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Crossfire: Hypocritical not to pay college athletes?

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Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Christine Brennan continue the Crossfire debate on whether college athletes should get a salary.

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Should College Student-Athletes Be Paid? Both Sides of the Debate

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Pay for Play: Should College Athletes Be Compensated?

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Grinding through grueling workouts, practices and games every day of the year, combined with rigorous college courses, student-athletes are some of the hardest working people in the country…

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Imagine working for countless hours, six days a week, then putting on multiple performances just so someone else can be paid billions. That is the life of a college athlete. College athletes do not get any recognition or benefits that they deserve for the revenue they bring to their university and the surrounding community. For some college athletes, things such as tuition, gear, recovery items, and other necessities needed to perform are not free or cheap. Many college athletes pay money out of their own pockets to be able to perform at the level they need to, but who gets all the financial benefits? The NCAA and the university itself.

According to USA Today, the NCAA had a revenue of $1.1 Billion from 2017 NCAA college sporting events. How much of this money went to the college athletes who are the ones physically and mentally performing generating this money? Zero. However, in a legal way, college athletes who are playing at Division 1 or Division 2 schools are being paid with full scholarship tuition. It is fair to say that, paid tuition is equivalent to being a paid athlete. This leaves out Division 3 college athletes who put in just as much hard work and time to be able to perform at a high level and generate money for the NCAA and their university, but do not receive full rides. At Division 3 colleges, the only scholarship that is allowed is academic, not athletic. I interviewed Walker McDonald, a current college athlete at Greenville University, and asked him the question of, should college athletes get paid for playing for their university? Walker said, "I believe college athletes should be paid based on how much money they get from scholarships...athletes should at least make enough money to cover their tuition if the scholarship doesn't."

Media by NCAA Money Revenue.

Media by All NCAA College Sports.

College athletes have to sign contracts by the NCAA stating that they will not receive any money from anyone while they are playing for the university. I do not dismiss the fact that playing for a university is a privilege and not a right, college athletes have many experiences and memories that are priceless in life. However, times are hard for many students, and college athletes have a bit more expenses when it comes to necessities, they need to be able to perform at high levels. I was able to interview Josias Parker, an alumna of the men's basketball team at Greenville University. I asked him if college athletes should get paid for their time playing for their university. Josias replied by saying, "I definitely think college athletes should get paid, because universities make a lot of money from sports, sports bringing a majority of income, especially for small schools like Greenville University. Athletes should get paid especially because college is a tough time with money, so paying money to athletes will give college athletes more relief and will try to help them and aid them with whatever they need, like necessities they need to perform well."

There is a good compromise with those who disagree with the idea of college athletes getting paid, instead of a set salary like professionals. The very least college athletes could receive is donations from fans or other organizations. College athletes are told to treat their sport as a job and be professional about every aspect of the game. However, like waiters and waitresses get tips for doing a good job, why can't athletes be rewarded the same way?

Even without pay, the very least college athletes could receive is a guarantee that their scholarship will not be taken away if they are hurt playing. If we are going the route that an athlete's pay is their scholarship, then it shouldn't be able to be taken away when they are no longer "useful" for the university. Athletes like Kyle Hardrick who lost his basketball scholarship at Oklahoma University after he tore his meniscus in his knee are examples that universities only care about the ability of the player to perform. If universities only care about the usefulness of the athlete, then there should be guaranteed tuition or pay allowing the athlete to finish college even after being injured and unable to play. Student college athletes should get paid, especially after seeing the details of what they go through to perform at the high caliber level they compete at.

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Imagine working for countless hours, six days a week, then putting on multiple performances just so someone else can be paid billions. That is the life of a college athlete. College athletes do not get any recognition or benefits that they deserve for the revenue they bring to their university and the surrounding community.

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? (Published 2019)

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A star athlete’s freak injury revives the debate.

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College athletics is less a nonprofit enterprise than an industry exploiting its workers, writes Brian Rosenberg, the president of Macalester College, in The New York Times. He points out that universities with top teams can rake in nearly $20 million a year from Nike or Adidas sponsorships, while the athletes themselves, whose talent is what attracts such sponsorships in the first place, walk away with nothing. He writes:

College basketball players are worth a lot of money, but they aren't legally allowed to make it. So the schools, coaches, agents and shoe companies make the money instead - all in the name of "amateurism."

Katelyn Ohashi, a former University of California, Los Angeles, gymnast, has criticized the unfairness of N.C.A.A. rules that prevented her from making any money from a video of a perfect floor routine that went viral earlier this year. She told Mr. Newsom:

Here's the fame, but then there's no compensation, and it's so crazy. People are like, "Oh, you must be so rich." And I'm like, "You must not know the N.C.A.A." ... When my routine went viral, [N.C.A.A. President] Mark Emmert called me to congratulate me, and I'm like, "You should be thanking me."

