- “So You Want to Be a Millionaire While You Go to College?” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 27, 2000, pp. 56–57. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2678998.
In “So you want to be a millionaire while you go to college?” the author introduces the topic by listing the benefits these universities, and coaches reap due to how the college athletes at their respective universities perform. He then brings the major shoe companies, and other sports equipment companies that offer these schools six figure contracts for endorsements and to wear their product during games. Not to mention the national television companies which make deals with the NCAA for millions and billions of dollars to broadcast the biggest basketball and football games on their channel. The author then talks about the history of the rules regarding the requirement for athletes to attend a college before turning pro, and how the National Basketball Association added a small tweak to the rule that any player that can prove an “economic hardship” could apply to be drafted into the league at an earlier age.
The NBA soon abandoned this requirement after a couple years. He then describes the luring effect that the millions of dollars have on a pro-caliber player that is risking their career playing amateur sports. The author then brings in the ideas of Ken Shropshire, a professor at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, who brought up the fact that these amateur athletes bring in millions of dollars to these schools through the sale of the team’s merchandise, and tickets. Shropshire also mentioned how the good performance of the athletes can increase the amount of money school boosters donate to the program. He closes the journal with the idea that most coaches and university board members are white, and they are the ones receiving all the money that the (mostly African-American) athletes are bringing in for these schools.
This source is good for my topic in the sense that it gives me a lot of ideas to use in my essay, but this article probably will not be very useful for my essay since there are no real percentages or numbers in this article that I can use. The article is mostly ideas and reasons why the athletes should be paid. This journal won’t be useful in my essay because it is outdated. The part of this journal that I would use in my essay would be the part where he gets into race because I feel that is a big reason as to why most people are against paying these athletes. The solution suggested in the article is a good one, but I feel that it is too vague for me to use in my essay. The article does not give an example of numbers which would be ineffective when trying to argue that college athletes should get paid.
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- Peebles, Maurice. “7 Common Sense Reasons Why College Athletes Should Be Paid (According to Jay Bilas)Good Players Would Stay in School Longer.” Complex, Complex, 1 June 2018, www.complex.com/sports/2015/12/jay-bilas-interview/good-players-stay-in-school.
In this article, Maurice Peebles is interviewing Jay Bilas who is a Duke graduate, former Duke basketball player, lawyer, and well-respected sports analyst. Jay Bilas has spoken out against the compensation of college athletes many times over his sports career. In this interview Jay gives seven main reasons why college athletes should get paid. Peebles starts the article off by giving ticket prices for the 2015 national championship and saying how much the two head coaches for the teams facing off in the championship (Duke and Wisconsin) made in 2015.
Peebles then goes to his interview with Jay Bilas. Bilas’ first reason was how the only people who have restrictions on how they can make money in college are the athletes. He gives an example of how music students are given music scholarships, but they can use their talent in any professional sense, and they will not get in trouble in any way for profiting off their talent. The next point Bilas brings up is the moral side of the argument, The idea that these kids are generating billions of dollars in revenue for their schools, but they never get to see any of that money for themselves. Jay Bilas gives another example that if every studio colluded together and decided to not pay the actors, but instead give them nice accommodations on set and pay for their expenses, many people would not agree with this idea and say how the movie industry is a billion dollar industry and that their kid is the star of the show making the movie studio so much money.
Bilas then says that it is just immoral to only restrict athletes from profiting off their talent. He also brings up how whenever the NCAA faces any legal adversity, they change the definition of amateurism to make it seem like they are protecting the players. The last example he gives for this reason is that by giving athletes scholarships the university is essentially paying themselves and then they act like they have no money to give to the athletes when they are struggling. Bilas then attacks an opposing viewpoint of people who say that paying the players will ruin the game. To disprove this viewpoint, he gives examples of when other sports implemented a new rule and people thought it would ruin the game but instead it actually helped the sport and increased popularity.
