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Let's be clear about the context within which this question usually arises. It usually does not come up at those NCAA Division I institutions that struggle to fund their athletic programs or in Division II or Division III. There is a misconception that athletic programs in general are profitable and institutions are making money hand-over-fist. The truth is that only a fraction of the programs are profitable while most operate at a cost to the institution. The question of pay arises primarily in reference to student-athletes in the sports of football and basketball at Division I institutions with high-profile, high-income athletics programs. The argument is that since such institutions receive millions of dollars from the performance, the student-athletes should be paid.

Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses. Collegiate sports is not a career or profession. It is the students' vehicle to a higher education degree. This access is contingent upon continued enrollment, participation in the sport for which they received the scholarship, and academic eligibility. The NCAA Student Assistance Fund can be used to help those student-athletes who have unusual needs in excess of the usual cost of attendance. A high percentage of student-athletes graduate without the burden of student loans, which most other students accumulate.

Student-athletes are amateurs who choose to participate in intercollegiate athletics as a part of their educational experience, thus maintaining a distinction between student-athletes who participate in the collegiate model and professional athletes who are also students.

A fundamental NCAA commitment under the collegiate model is to student-athlete well-being, where institutions have the responsibility to establish and maintain an environment in which student-athletes' activities are conducted to encourage academic success and individual development as an integral part of the educational experience. Another commitment is to sound academic standards. Intercollegiate athletic programs should be maintained as an important component of educational programs, and student-athletes should be an integral part of the student body. Each institution's admissions and academic standards for student-athletes should be designed to promote academic progress and graduation and be consistent with the student body in general.

It is clear that, in addition to their academic course loads, student-athletes' physical conditioning, practice and competition schedules make it difficult for many of them to take on part-time employment to supplement their institutional aid. So, perhaps the question should be whether it is reasonable that student-athletes should have additional resources typical for full-time students who work during the academic year, since scholarships do not cover all living expenses and many student-athletes do not have the opportunity to earn income to cover those expenses or to afford simple social outings with friends, an important component of college life, well-being and holistic development.

There is discussion in the NCAA about increasing financial aid to allow student-athletes to have funds typical of working full-time students at their institutions. Paramount in those discussions are the well-being of the student and the ethics of amateur sports.
Horace Mitchell is president is California State University-Bakersfield NCAA Division I Board of Directors.

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College athletics are a vehicle for receiving an education.

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Sep 12, 2013

Scoop JacksonESPN Senior Writer

Close

Columnist for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine

Wrote for Slam, XXL, 6 years with NBA; 4 years with Nike

When Johnny Manziel appeared recently on the cover of Time magazine -- striking his Heisman pose with six simple words, "It's Time To Pay College Athletes" sharing his space -- the most universally agreed, yet universally debated, issue in all of non-professional sports returned to the front of the national discussion.

Yet the beauty of the debate is once again lost because the foundation of the argument sits on a fault line. There is no system of payment that can be put in place that is fair across the board to all students, all sports and all schools that participate in college athletics.

At this point, the debate over whether college athletes should be paid really doesn't change anything. It's not about finding the right answer because there is no right answer. Seemingly everyone, regardless of the stance they take, makes valid points. Yes, for the most part, colleges and universities are making money off of the backs, performances and success of major football and men's basketball programs and the scholarship athletes who play them. But ask yourself: Isn't that what most businesses do?

Yes, business. Not college athletics. Business, man.

The problem seems to be that we don't look at college athletics as a business. Instead, we subconsciously and constantly (and emotionally) look at college sports as something different. We allow the "school" part to blind us into thinking that the educational piece changes the dynamics of what is really going on and exempts athletics from being about something other than money.

It's not. But that's our fault, not the NCAA's.

Take away the university/college "label" associated with college football and what do we have? The NFL. Do the same for all of the other college sports, and the professional equivalent to that sport comes up as the answer. This is where we are. This has been our reality for decades. Yet, we still take issue with the setup of college athletics because we can't collectively remove ourselves from the romanticism that somewhere in this billion-dollar paradigm, students are being taken advantage of by institutions of higher learning.

Is the business of college athletics unfair to the people who play the games? Sometimes, yes. Unless there's proof that colleges and universities are improperly using athletic revenues, where is the real problem?

Every student who signs a letter of intent or agrees to accept a scholarship to play a sport knows going in that the school's job is to make the most money off of his or her efforts. They agree to that. It's no different than a professional athlete signing a contract.

The success of the program while that student is there is not guaranteed. But if Texas A&M stands to make an estimated $72 million alone off of branded merchandise in one year (as reported in Time magazine) connected to the success of Manziel and the football program, why is that a problem? Manziel and his family knew and agreed to the rules of the game when they chose the Aggies as the program they wanted to use to put the child-prodigy in position to get paid once his college career is over?

We need to stop looking at college as it relates to athletics as an educational aperture and look at it for what it has become: a business platform. One where going in, the laborer knows that he or she will be under-compensated and one that greatly benefits ownership, but one that has the mandatory training program that all must go through in order to financially capitalize on their own talents.

The bottom line is that athlete's should not be paid a salary. They should get something more than what they are currently getting for making their school loads of money. But if you compensate student-athletes monetarily, how do you decide who gets paid? Is it by performance or position? How do you fix one disparity without creating another?

We need to stop looking for fairness in this because there is none and there never will be. There are very few businesses that are fair across the board to the people who work for them. The business of college sports isn't one of them.

I spoke with a retired financial manager who has had some dealings with the NCAA, and he shot down my theory of the answer to the "pay for play" dilemma in college athletics. I suggested: Just treat all students on scholarships the same, give them all the same liberties and freedoms, and the problem will be solved. He reminded me how all or most universities inside of the NCAA operate as not-for-profit institutions and the nature of how those business models work.

The nature of a school at the university level is to make money through education. Like any other business, colleges go into default and close when they are not making money or advancing financially. All businesses justify what they pay their employees, and unless there are labor laws being broken, then that business should be absolved of being told how to go about making money.

Why should college athletics be any different?

No one is making kids go to school to make money for the colleges and universities. They and their families choose to do this. It is an agreement that is not set up to pay them in ways that is fair in relation to the money the schools make from their participation. It's rather like taking an unpaid internship to prepare for a better job later in life. It is a trade-off. An unfair one, but it is consensual.

Which is why every college athlete needs to ask: If the school isn't trying to make money, why did they recruit me in the first place?

To help them win. And what comes with winning in the business of sports? Packed stadiums and arenas. Television contracts. Shoe company sponsorships. Global fan bases. Merchandise sales in the millions. Corporate brand recognition. Checks. No balance. Cha-ching! But you, college athlete, decided for this part of your career not to get paid for it. You agreed for tuition, room and board, books and to follow the rules of the NCAA as compensation. So don't get mad when the system begins to screw you. It's impossible to be the victim when you are the enabler.