In fact, according to an analysis cited in The Economist, if players were paid in proportion to the amount of revenue they generated for their colleges, "the top 10 percent of football and 16 percent of basketball players would be paid around $400,000 and $250,000 a year respectively." While the N.C.A.A.'s desire to keep so-called professionalism out of college sports may have made sense before they became such a big business, the author writes, it's clearly an illusion that no longer holds:

The two most lucrative college sports, American football and basketball, are highly competitive. Many universities are willing to bend over backward to enroll talented players. And the argument that university athletics remains amateur would hardly earn passing marks in even an introductory college course.

Removing the N.C.A.A. restrictions on endorsements would create a winner-take-all dynamic within and among universities, writes Cody J. McDavis, a former Division I basketball player. The best players at the best schools would reap all the benefits, Mr. McDavis says, while less popular sports and athletes would suffer. He writes:

Major brands like Nike would pay top football and basketball talent at the biggest schools, while student-athletes in other sports or at smaller programs would be ignored. Currently, corporate funds go to athletic departments and are generally distributed among all sports; with third-party payments, those funds could instead mostly go directly to a few student-athletes, starving the rest.

The N.C.A.A., for its part, has said the California law "would erase the critical distinction between college and professional athletes." Even The Los Angeles Times editorial board, which came out in favor of the law, acknowledges that some change to the spirit of college athletics would be inevitable. They write:

The measure would inevitably eat away at the distinction between professional and college sports. Celebrated collegians could make money not only by endorsing sneakers and sports drinks, but also by autographing jerseys, pitching workout videos and putting their name on baseball bats and hockey sticks. In short, they could profit from the fame that their work as an athlete brings.

As those on opposing sides of California's law debate how the fruits of the college sports economy ought to be distributed, others assert that the solution is simply to decommercialize the activity altogether.

Jonathan R. Cole, a professor at Columbia and author of "Toward a More Perfect University," suggests in The Atlantic that the emphasis placed on campus athletics is " totally out of control." In 41 states, he writes, the highest-paid public employee is not a professor or neurosurgeon, but rather a college football or basketball coach. For students, meanwhile, the difficulty of keeping up with both coursework and demanding athletic schedules has created an incentive for academic fraud. Taken together, a picture emerges of college sports as a pseudoprofessional industry that encroaches upon the mission of higher education. He writes:

For the highly selective colleges and universities, the leaders ought to roll back the percentage of recruited athletes. ... The highly selective colleges ought to withdraw from the N.C.A.A. and form their own league since they are not trying to build national championship programs. ... Finally, university leaders should consider forming special institutions located in different geographic areas that are devoted almost entirely to athletics and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

One school that has provided something of a model on this front is Spelman, a historically black college for women. In 2011, Spelman learned that its N.C.A.A. division was losing three members. Rather than find another conference in which to compete at great expense, the school decided to withdraw from the N.C.A.A. and eliminate its athletics department in favor of a fitness program for all students. Beverly Daniel Tatum, then Spelman's president, wrote in The Times in 2013:

Whether it's diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease, black women are more likely to suffer from these ailments - and die from them - at young ages. All are linked to obesity and lack of physical activity. ... We decided that it was more important to support our entire campus with a wellness initiative than 80 student athletes with N.C.A.A. funding.

California's changes aren't scheduled to take effect until 2023, leaving the N.C.A.A. ample time to mount court challenges to the law, which the organization has suggested violates the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. If the law is upheld, the N.C.A.A. will have to decide whether to penalize the schools with fines, which may or may not be legally enforceable, or even expel them.

For now, California is betting that the outsize importance of its universities within the world of college sports will make those threats impossible to carry out. "I don't necessarily take it to heart," Newsom said.
It's the one-month birthday of this newsletter! Do you have a topic you'd like us to cover? Is there anything you want to see more or less of? Email us at debatable@nytimes.com to tell us what you think so we can make it even better for you.
Jemele Hill makes the case for black athletes to leave white colleges for historically black ones. [The Atlantic]

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Opinion | Should College Athletes Be Allowed to Get Paid? (Published 2019)

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College athletics is less a nonprofit enterprise than an industry exploiting its workers, writes Brian Rosenberg, the president of Macalester College, in The New York Times. He points out that universities with top teams can rake in nearly $20 million a year from Nike or Adidas sponsorships, while the athletes themselves, whose talent is what attracts such sponsorships in the first place, walk away with nothing.