Bilas chooses another popular viewpoint among the NCAA which is that if the basketball and football players are paid then that will mean the end for other collegiate sports. He argues that you are paid based on your necessity and the value you provide. He also gives a personal example of when he used to play basketball at Duke in the eighties and the NCAA would always say there isn’t enough more to play the players, but now the NCAA is making billions more now compared to in the eighties and the NCAA still says they don’t have any money to give the players.
After that Bilas talks about how the NCAA makes it seem like implementing this new rule would take a long time, but in reality, it wouldn’t. To disprove this idea, he brings up how the NCAA made up the college football playoffs and made a billion dollars off that in a matter of seconds. Bilas then brings up how people say the quality of the top teams would dramatically change because the big-name programs have all the money. For Bilas’ last reason he says that good players would stay in school longer. Obviously, the top picks wont stay because they will be able to make millions straight out of college, but the other players will opt to stay longer when they start getting paid in college.
This article will be very useful for my essay because Jay Bilas really dives into each problem that is presented when paying college athletes is brought up. Even though the article doesn’t use much statistics or percentages, the beginning of the article gives the reader all the numbers they need to know for the problem. Jay Bilas gives many solid examples when explaining why he believes that college athletes should be compensated. This article will help my essay’s credibility because Jay Bilas played college basketball at Duke, and he is now a very respected ESPN sport’s analyst as well as a lawyer.
- Bilas, Jay. “And, This Is Just from the NCAA Tournament. It Doesn’t Reflect the Billions in Conference Money, Apparel Deals, Etc. If Only There Were Enough Money. Https://T.co/nTIjNOSA9G.” Twitter, Twitter, 8 Feb. 2019, twitter.com/JayBilas/status/1093845616252370944.
In this tweet Jay Bilas points out that the NCAA continues to make up excuses and say there just isn’t enough money in college sports to pay the athletes, but in the tweet he quoted it says that the NCAA revenue increased about fourty nine million dollars from 2017-2018.
This tweet will be useful in my essay because it addresses what Jay Bilas was talking about in his interview (the previous source) when he said the NCAA says they don’t have enough money to pay the players. I will use this tweet in my essay because it gives me real numbers to work with instead of just ideas and examples. The audience he is talking to in his tweet are his millions of followers, and the person who’s tweet he quoted.
- Starkey, Brando Simeo. “College Sports Aren’t Like Slavery. They’re Like Jim Crow.” The New Republic, 1 Nov. 2014, newrepublic.com/article/120071/ncaa-college-sports-arent-slavery-theyre-jim-crow.
In the article “college sports aren’t like slavery. They’re like jim crow” Brando Simeo Starkey uses another viewpoint on the ethical side of this argument. He talks about how the NCAA’s anti-tampering rules, and the rules against letting college athletes sell memorabilia or profit off their likeness, are much like the Jim Crow laws that were enacted to exploit black labor. The players not being able to sell stuff that they produced and all the money going to the coaches and staff, is much like when the black slaves couldn’t sell their cotton that they picked to the highest bidder but instead having to sell it to their master for pennies on the dollar.
Starkey also gives examples of how star running back Todd Gurley and star quarterback Terrell Pryor were both punished by the NCAA for selling autographs and game worn memorabilia to fans. Starkey then makes a point about the hypocrisy seen from the coaches who are making the big dollars when talking about their athletes. Nick Saban said agents are nothing better than pimps when talking about agents having improper contact with certain college athletes even though Saban himself has an agent who helps him earn over seven million dollars each year.
This article will be useful in my essay because it covers a lot of issues on the ethical side of the argument. The article gives me multiple examples to use when talking about how the NCAA’s rules are the same as the Jim Crow laws in the 1800’s. In this article, Starkey also points out that college athletes cannot profit off their likeness even though the university does. The NCAA’s rules are hurting the athlete more than helping them by treating everything about college sports as a professional business except the players which are forced to act as amateurs. Starkey is speaking to people who know the history of Jim Crow laws and can see the similarities the NCAA’s rules have to the them.