It is a very "comes with the territory" reality that we all need to face. Not just college athletes. It is why we, the general public, need to simply stop looking at universities and colleges as places of education and instead focus on them as places of business where education just happens to be a service they provide.

Changing our mindset doesn't solve the problem or lessen the intensity of the debate. And accepting things "as is" isn't working either. But a small reality check in thought at least would give us a new starting point to change the discussion of the wrongs of how college athletics is set up.

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Pay for play isn't answer for college athletics

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Sep 12, 2013 Scoop JacksonESPN Senior Writer Close Columnist for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine Wrote for Slam, XXL, 6 years with NBA; 4 years with Nike When Johnny Manziel appeared recently on the cover of Time magazine -- striking his Heisman pose with six simple words, "It's Time To Pay College Athletes" sharing his space -- the most universally agreed, yet universally debated, issue in all of non-professional sports returned to the front of the national discussion.

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Jared Welch and Blake Marshall support paying athletes

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It is directed at the general public,  universities, and the student athletes.

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College sports bring in big dollars every year on the major college level. These programs bring $30 and sometimes $40 million dollars per year to the universities and colleges and the players get nothing. These are the same players who are breaking their backs for the university day in and day out and can't get a share of that money and, to me, that does not seem fair. I know what you may be thinking: that these student athletes are getting a free education or have gotten a scholarship to play ball at that university. To me, that's the least they could be doing.

When I look at college football on Saturdays and see packed stadiums with cheering fans paying big money for a ticket I say, what business out there could run a company and not pay its workers? You would think I was talking about some Third World country! Pay the players now, please!

Think about this one: most of the college coaches get six figure salaries-- big college programs and small ones. Some of these college coaches get shoe contracts, some get T.V. and radio contracts and many other perks along the way. Also, if they are a good coach and win games they will be offered another coaching job somewhere else with bigger money and larger perks! The student athletes get nothing and, to me, something should be done about that. Please pay the players now!

They will keep telling you that the athletes are getting the free education, free books, free room and board and the chance at a good college education that will last a lifetime. So what! Pay the players! I see this whole college thing as slave-labor! Coaches make big money on the backs of these players. You hear stories about college athletes taking money or getting paid under the table. You hear these stories of players getting cars and lots of cash, you hear stories of players getting all of this and more on the side. You hear about the player's families getting cars and houses to attend that college program. This goes on all the time in secret!

Why do the players take this money and cars and houses for their families and much more? Well one reason is recruiting; some college programs feel that in order to get a major college recruit they have to offer these things. Some college programs (not all) have to give something to get these kids. Some of these players come from poor backgrounds, so for these kids to get some money is a big deal especially if the players and their families don't have money anyway.

Being a college athlete is very hard. In the first placed the amount of hours that these players put in is a lot--every day of every week. They are in class all day then there's practice after practice, they go eat dinner if they can and then go study. Now all of this may sound simple to you but the amount of time these student athletes are putting in is huge. Then the coaches want more. There could be film to study and there could be times when they are being seen by the athletic trainer. As a student athlete, you have to focus on your studies and your athletic performance or they will try to get rid of you.

College athletics is hard. Sometimes at the end of the day you are exhausted and don't feel like studying or if they have some kind of study table for the players you may not be able to totally focus and, oftentimes, your attention is elsewhere. Just think about the millions of people who go to work every day. They work long hours and may have long commutes to and from home. I'm sure the last thing working people want to do is spend extra hours doing more work. Most working people want to relax, maybe have a beer and watch some T.V. then call it a day. The big difference is they are getting paid for the service and time and college ball players are not.

Most of the college student athletes do not get their college degrees and one reason is the workouts and the games that they play. There is so much pressure to do well that something will fall off and that something is their education. College coaches have been known to look the other way as it relates to student athletes and their academics as long as that player can help win games.

For most college athletes, when their eligibility is used up the college programs have no more need for their services. Why would they? For 4 years these college programs have worked these young men and women to death every day. The college programs have gotten all that they could get out of these players and then some. At the college level or at any level it's only about winning games and bringing in big money.

Take a look at baseball; if a high school baseball player is really good, he can be offered a contract to sign with a major league baseball team. Sometimes the offer is $200,000 and, I've heard, as much as $2 million dollars. Now if that high school baseball player takes that money then they forfeit their college eligibility. Some high school baseball players pass on the money to attend college where they can get better, sharpen their baseball skills and be drafted again by a major league team. Many high school baseball players take the money and take the chance to try and make it in the major leagues. A great many players never make it to the majors. Some playing in the minor leagues for years until they realize that their dream of playing in the majors is not going to happen and they move on to something else.

Once you take that money you can't go back and try to play college baseball. The same is true for all the other sports. You'll have high school basketball players trying to make it to the NBA; you'll have young men try out for the NFL. Many of these athletes never gave education a chance and many who are in college never got their degree.

College athletes struggle with their academics. Many do not graduate and some just quit altogether. College athletics is not for everyone and many student athletes can't cut it so pay the players! Pay them something for all their time and their efforts!

When these college programs are playing in bowl games and making millions on the backs of the players and the players get nothing still, that's wrong. When its "March Madness" time for college basketball and millions are glued to the T.V. every day for hours and the players are giving their all--they still get nothing!

Why would it be a problem to pay players? The schools are making millions of dollars any way. This is not Mexico or China where the workers are getting paid $1.00 per hour to make billions for some corporation--you know slave labor!

Why do you think players take money from many outside sources? Why do players get suspended from the team for breaking team rules? Why are college programs put on probation? It's all because of money. You have many players coming from disadvantaged backgrounds where there is no money in their families. If these disadvantaged young student athletes had to pay for college out of their own pockets, most would not be in a college at all.

Some student athletes come from backgrounds where the educational system is not that good. Their school districts are under-funded and mismanaged. For many student athletes, their way out is an education with the full athletic scholarships. Playing a sport is their future. Many student athletes only focus on athletics thinking that one day they will be good enough to play in the pros. So when money is dangled in front of the faces of some student athletes, the temptation has to be overwhelming!

For a great many years we have heard stories of players and coaches getting in trouble because of money. We've heard of situations of entire college programs being killed off by the NCAA because of money being given to players. Why do they do it? Why is money a problem? One reason is because it's easy to get certain types of players from certain kinds of backgrounds. Big-time college programs can only survive with big-time major college players so they pay them. We all know that paying college athletes is wrong (set by the guidelines of the NCAA). But this rule needs to change now.

If college athletes are getting scholarships then they can be paid. If players are getting paid, then I believe you would have more college athletes graduate from college because there would be a stronger incentive to work hard in the classroom. Larger universities pay college coaches more based on their performance and the players should get paid as well.

