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C- October 1, 2019
R- Yes
A- Spencer Bokat-Lindell
A- No
P- To inform

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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.

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C- February 26, 2019
R- Yes
A- Jeremy engle
A- No
P- To inform

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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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C- 2020
R- Yes
A- The editor in chief
A- No
P- To inform

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College sports generate billions of dollars in revenues in the United States every year. In 2016, CBS and Turner Broadcasting extended their contact with the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament with an 8-year, $8.8 billion extension. That placed the value of March Madness at more than $1 billion per year for the first time in history.

The extension in 2016 followed a 2010 contract which offered a 14-year agreement to broadcast the annual tournament for $10.8 billion.

The NCAA states that 90% of the revenues generated through the games played by student athletes go into services, programs, or direct distribution opportunities which directly benefit member conferences and schools. Aside from equipment access, medical care, scholarships, and travel support, student athletes receive zero compensation for their participation in their chosen support.By definition, paying the athlete would make them a professional. On the other hand, it could be argued that scholarships are an alternative form of payment already being provided. Because of the revenues their activities generate, the pros and cons of paying college athletes are closely scrutinized.

List of the Pros of Paying College Athletes

1. It encourages healthier student athletes.
Paying college athletes for their participation in sports eliminates the need for them to find outside employment to support themselves. Many scholarships may offer tuition, room, and board coverage in return for participating in a sport, but not every student athlete qualifies for a scholarship. Walk-on players have their images used to generate revenues for the NCAA too for zero compensation. Paying all athletes would allow them to focus on academics and athletics without worrying about making ends meet.

2. It provides relief for families.
Families are often tasked with providing direct support for their student athletes to abide by current payment rules. Student athletes are not even permitted to autograph items, or sell certain personal memorabilia, as a way to generate revenues. Outside of student loans for partial scholarship or walk-on athletes, it is up to each family to pay for the student to be at the school. Paying the athlete would provide some financial relief to these families, which may not have the funds to make long-term supports.

3. It provides another incentive to play.
Most student athletes who play in college never become professional athletes. In the NCAA, fewer than 2% of college athletes go on to become professional athletes. Most become professionals in their chosen field of study. By offering a stipend for playing, much like a work-study program, students would gain another incentive to become involved in athletics. They could use these funds to pay for costs not covered by a scholarship. Students could save the money for a first apartment outside of college. If a student knows they will not go pro, they may decide to give up sports instead, which would ultimately reduce the income generated by collegiate sporting activities.

4. It would stop corruption.
Despite rules preventing such actions, coaches, shoe executives, agents, apparel representatives, and other industry professionals often conspire to pay recruits to join a specific college. It is a practice that stays out of the public eye because everyone involved benefits if no one knows about the payments. Using money to influence a high school student to select a specific program and hire a specific business manager is felony-level conduct. Allowing college athletes to be paid would help to limit this issue, which would reduce investigation costs across the board.

5. It would attract better athletes who stay in programs longer.
The goal of attending a college program should be to earn a degree. Academics should be the top priority. For the athletes that do have the ability to play professionally, going to college is a stop on the journey toward a good paycheck. If these athletes could be paid while they are attending a college program, then they would be more likely to stick with the program to eventually earn their degree. They could then be drafted into a professional league once they've completed their courses.

6. It could lower tuition rates.
Paying student athletes does not mean that the costs for everyone would automatically go up. For some institutions, the costs could actually go down. Increased competition for the best athletes would create improved programming at colleges across the country. Athletic facilities would be upgraded to encourage enrollment. Although the richest institutions would always be able to offer more, at the end of the day, most people would benefit from lower costs because the system would require more efficiencies to remain productive.

7. It could create college credits that could be used toward graduation.
One of the benefits of work-study programs is that it can supplement the credits earned while supplementing college tuition costs. Athletes could use some of the concepts and skills they learn within their program to enhance their educational experience. Depending on the setup of the program, it could even help athletes graduate with a degree in their chosen faster.

