Paying College Athletes. Good or Bad for the Sport?

Hawkeye football players getting ready to
run out on to the field at Kinnick Stadium

The NCAA is one of the most lucrative non-profit organizations that has ever existed, with many schools bringing in multiple millions of dollars each year through their respected sport. The student-athletes that play for these teams are what bring fans to the games and earns each university a lot of money per year solely based on them being on the team.  Paying college athletes may be a necessary action within the near future with the amount of money athletic programs bring into these respected universities.  Many smaller programs may not be able to afford to pay athletes because of a lower revenue income for their schools, which could be an issue within intercollegiate sports in the foreseeable future.  Paying players has the potential to ruin college sports for many schools and will ruin the tradition of the student athlete.

There are many people out there that believe college athletes should be paid.  One main reason student-athletes should be paid would be the fact of not being able to have a social/working life outside of their sports, especially during the regular season.  The Northwestern football team has recently decided to unionize (because they are private), and have also decided to sue the NCAA demanding better treatment of the athletes over a regular student, and compensation for the sports they are offered to play in college.  These football players say, “they spend 40 to 50 hours per week on football related activities during the season and even more during training camp (Karaim 2014).”  This shows that these student-athletes give all of their hard work and effort to field a good team for each of their universities, but do they have a good argument for why college players should be paid?  I believe they do.  College athletes work their tales off all year round to win for our favorite teams, and by doing so they commit a lot of their time and effort, while still needing money and food to support themselves.  They don’t have the time to work and earn money, so why not pay them?  Now on the other hand these student-athletes are receiving a full-ride tuition scholarship, which many people argue is plenty of money considering most schools can cost upwards of  $30,000 per year.  They are also allotted money for food, but there is a limit and can possibly leave these kids hungry still, without being able to afford food for home.  Mark Emmert, who is the NCAA President said “Most university presidents, most college presidents that I've talked to, are not particularly interested in continuing sports as they exist now if [college athletes] are going to be converted to employees that are hired (Karaim 2014).”  This shows that the president of the NCAA already believes that these students get paid enough, with most university presidents agreeing with him.  Does this mean that players being paid would ruin college sports?  I think this is exactly what this means.  The NCAA and many university presidents would be so against this, that it would be likely that we see college athletics cease to exist, or at least on the tier we know it as.  There have been cases such a Shabazz Napier, who was a basketball player for the University of Connecticut.  Napier said he would sometimes go to bed hungry, because he had used his entire meal plan and could not afford to pay for his own meals due to him being an athlete.   After hearing about this, Emmert stated that all-student athletes should receive an unlimited meal plan and also possibly receive a $2,000 stipend for miscellaneous things that may occur in day-to-day life (Karaim 2014). This is still not a lot of money, unless he was talking about $2,000 a semester, I believe it would still be an insufficient amount of money for someone to live off of for an entire year. 

Mark Emmert giving a speech.

There has been talk of the power five conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac 12, SEC) gaining autonomy from the rest of the lower conferences.  By gaining autonomy it would allow the power 5 conferences to pay their players.  This would be a huge disadvantage for many lower tier schools and they would have the possibility to cease existence with very little revenue coming in.  I feel that this is a terrible choice for the NCAA to give the power 5 conferences autonomy, not only because it would put smaller school at a large disadvantage, but also it would take away the fun and spirit of the game.  I always thought it was exciting to know that a huge upset could happen any week, especially in college basketball.  With autonomy comes many things that people don’t realize.  We need to take a closer look at the potential damage that could be done by doing this, and realize that it is probably not the best option for college sports.  I do believe it would be a good thing if college athletes were given more money per year, but gaining autonomy and lessening the amount of teams within the NCAA Division 1A would be a bad idea and would most likely take the fun out of college sports for many fan bases around the country (Gemmell 2014).

       Athletes earn their schools millions of dollars throughout their careers. On average the market value for a top athlete at Texas in football would be around $567,922 dollars per year, while they’re only being compensated for about $21,090 through their scholarship, and the market value for a basketball star at Louisville is around $1,632,103 and the scholarship they are receiving is $17,370 (Karaim 2014). This means that the schools are profiting off of these individuals by debating whether or not we should pay athletes to play for universities, more questions arise.  Questions like, should there be a limit on how much each athlete can get paid based on talent? Should each collegiate athlete be paid the same amount while attending the university?  Should academic standards become stricter?  Should players who don’t want an education play in a different league prepping them for a professional career? Should professional leagues just open their leagues up for anyone who has graduated high school?  There are all tough questions to answer.  If we are going to go down the road of giving athletes money, why not pay the superior athletes more?  They tend to earn the universities more money with the sales of their jerseys and other merchandise, and fans come to see the best players play.  So I do believe that there should be tiers of payment for individuals on a team, but there also needs to be a set limit on how much someone can receive or it would be unfair for poorer universities.  There are many stipulations to how paying players would work, and I believe there is no real good way to do this.  There will always be someone unhappy in the end, but something needs to be done so these talented athletes can have a secure future with or without being injured.

        In a study conducted it showed that 54% of the students believe that the student athletes should receive more money than what their scholarship entails.  It also shows that 56% of these students believe that the money these athletes receive should come straight out of the schools athletic department that the athlete attends.  Many had also stated that they think it would reduce cheating within intercollegiate sports, so there would be no more $100 handshakes going on in some of the most dirty and corrupt athletic departments in the country (Schneider 2001). I also tend to believe that it could help reduce cheating, because the players would truly go to where they feel most comfortable, not where they will receive the most benefits under the table.

 There are people who aren’t even athletes who agree that athletes should be paid, even students who attend a major conference university.

     While I do believe paying players is probably the most ethical way to go about this whole argument, I do think there could be many drawbacks such as the loss of tradition and being a student-athlete.  People use to go to school to get a degree and playing athletics was second nature to them, but nowadays it tends to be all about the money and sports within the universities.  This has helped universities fund many things within their campuses and athletic programs, but at what cost?  Athletes do need to be paid, but there needs to be a happy medium that everyone can agree upon.  They should be able to live a comfortable lifestyle, but if they are to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, I say let them enter the professional leagues if they don’t care about an education.

Works Cited

1) Karaim, R. (2014, July 11). Paying college athletes. CQ Researcher, 24, 577-600. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/cqresearcher/

2)  Gemmell, K. (2014, January 17). Power Conferences in Autonomy Talks. Retrieved July 31, 2014, from ESPN.com website: http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/10307993/ncaa-administrators-mull-giving-power-5-conferences-more-autonomy

3) Schneider, R. G. (2001). COLLEGE STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS ON THE PAYMENT OF INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDENT-ATHLETES. College Student Journal, 35(2), 232.