If the players are getting paid then this corruption would stop. No more booster paying players, no more college players selling their shoes, no more college players taking jobs that pay them big money just to work a few hours. It's hard out there for a student athlete! Did you know that a non-student athlete can get a job to earn extra money and can work around their schedules but a student athlete can't have a job until the school year is over and there are restrictions as to the type of job they can have.

In the game of college athletics, the rules are not fair for the college student athletes! The playing field is not equal. Pay the players!

www.woodsrecruiting.com

? 2007 Al Woods

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In the game of college athletics, the rules are not fair for the college student athletes! The playing field is not equal.

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yoooo

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2013-03-20-dn-subasket6.JPG

Syracuse's Michael Carter-Williams dribbles across the NCAA logo at midcourt at the HP Arena in San Jose, California, in this March 20, 2013 photo.
(Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com) Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard. By Noah Feldman | Bloomberg View
The odds have gone up that the Supreme Court will consider whether rules governing amateur participation in U.S. college sports violate antitrust law. The central issue is whether student-athletes should be compensated for their efforts.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, was the defendant in the original lawsuit, and had already asked the justices to review the compromise decision issued by a federal appeals court in 2015. Now the plaintiffs' lawyers have agreed, filing a brief that argues the Supreme Court should take on the case.

Agreement from both sides is no guarantee the court will listen. But it's relatively unusual --- and worth understanding if you care about the future of college sports.

The backdrop for the current state of play is the decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in September. The opinion can be seen as a classic Solomon-style effort to give something to each side.

Lawyers for the named plaintiff, Edward O'Bannon, and a class of similarly situated athletes, had convinced the federal district court to rule that the NCAA's amateurism rules preventing certain compensation counted as a restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The district court had then ordered two different remedies. First, it said the NCAA could no longer bar member schools from providing scholarships for the full cost of attendance. Second, it said the NCAA couldn't stop member schools from compensating student athletes up to $5,000 a year, to be paid after graduation.

The Ninth Circuit upheld the basic logic of the lower court's decision, and analyzed the NCAA's amateurism rules from the perspective of antitrust law. It upheld the order that would effectively let schools provide scholarships up to the full cost of attendance.

But the appellate court struck down the more controversial piece of the lower court's remedy that allowed a paid salary. That decision smacked of compromise, and indeed, one of the judges on the panel dissented from the part of the opinion that rejected the compensation order.

The NCAA asked the Supreme Court to reverse the decision. Its central argument is that the Ninth Circuit misunderstood a 1984 Supreme Court precedent, NCAA v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Oklahoma. In that case, the justices applied antitrust law to strike down the NCAA's exclusive football television contract with ABC, and in the process radically transformed the nature of college athletics in the U.S.

In the course of reading its holding, the court distinguished the television contract from other aspects of the NCAA's policies. It said that it was "reasonable to assume that most of the regulatory controls of the NCAA are justifiable means of fostering competition among amateur athletic teams and therefore procompetitive because they enhance public interest in intercollegiate athletics."

And the court concluded by observing that "there can be no question but that ... the preservation of the student-athlete in higher education adds richness and diversity to intercollegiate athletics and is entirely consistent with the goals of the Sherman Act."

According to the NCAA, these statements amounted to a holding by the Supreme Court that the NCAA's amateurism policies are procompetitive, not anticompetitive, under the Sherman Act. If that were true, then the Ninth Circuit couldn't contradict that holding.

The best reading of the 1984 precedent is that it didn't mean to establish once and for all that NCAA amateurism is procompetitive. The words "reasonable to assume" strongly suggest that real-world evidence could overcome the assumption. And the justices' 1984 statement about the value of student-athletes sounds much more like a declarative dictum without precedential weight than a specific, self-conscious legal holding. It even comes in a separate concluding paragraph to the opinion, which would be a funny place for a whole new holding.

Even if the Ninth Circuit got it wrong -- and I don't think it did -- the Supreme Court doesn't like to take cases simply to correct errors. That's why it's noteworthy that the plaintiffs' lawyers have now argued in their brief that the issue is so important that the Supreme Court should take it on.

Their main justification is size: The college sports industry now has revenues of $13 billion. That "would have been unfathomable" in 1984 when the earlier case was decided, the lawyers say. They're certainly right about that. But if the Supreme Court in 1984 never meant to preclude antitrust analysis, as the Ninth Circuit held, it isn't a very good reason for the court to take the case.

The plaintiffs' lawyers are trying to be strategic. They want the justices to vacate the Ninth Circuit's compromise opinion and force the NCAA to allow cash compensation for student-athletes. And in order to get there, they're willing to risk the holding that allows for enhanced scholarships.

It could possibly work. Agreement between the parties that a case should be heard is some evidence to the justices that an issue really needs to be resolved. Yet this would have to outweigh the virtues of the appellate court's compromise, as well as the appearance that both sides are simply seeking error correction.

There's also a sub-issue in the case, a fascinating question of First Amendment law. The lower courts held that student-athletes can sue the NCAA for keeping money it makes from videogame sales featuring the players' names and likenesses. The NCAA says it should be protected by its free-speech rights. That issue is worthy of its own analysis and discussion, which I'll save for another column. But the presence of the free-speech issue might actually make it less likely for the court to take the antitrust issue, since it's potentially confusing and the court likes clean, well-presented cases.

The upshot is that you shouldn't rule out a blockbuster Supreme Court case next year on NCAA amateurism. After just finishing a Supreme Court term focused on abortion, affirmative action and religious liberty, it might make for a nice diversion.

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Should college athletes be paid? Supreme Court could decide (Commentary)

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NCAA and plaintiffs who sued for compensation now agree the nation's highest court should take on the case.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/sports/a-way-to-start-paying-college-athletes.html?_r=0

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid
When the NCAA was founded by President Roosevelt in 1905, the institution was committed to the idea of not providing a salary or stipend to the student-athletes who took part in its organization. It is based on the idea of amateurism, and this was a notable idea at the time.

But, over a century later, the NCAA is no longer recognizable compared to what the organization used to be. The NCAA has modernized to take full advantage of the new kinds of sports fans and especially the new kinds of media. Today, sports and athletics in the NCAA draw in around $11 billion every year for the organization. Its coaches and administrators make staggering amounts of money. From high salaries to performance bonuses, it seems that the NCAA is a very profitable business considering it is a non-profit organization.

Yet, despite all of this cash floating around, the players who make the organization work do not see any of this money. In fact, they are barred by NCAA regulations from capitalizing on their status as great athletes at all. The organization argues that student athletes are provided with full scholarships and a free education. While this was previously a great incentive to work towards a career as a college athlete, the billions of dollars that are poured into the industry every year seem to be disappearing into black holes including ever-increasing coaches' salaries and brand new stadiums.

