmett-Norris). This means that if male athletes begin to get paid, then female athletes will get paid.
The NCAA would have a very hard time trying to create a plan for every individual athlete that would be getting paid. If the NCAA began to pay athletes, this would change the game of recruiting immensely. Athletes would begin to go to schools that offer them the most amount of money. Division 1 schools would take over the college sporting world because they are the ones that have a lot of money to use for scholarships while division two has limited amounts, and division three has no scholarships to give. The paying of collegiate athletes would change the world of college sports in a heartbeat.
To every problem there is a solution. A compromise that gives the NCAA what it wants, and it gives the individual athletes what they want. In my opinion, any athlete that is devoting four years of his or her life to a college should be given extra compensation on top of their scholarship. For example, being an athlete at Saint Anselm College, means we are on a time sensitive schedule everyday. While being on a time sensitive schedule, we can not work and therefore we can not make any money to support our daily living needs.
The NCAA should pay athletes a small amount every semester, or annually (depending on the preference of the athlete) to cover their daily living needs. I am not the only person who believes that athletes should be getting compensated more than their scholarships. Jalen Rose, an analyst for ESPN and ABC, and a former NBA player can relate his compromise to mine. Jet Perspective, a magazine, did an article on Jalen’s opinion and what he thinks the solution would be. Jalen says, “Collegiate athletes should be paid a stipend of $2,000 per semester.
Universities, coaches and staff benefit financially from the success of these student-athletes” (Rose). According to Dictionary.com, a stipend is a, “fixed or regular pay; salary” (Dictionary.com). If athletes receive $2,000 every semester it will be able to cover basic living expenses such as buying groceries, gas money, buying clothes and going out with friends.
Imagine a perfect world where everyone got what they wanted. Life would be so simple, and so much more relaxed. The controversy of paying college athletes has been going on for several years now and it seems that the NCAA is doing anything to not pay the athletes. In Knight Kiplinger’s “Money and Ethics”, he writes, “The debates would be endless” (Kiplinger 11). The debates of whether athletes should be getting paid or not, how they would be getting paid, and how to determine who gets paid will forever be a long lasting, never ending debate for anyone who is interested in this controversy.
Works Cited
- Barbash, Louis. “Pay or Don’t Play.” Washington Monthly 45.9/10 (2013): 13. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- Bareentto, Omar A. “LexisNexis® Academic.” & Library Solutions. Rutgers Business Law Journal, 2015. Web. 09 Nov. 2015.
- Deford, Frank. Are NBA and NFL Rules Bush League? New Hampshire Public Radio. New Hampshire, 6 Aug. 2014. New Hampshire Public Radio. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- Grimmett-Norris, Robert. “GeiselCat SAC Library Catalog of Locally Available Titles.” “LexisNexis® Academic.” Saint Louis School of Law, 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- Karaim, Reed. “Paying College Athletes.” CQ Researcher 11 July 2014: 577-600. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- KIPLINGER, KNIGHT. “Should Athletes Share In Their School’s Profits?.” Kiplinger’s Personal Finance 66.3 (2012): 11. Business Source Premier. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. Levine, William N., MD, and Brett D. Owens, MD. “Respiratory Protective Equipment.” Football Injuries (n.d.): n. pag. 2010. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- Rose, Jalen. “Should College Athletes Be Paid?.” Jet 119.11 (2011): 48. MAS Ultra – School Edition. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
- “stipend.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 22 Nov. 2015.
. - Vanderford, Ryan. “LexisNexis® Academic.” & Library Solutions. Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 2015. Web. 09 Nov. 2015.