Now, collegiate sports teams are fighting back against the NCAA standards. Whether in the press room or in the court room, the NCAA cannot seem to come up with a valid argument other than, "This is our tradition."

In the 21 st century, the NCAA tradition no longest exists. Here are the top ten reasons why student athletes should be paid for their hard work and talent.

BluIz60 / Shutterstock.com

Colleges can be more selective in their admittance procedures when their sports teams are famous or successful. Many of these universities fall far from the top 10 colleges in the world or even the country. Yet, they are able to run admissions procedures and charge tuition rates that reflect those of Ivy League institutions.

The year that Boston College's quarterback won the Heisman Trophy, the number of students vying for admission to the college grew by 25 points in a single year. It was not just the number of applications that grew- the quality of applications grew in similar proportions. The average SAT score of the freshman admitted in that year jumped by 110 points. Doug Flutie, a single student athlete, created this huge raise in interest with his talent and passion for the game and it seems that only Boston College was rewarded.

College sports teams often do much of the school's marketing for them while simultaneously generating revenue. Relatively small and unknown schools like Gonzaga University in Washington are known almost entirely because of their basketball teams. Without these successful players, colleges like Gonzaga would have to spend a fortune on marketing programs to attract out-of-state students.

Photo Works / Shutterstock.com

If athletes were to be paid for only one reason, it is because the NCAA and universities capitalize on both the team's success and the players' status for its own financial gain through the sales of apparel and other merchandise. When universities sell jerseys and t-shirts with popular numbers on them, they are literally selling the personhood of the person whose number is on the jersey.

The sales of apparel featuring student athlete personalities takes the NCAAs profits from sports to a whole new level. Say what they will about the fairness of the scholarship system, public businesses that used the image of an athlete, model, actress or any public figure for their own gain would ultimately end up compensating the individual they use.

Not only is the university allowed to capitalize on the celebrity of its players; but the players are contractually not allowed to do this themselves. NCAA rules state that student athletes are not allowed to use their likeness for promotional purposes or monetary gain. This means that a well-known athlete cannot charge money for the hours spent signing autographs but the university is able to use the athlete to generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars through sales and increased enrollment.

Making millions of dollars based on a player's performance or personality while barring them from accepting even a free taco is not only hypocritical, it is morally questionable.

NCAA coaches can often earn an average of $100,000 per year. Being that they work for educational institutions and often have several assistants and advisors who help to share the work load, this is a huge amount of money compared to teachers and professors who are inundated with facilitating the academic success of tens of thousands of students.

A $100,000 salary is fair for professionals who draw so much money into the school through the leadership of their sports teams. However, schools with massive sports programs have been known to pay their head coaches millions of dollars. The head football coach at Alabama is reported to have made $5.5 million in the year 2013 and recently received a new contract to the tune of $7 million each year. The head football coach at Texas made slightly less; he brought in only $5.4 million.

Today, it is strange to think that when the NCAA was founded, most people were equally opposed to paying coaches as well as athletes. Many coaches worked primarily for the love of the game. Over 100 years later, the average BCS eligible football coach makes a salary of $2.05 million every year.

If schools believe that spending $7 million a year on a single salary is a good investment, it is difficult to reconcile the schools' and the NCAA's stance on compensation for players. After all, money does not seem to be an issue.

The NCAA has revenue that rivals many of the country's biggest public companies. It is never compared to these companies because the NCAA remains a non-profit organization. However, each year the NCAA takes in almost $11 billion in revenue across college sports. The biggest earners are football, basketball and baseball.

$11 billion is more than the annual revenue of the entire NBA or the NHL. It should also be noted that this money is not evenly distributed. The top playing Division I schools contribute more to this figure than many of the lowest members combined.

For example, the University of Alabama took in $143.3 million in athletic revenues alone. This figure is not only more than any professional hockey team in the NHL earns but it is also more than 25 out of the 30 NBA teams bring in annually as well.

While there is nothing wrong with a non-profit organization taking on huge amounts of revenue, it seems that the wealth could be distributed amongst those who are at the heart and soul of the organization: the players.

Although the NCAA pays its top executives million dollar salaries, parents, students and fans do not scramble to snap up the best season tickets to watch some executives play sports. The fans are invested in the players, many of whom have started taking on followings akin to those of famous and established professional players.

If the administrators and coaches in the NCAA want to make the same salaries that their colleagues in the pros do, then perhaps they should also reconsider how committed they truly are to the amateurism that the NCAA was founded on.

Conclusion

Student athletes are stuck between two worlds. While the NCAA constantly affirms its commitment to its root values, it is simultaneously brokering deals with national networks to show live football games to millions of people. Too many college athletes put their heart and soul into what they do and too many come out with any reward.

Many people say that NCAA has an ideal model for creating cheap labor. Not only do they expect athletes to perform in the classroom that performance has to be translated to the field. Should the athlete begin to feel the pressure of the strenuous 90 hour weeks, they are cut from the team and lose their scholarship and their vehicle with which to educate themselves. What the NCAA says when they enforce policies that leave their players floundering both physical and financially is that each player is just a body that is replaceable.

Of course, there is not a real precedent to begin paying a student the same salary as Kobe Bryant; but making sure that they can eat properly should not be an issue for organizations with such huge amounts of revenue. Whether it is to acknowledge their significant contribution to the college or just to ensure that these students leave their college career with something other than a diploma and a "college football injury," student athletes should be compensated. After all, Americans don't spend $11 billion a year to watch men in suits make decisions.

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid When the NCAA was founded by President Roosevelt in 1905, the institution was committed to the idea of not providing a salary or stipend to the student-athletes who took part in its organization. It is based on the idea of amateurism, and this was a notable idea at the time.

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March Madness means a huge payday for coaches, colleges, networks and advertisers -- everyone except the athletes themselves. Although television rights for the NCAA tournament this year alone brought in nearly a billion dollars, the players won’t see a penny, and many are unhappy with the situation. Economics correspondent Paul Solman examines the cases for and against paying student athletes.

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Author:
Joe Nocera

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A Way to Start Paying College Athletes (Published 2016)

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A salary cap for college football and men’s basketball players would not break the bank or completely abandon free-market principles. Here’s how it might work.

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Author:

Rick Burton, Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University

Audience: The audience is the collegiate sports community, and those who care about the form of payment athletes already receive.

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College Athletes Are Already Paid With Their Education

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US News is a recognized leader in college, grad school, hospital, mutual fund, and car rankings. Track elected officials, research health conditions, and find news you can use in politics, business, health, and education.

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Tyson Hartnett
General public

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There has been major discussion recently if college athletes should or shouldn't be paid while they are in school. The first thing opponents say is, "They're already getting a scholarship! That's more than anybody else! Don't be greedy!"

Fine, let's not be greedy and look at how much a scholarship is actually worth. On average, a full Division 1 scholarship is $25,000 per year.

"That's $100,000 over four years!"

Yes it is, but most athletes don't last at a school for the whole four years. Once you get a sport involved, there are politics, injuries, and a call to the office to tell the player, "Thanks, but we don't need you on this team anymore." Many players will get a scholarship for a year or two, then transfer to a different school which turns out to be a better situation.

A $25,000 scholarship may seem like a lot of money, but it really only covers the basics. It covers thousands of dollars in mysterious, unknown university fees, tuition, housing, a meal-plan and multiple hundred-dollar textbooks. Some players, if they come from a low-income household, get a few hundred dollars each semester from Pell Grants which enables them to buy chicken soup instead of chicken-flavored ramen.

Contrary to what all the opponents believe, being an athlete is a full-time job. On a typical day, a player will wake up before classes, get a lift or conditioning session in, go to class until 3 or 4 p.m., go to practice, go to mandatory study hall, and then finish homework or study for a test.

For a little extra money to see a movie or go out to dinner once a week, my freshman roommate worked a job at the university, earning about $7/hour. He would work his butt off all day, with two or sometimes three basketball training sessions, plus classes and homework, and go to that job for a few hours late at night. He would come back exhausted, but he needed whatever money they would pay him.

However, once the season started up, he couldn't work that job anymore. We were on the road all the time, even gone for two straight weeks at one point. The teachers let us do our work from the road, but the job wasn't going to pay you just because you were playing basketball on a road trip. The team gave us meal money (about $7 per meal) so we could get chips and condiments with our sandwiches, but anything else was considered an NCAA violation.

The point of this is that a scholarship doesn't equal cash in a player's pocket. Even with any type of scholarship, college athletes are typically dead broke. But how much do the top NCAA executives make? About $1 million per year.

Who else makes money off these near-professional level athletes?

First, their own coaches. Many coaches earn at least $100,000 per year to coach one of the major sports like baseball, basketball, or football at a school. These coaches will receive bonuses for getting to the playoffs, winning championships, or breaking school records. You know what athletes receive as a bonus? Nothing.

Second is the NCAA. Recently, the NCAA and CBS signed a $10.8 billion television agreement over 14 years. The NCAA is also considered a non-profit company.

Third, the athletic programs. Universities bring in hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to their athletic programs each year. Through donations, ticket sales, media rights, advertising, and anything else with a price tag, these athletes are symbols for their school and their program. If a school makes a huge scientific achievement, they will be in the newspaper for a few days. The athletic teams, however, are in the newspaper the entire year.

The flip side of this is that not all sports teams are profitable. For example, some less popular teams like swimming, tennis, or volleyball don't earn the university much money, and the bigger sports like basketball and football make up for the lost revenue. So why would we pay athletes if entire teams are struggling to survive?

We would pay athletes because when President Theodore Roosevelt helped create the NCAA in 1906, he had no idea what it would grow into. At first, it was a great place to watch athletes play sports while making sure the rules were being followed. But now in the 21st century, the NCAA is a billion dollar company. Why hasn't anything changed? Because the decision makers have the mentality of, "This is the way it's always been." They're scared to make amendments, even when it's necessary.

I'm not saying we should be paying athletes $5,000 or even $10,000 per semester. If each athlete got $2,000 paid over the course of the semester, this would give them some spending cash and an opportunity to start managing their money. Most athletic programs can't afford to pay athletes on their own, so the NCAA and their executives need to figure out a way to start compensating their golden geese.

Athletes earn their schools hundreds of thousands of dollars, increase enrollment, and if they do well, provide a recruiting piece for generations. Top NCAA executives are getting $1 million per year while an athlete can't earn $50 from signing a few autographs.

Let's open our eyes to what's really going on. The NCAA "prevents student-athletes from allowing their likeness to be used for promotional purposes."

There's only one thing I can say to this: Why?

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There has been major discussion recently if college athletes should or shouldn't be paid while they are in school. The first thing opponents say is, "They're already getting a scholarship! That's more than anybody else! Don't be greedy!" Fine, let's not be greedy and look at how much a scholarship is actually worth.

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For the general public and college students/athletes

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7 Common Sense Reasons Why College Athletes Should Be Paid (According to Jay Bilas)

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ESPN's Jay Bilas explains in plain language why the NCAA needs to pay their workers.

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2014/01/30/21-reasons-why-student-athletes-are-employees-and-should-be-allowed-to-unionize/#3fb78f702991
Marc Edelman: Associate Professor and sports  writer
Audience: Sports fans

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Audience: Educated, regular people

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Jul 18, 2011

Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host

Close
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

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Jul 18, 2011 Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host Close Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN.

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Author: Michael Wilbon

Audience:
General Public

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Jul 18, 2011

Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host

Close
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

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Jul 18, 2011 Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host Close Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN.

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Author: John S. Kiernan

He is a Senior Writer and Editor at Evolution Finance. This article is intended for athletes and anyone else that is concerned with whether or not college athletes should be paid.

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John S Kiernan, WalletHub Managing EditorJun 30, 2016

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? Experts Weigh In

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? Experts Weigh In

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MAURICE PEEBLES

The article is written for anyone who have influence in weather student athletes should be paid.
http://www.complex.com/sports/2015/12/jay-bilas-interview/

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Hannah
Author is Dave Anderson.

Intended audience is to the general public, sports enthusiasts, and people with the question of whether athletes should get paid or not.

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid
When the NCAA was founded by President Roosevelt in 1905, the institution was committed to the idea of not providing a salary or stipend to the student-athletes who took part in its organization. It is based on the idea of amateurism, and this was a notable idea at the time.

But, over a century later, the NCAA is no longer recognizable compared to what the organization used to be. The NCAA has modernized to take full advantage of the new kinds of sports fans and especially the new kinds of media. Today, sports and athletics in the NCAA draw in around $11 billion every year for the organization. Its coaches and administrators make staggering amounts of money. From high salaries to performance bonuses, it seems that the NCAA is a very profitable business considering it is a non-profit organization.

Yet, despite all of this cash floating around, the players who make the organization work do not see any of this money. In fact, they are barred by NCAA regulations from capitalizing on their status as great athletes at all. The organization argues that student athletes are provided with full scholarships and a free education. While this was previously a great incentive to work towards a career as a college athlete, the billions of dollars that are poured into the industry every year seem to be disappearing into black holes including ever-increasing coaches' salaries and brand new stadiums.

Now, collegiate sports teams are fighting back against the NCAA standards. Whether in the press room or in the court room, the NCAA cannot seem to come up with a valid argument other than, "This is our tradition."

In the 21 st century, the NCAA tradition no longest exists. Here are the top ten reasons why student athletes should be paid for their hard work and talent.

BluIz60 / Shutterstock.com

Colleges can be more selective in their admittance procedures when their sports teams are famous or successful. Many of these universities fall far from the top 10 colleges in the world or even the country. Yet, they are able to run admissions procedures and charge tuition rates that reflect those of Ivy League institutions.

The year that Boston College's quarterback won the Heisman Trophy, the number of students vying for admission to the college grew by 25 points in a single year. It was not just the number of applications that grew- the quality of applications grew in similar proportions. The average SAT score of the freshman admitted in that year jumped by 110 points. Doug Flutie, a single student athlete, created this huge raise in interest with his talent and passion for the game and it seems that only Boston College was rewarded.

College sports teams often do much of the school's marketing for them while simultaneously generating revenue. Relatively small and unknown schools like Gonzaga University in Washington are known almost entirely because of their basketball teams. Without these successful players, colleges like Gonzaga would have to spend a fortune on marketing programs to attract out-of-state students.

Photo Works / Shutterstock.com

If athletes were to be paid for only one reason, it is because the NCAA and universities capitalize on both the team's success and the players' status for its own financial gain through the sales of apparel and other merchandise. When universities sell jerseys and t-shirts with popular numbers on them, they are literally selling the personhood of the person whose number is on the jersey.

The sales of apparel featuring student athlete personalities takes the NCAAs profits from sports to a whole new level. Say what they will about the fairness of the scholarship system, public businesses that used the image of an athlete, model, actress or any public figure for their own gain would ultimately end up compensating the individual they use.

Not only is the university allowed to capitalize on the celebrity of its players; but the players are contractually not allowed to do this themselves. NCAA rules state that student athletes are not allowed to use their likeness for promotional purposes or monetary gain. This means that a well-known athlete cannot charge money for the hours spent signing autographs but the university is able to use the athlete to generate hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars through sales and increased enrollment.

Making millions of dollars based on a player's performance or personality while barring them from accepting even a free taco is not only hypocritical, it is morally questionable.

NCAA coaches can often earn an average of $100,000 per year. Being that they work for educational institutions and often have several assistants and advisors who help to share the work load, this is a huge amount of money compared to teachers and professors who are inundated with facilitating the academic success of tens of thousands of students.

A $100,000 salary is fair for professionals who draw so much money into the school through the leadership of their sports teams. However, schools with massive sports programs have been known to pay their head coaches millions of dollars. The head football coach at Alabama is reported to have made $5.5 million in the year 2013 and recently received a new contract to the tune of $7 million each year. The head football coach at Texas made slightly less; he brought in only $5.4 million.

Today, it is strange to think that when the NCAA was founded, most people were equally opposed to paying coaches as well as athletes. Many coaches worked primarily for the love of the game. Over 100 years later, the average BCS eligible football coach makes a salary of $2.05 million every year.

If schools believe that spending $7 million a year on a single salary is a good investment, it is difficult to reconcile the schools' and the NCAA's stance on compensation for players. After all, money does not seem to be an issue.

The NCAA has revenue that rivals many of the country's biggest public companies. It is never compared to these companies because the NCAA remains a non-profit organization. However, each year the NCAA takes in almost $11 billion in revenue across college sports. The biggest earners are football, basketball and baseball.

$11 billion is more than the annual revenue of the entire NBA or the NHL. It should also be noted that this money is not evenly distributed. The top playing Division I schools contribute more to this figure than many of the lowest members combined.

For example, the University of Alabama took in $143.3 million in athletic revenues alone. This figure is not only more than any professional hockey team in the NHL earns but it is also more than 25 out of the 30 NBA teams bring in annually as well.

While there is nothing wrong with a non-profit organization taking on huge amounts of revenue, it seems that the wealth could be distributed amongst those who are at the heart and soul of the organization: the players.

Although the NCAA pays its top executives million dollar salaries, parents, students and fans do not scramble to snap up the best season tickets to watch some executives play sports. The fans are invested in the players, many of whom have started taking on followings akin to those of famous and established professional players.

If the administrators and coaches in the NCAA want to make the same salaries that their colleagues in the pros do, then perhaps they should also reconsider how committed they truly are to the amateurism that the NCAA was founded on.

Conclusion

Student athletes are stuck between two worlds. While the NCAA constantly affirms its commitment to its root values, it is simultaneously brokering deals with national networks to show live football games to millions of people. Too many college athletes put their heart and soul into what they do and too many come out with any reward.

Many people say that NCAA has an ideal model for creating cheap labor. Not only do they expect athletes to perform in the classroom that performance has to be translated to the field. Should the athlete begin to feel the pressure of the strenuous 90 hour weeks, they are cut from the team and lose their scholarship and their vehicle with which to educate themselves. What the NCAA says when they enforce policies that leave their players floundering both physical and financially is that each player is just a body that is replaceable.

Of course, there is not a real precedent to begin paying a student the same salary as Kobe Bryant; but making sure that they can eat properly should not be an issue for organizations with such huge amounts of revenue. Whether it is to acknowledge their significant contribution to the college or just to ensure that these students leave their college career with something other than a diploma and a "college football injury," student athletes should be compensated. After all, Americans don't spend $11 billion a year to watch men in suits make decisions.

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid

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Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid When the NCAA was founded by President Roosevelt in 1905, the institution was committed to the idea of not providing a salary or stipend to the student-athletes who took part in its organization. It is based on the idea of amateurism, and this was a notable idea at the time.

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By Jhon R. Thelin

John R. Thelin is professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is also the author of A History of American Higher Education published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

The article is intended for the financially interested readers, as it is posted in the time.com website under the section money and focus heavily on the finances of college education.

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Here's Why We Shouldn't Pay College Athletes

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Paying college athletes a salary has become a popular idea. But most are better off with tax-free scholarships, the way it works now.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tyson-hartnett/college-athletes-should-be-paid_b_4133847.html

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Jul 18, 2011

Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host

Close
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

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Jul 18, 2011 Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host Close Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN.

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John R. Thelin, author of "Here's Why We Shouldn't Pay College Athletes" writes to the general public concerned with the math behind this issue.

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Here's Why We Shouldn't Pay College Athletes

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Paying college athletes a salary has become a popular idea. But most are better off with tax-free scholarships, the way it works now.

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The author is Dr. Allen Sack.
The article is for the general public and any scholar athletes.

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The author is Michael Wilbon. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown'

The audience is for everybody interested in sports, and specifically college sport.

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Jul 18, 2011

Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host

Close
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

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Jul 18, 2011 Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host Close Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN.

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This article is intended for Student athletes but specifically basketball player in the NCAA.

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The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism

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With the passing of another academic year, fans were able to enjoy yet another nail-biting NCAA Basketball Tournament and a highlight filled football season. Most would agree that the NCAA provides competitive sport as popular as the professionals. In fact, its annual revenue makes that point clear. College football and basketball generate more than the National Basketball Association, a total of more than $6 billion yearly.[1] There is one major difference between the two associations, however. NBA players get paid for the revenue they help bring in, while NCAA athletes receive no monetary compensation. The promise of a free education is not enough anymore if the NCAA wants to act as a money making business, and not reward those who help make it profitable. If the NCAA does not want to pay college athletes, than it should not hold these players back from entering the professional game. However, colluding with the NBA and the NFL, athletes are restricted when it comes to joining the pro ranks. With these two ideas combined, athletes are drawn to the college game out of necessity, and not always desire. Some writers, like Stanley Eitzen, have even compared the system to indentured servitude or a "plantation system."[2] Concerning the revenue sports of men's basketball and football, the players should be entitled to some monetary compensation for their work, as well as the right to enter the professional leagues at an age that suits their abilities.

A key point as to why the NCAA would not want to pay athletes is to maintain the amateur status of its reputation. In the U.S. News and World Report Andrew Zimbalist provides a definition of amateur as "someone who engages in the activity for fun, not remuneration.[3] While that may be what NCAA President Mark Emmert thinks still drives the association he runs, things have changed over the years. The ideals of amateurism and the capitalist benefits that the NCAA reels in annually do not mix and are in fact hypocritical. Television deals and sponsorships are only growing. The three weeks of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, known as "March Madness," generate over $770 million in TV rights deals alone.[4] The only reasons why these exist are the athletes themselves, and they are reaping none of the benefits from these windfalls. The idea of maintaining integrity in college sport is also a pervasive theme between Emmert's, and other's statements. In a New York Times' piece in 2011 University of Maryland system Chancellor Brit Kirwan points the blame on the NCAA itself. "The huge TV contracts and excessive commercialization have corrupted intercollegiate athletics," he said. "To some extent they have compromised the integrity of the universities."[5]

Areas in which the NCAA defies its own devotion to amateurism are the sale of video games licenses, game merchandise, footage, etc., that provide direct profit for the association. The players directly promote these examples, but the benefits received are to the NCAA and schools alone. Amateurism then serves as the guise used by the NCAA to take advantage of gifted athletes, in a way creating a system that benefits off of their talents for at least a couple years at a time. Football and men's basketball are the sports monetized the greatest, but the effects spill over into the other sports as well. If the amount of money that these sports make for the schools' athletic departments was not so great, then maybe the NCAA could maintain that these students are participating in a normal extra curricular activity. As long as their time creates such a cash flow, it would be a joke to say that is true. Over the years the NCAA has changed rules that do not always align with pure amateurism. According to Zimbalist, in 1973 the NCAA altered scholarship terms so that they needed to be renewed each year.[6] This would imply that no athletes position was safe, a notion that does not fit with the love of the game. Zimbalist also brings up the gifts that winning teams receive that could sometimes be worth thousands of dollars. College coaches are receiving multi-million dollar salaries in this modern NCAA system. University of Texas Head Football Coach Mack Brown's salary totals over $5 million. In comparison, scholarships for the entire Texas football team total just over $3 million.[7] Clearly, the NCAA does not need the coaches to maintain an amateur status. Over the years it seems the NCAA is walking a tightrope of purity.

Arguments against paying the athletes always include the fact that these men and women are not just athletes, but they are students first. This viewpoint would carry more weight if the emphasis were realistically placed on academics. Johnson and Acquaviva make the point that between weight training sessions, film room, practice, individual workouts, travel, and finally competition, these "student-athletes" cannot feel much like students. They point to an Adler and Adler study that concluded, "Big-time basketball and being seriously engaged in academics were not compatible."[8] Coaches will at times schedule less challenging classes, or ones that will fit easier into a practice schedule. These points make it seem like "athlete" really does come before "student."

Many will say that the student-athletes are already compensated with a college education.[9] This logic is extremely flawed for many of the reasons discussed earlier. The athletes cannot get the same value out of the education because of the already intense time commitment to the sport that has given them the opportunity to be in school. The idea that a college education is payment would have to assume that a college degree always pays off in the long run. In reality, the glut of bachelor degrees entering the workforce is lessening their value. Without actually experiencing the class room and receiving the right networking and advising opportunities, it cannot be assumed that the degree is worth the athlete's time. Especially considering that the time spent in college could be a player losing money available by playing in the professional leagues. The idea that an education is worth to a player what a professional salary would be seems to be a naïve view.[10] While a cash payment may not solve the problems of a college athlete, and it may perpetuate some economic issues, payment is what these players are entitled to because they are the symbols that fill the stadiums across national campuses. Even with a full scholarship an athlete may have to pay between $8,000 to $12,000 more than the allotted amount due to travel and other needs.[11] Assuming that the education itself, along with the opportunities and athletic department support, is payment enough, is assuming that those expectations are realistic and not just ideal.

While this may sound shortsighted, college athletes in revenue sports should be paid because it is right. A distinction must be made whether or not the NCAA is in business to take advantage of capitalism and make money. If no profits were taken, then the association would have an argument against paying players. In a piece from the Sport Journal piece, the author points to Kahn's argument that the NCAA acts like a cartel in its actions. According to his study, in 2005 a draft ready football player is worth $495,000 and a draft ready basketball player is worth over $1.4 million to the NCAA respectively. [12] This means that the scholarship value the player is receiving in return for play is nowhere near the player's actual worth to the school. This combined with the facts that players in the revenue sports receive no pay, and are also restricted to when they can go professional, exemplifies oppressive policy set forth by the association, in collusion with the professional associations.

What compounds the problem further is the NCAA policy to mandate when athletes can go professional. The demand for paying athletes would not be as great of a mandate from this paper if the NCAA allowed players to skip college altogether. If a player wants to skip college basketball for a trip to the NBA, why not let him? There are a number of "draft ready" players that enter NCAA sports every year. This ranges from "one and done" basketball stars that have found John Calipari's Kentucky to be their home of late, to physical football specimens like South Carolina's Jadeveon Clowney who was restricted from being drafted this past year for his sophomore status.

To put the rules simply, to be drafted to the NBA, a player must be one year removed from high school and 19 years of age. This creates a two-fold problem. It defines the culture of "one and done" players, who just use the college game as a waiting period for professional careers. It also restricts a player's right to pursue the career. While the rule may hamper undue expectations of riches, and allow players to mature, it also forces some players deserving of an opportunity to go pro, into a limbo period where very little reward comes their way, and the profits of their play go to the school and the league. A Forbes article points out that the age restrictions placed on NBA and NFL draftees is used to help the leagues, not the players.[13] The NBA and the NFL are able to use college as a their farm systems. Participation in college adds extra talent evaluation, bypassing guesswork. The NCAA, likewise, would like the top players to stay in school where they can win, draw headlines, as well as help to reel in the profits. This reasoning makes sense in terms of the associations involved, but the leagues will claim the benefits were for the players too.

The rule could be to test the physical readiness of players. However, players are not going to enter the draft in either sport if their bodies are not ready, especially football.[14] The NCAA may be worried about a so called "talent drain" from their sports. In the decade between 1995 and 2005, only 39 players went to the NBA from high school. That is an average of less than four players per year, and should not be considered a drain on the system. Also, if leagues like the NBA are worried about the maturity level of its players, one year in school will not necessarily cure a bad egg. The league can implement its own value systems to combat these dangers, and teach players how to be mature adults. NBA Commissioner David Stern has even said that the NBA's intention to restrict eligibility is not to force kids into college. "That's not our rule," he said. "Our rule is that they won't be eligible for the draft until they're 19. They can play in Europe, they can play in the D-League, they can go to college. This is a not a social program, this is a business rule for us. The NFL has a rule which requires three years of college. So the focus is often on ours, but it's really not what we require in college."[15] Overall, the athletes see no gain from such a meaningless restriction that serves to maintain the NCAA as a monopoly pipeline into professional football and basketball.

This paper is not meant to create a payment plan for players, nor is it meant to say certain players are entitled to millions in compensation. The point is that players should get something in return for their time, because most rational fans know that basketball and football players are not normal students. If it were completely impossible for athletic departments to find it in the budget to pay athletes extra stipends, there would be very little conversation on the topic. This paper does not have a direct solution to that cash flow question. Neither is this paper suggesting large lump sums be paid to these big sport athletes. However, between NCAA television and licensing revenues, and large salaries paid to coaches and staff, a little extra can go toward the stars on the court. In the end, the NCAA does not have much to fall back on when making an argument against some form of compensation. It's status as an amateur haven is almost erased, and the value of an athlete's education at schools across the country is in question. Reform may not be simple, but it will be the right thing to do in support of the players.

Works Cited

Burton, Richard. "College Athletes Are Already Paid With Their Education." US News. U.S.News & World Report, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Eitzen, Stanley D. "Slaves of Big-Time College Sports." USA Today Magazine Sept. 2000: 26. Web.

Johnson, Dennis A., and John Acquaviva. "Point/Counterpoint: Paying College Athletes." The Sport Journal. United States Sports Academy, 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Nocera, Joe. "Let's Start Paying College Athletes." The New York Times Magazine. N.p., 30 Dec. 2011. Web.

Press, Associated. "David Stern Wants Change to Age rule." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 04 Apr. 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Rishe, Patrick. "Risk Management Explains NBA, NFL Eligibility Restrictions Impacting Athletes Like Nerlens Noel, Jadeveon Clowney." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Walters, Chad. "NBA and NFL Draft Eligibility Restrictions - Why?" Lean Blitz Do It Better. N.p., 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Wieberg, Steve. "NCAA President: Time to Discuss Players Getting Sliver of Revenue Pie." USATODAY.COM. N.p., 30 Mar. 2011. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

Zimbalist, Andrew. "The Cost of Paying Athletes Would Be Far Too High." US News. U.S.News & World Report, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.

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With the passing of another academic year, fans were able to enjoy yet another nail-biting NCAA Basketball Tournament and a highlight filled football season. Most would agree that the NCAA provides competitive sport as popular as the professionals. In fact, its annual revenue makes that point clear.

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http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/6778847/college-athletes-deserve-paid

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Joe Nocera was an Op-Ed columnist for the Opinion pages between April 2011 and November 2015. 

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Joe Nocera was an Op-Ed columnist for the Opinion pages between April 2011 and November 2015. 

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This article is written for the general public for the purpose of informing people of how to begin the process of paying college athletes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Way to Start Paying College Athletes (Published 2016)

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A salary cap for college football and men’s basketball players would not break the bank or completely abandon free-market principles. Here’s how it might work.

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The author is Tiffany Patterson .

The audience is for general public  interested in the topic of if college athletes should get paid or not.

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Author is John S Kiernan, Senior Writer & Editor at Evolution Finance.

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Author is John S Kiernan, Senior Writer & Editor at Evolution Finance.

# data[].attributes.body
Audience is for those interested in the issue of whether athletes should be paid or not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
John S Kiernan, WalletHub Managing EditorJun 30, 2016

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? Experts Weigh In

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? Experts Weigh In

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Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com
Audience is for people concerned about the topic of whether or not college athletes should be paid or not.

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Jul 18, 2011

Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host

Close
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN. You can follow him on Twitter: @RealMikeWilbon

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year, the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million. So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised? Would the quality of the broadcasts or the coverage or the staging of the events be somehow diminished? What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it. That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism. Not everything is equal, not everything is fair. The most distinguished professor at the University of Alabama won't make $5.9 million in his entire tenure in Tuscaloosa; Nick Saban will make that this year. So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair. The BCS' new deal with ESPN was based, in part, on paying more money to schools/conferences with regard to what has been called "population centers." Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws. So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. But it's another thing entirely for the students who play for revenue-producing teams (at UConn and the University of Tennessee, this would include the women's basketball teams) to be somehow compensated from the lucrative television/radio/Internet rights fees they make wholly possible.

It's commendable that the NCAA has paid millions into a fund for in-need athletes to cover clothing purchases, emergency travel and medical expenses. There's also a special assistance fund and a student-athlete opportunity fund. Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them. It's called supply and demand, and if both men are fortunate enough to reach the NFL it'll be a lesson worth learning because that dynamic will exist their entire careers. If a soccer player can't get a dime for his jersey, well, there's a realization in that, too.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?" The answer is, nothing. If a car dealer wants to strike that deal then good for the player in question. If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

If the student as athlete can find a way, he/she should be able to endorse products, to have paid-speaking gigs, to sell memorabilia, as Allen Sack, the author and professor at the college of business at the University of New Haven has suggested in recent years. The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books. The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work. The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC in addition to ESPN. Wilbon joined ESPN.com after three decades with The Washington Post, where he earned a reputation as one of the nation's most respected sports journalists.

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Jul 18, 2011 Michael WilbonPardon the Interruption co-host Close Michael Wilbon is a featured columnist for ESPN.com and ESPNChicago.com. He is the longtime co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN and appears on the "NBA Sunday Countdown" pregame show on ABC, in addition to ESPN.

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Author is a award-winning professional journalist. Has a couple of college degree's.

Audience for this article is educated, regular folk.