List of the Cons of Paying College Athletes

1. It would eliminate the line between amateur and professional sports.
The reason why student athletes are not currently paid, according to the NCAA, is that it would eliminate the separation between amateurism and professionalism in sports. If that line is eliminated, then the links between an education at a college and sports played at a college would weaken. That would cause the athletes who don't eventually turn pro to suffer because they'd have fewer opportunities available to them.

2. It would prioritize athleticism over academics.
Although students would still be required to meet academic standards to qualify for academic programs, paying athletes for sports participation would likely shift personal priorities. They would be required to maintain their position on the team to benefit from the income, much like they are required to do so now to maintain a scholarship. Athletes would choose programs where they would be paid the most, instead of choosing programs where they could learn the most.

3. It would become a burden on taxpayers.
The idea of paying college athletes a salary comes out of the revenues which are generated by sporting activities. In reality, much of that money is already used by the conferences and schools to host games or conduct events already. To pay athletes a salary, most public institutions would need to ask taxpayers for monetary support. Private institutions would likely increase tuition rates to meet the financial obligations involved. Those burdens could stop some students from enrolling for academic purposes, which would create lower-skill workers over time throughout the country.

4. It would burden smaller schools.
Would all student athletes receive the same amount of pay, no matter which school they chose to attend? If so, then there would be an undue burden placed on smaller schools that compete at higher levels. If pay levels are allowed to be tiered, based on where a college competes, then is it fair for one athlete to be paid more than another because they were accepted into a "superior" program? There are plenty of structural questions that would need to be resolved before paying college athletes became the norm.

5. It could encourage schools to cut other programs.
Many schools use the funds from their athletics programs to fund other programs and activities. If those funds are ordered to be used as a salary for college athletes, then the other programs and services might suffer because of it. That would degrade the quality of life available on-campus at many institutions. Depending on what programs were cut, it could even impact the safety of students over a long time period.

6. It could create issues of paycheck equality.
If athletics is treated like a work-study program, there could be issues of equality in pay that would need to be evaluated. Some students in other programs would likely not earn the same amount as an athlete for their work-study program. When everything comes down to dollars and cents, there could be more discrimination put into college campuses by paying college athletes than the benefits such an activity would provide.

7. It would create opportunities to unionize.
Student athletes who are receiving a salary would be classified as employees. That would give student athletes the right to unionize in many states. That would create conflicts between schools and athletes in a manner that is similar to the conflicts seen between owners and professional athletes. Some participants would still be minors, which means their parents would need to be involved in contract negotiations. New levels of administrative complication would be incorporated into the educational system, which would further increase costs.

Paying student athletes creates a number of variables which offer plenty of pros and cons to think about. Most people would agree that athletes should be compensated when profits are generated by their likeness and activities. Most would also agree that university programs should emphasize academics over athletics. Finding a balance, using key points like these, is the only way progress on this issue will be obtained.

Blog Post Author Credentials
Louise Gaille is the author of this post. She received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Washington. In addition to being a seasoned writer, Louise has almost a decade of experience in Banking and Finance. If you have any suggestions on how to make this post better, then go here to contact our team.

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14 Should College Athletes Be Paid Pros and Cons

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College sports generate billions of dollars in revenues in the United States every year. In 2016, CBS and Turner Broadcasting extended their contact with the NCAA Division 1 basketball tournament with an 8-year, $8.8 billion extension. That placed the value of March Madness at more than $1 billion per year for the first time in history.

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C- July 18, 2011
R- Yes
A-  Michael Wilbon
A- No
P- To persuade

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Michael Wilbon, Pardon the Interruption co-hostJul 18, 2011, 03:00 AM ET

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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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You don't have to pay all of the players all of the same. But not giving athletes a cut of the billion-dollar deals they've helped happen? That's incredibly wrong.

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C- October 2, 2019
R- Yes
A- Dan Murphy
A- No
P- To inform

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Oct 2, 2019

Dan MurphyESPN Staff Writer

Close

Covers the Big Ten

Joined ESPN.com in 2014

Graduate of the University of Notre Dame

U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a former Ohio State football standout, is planning to propose a new national law to give college athletes the opportunity to make endorsement money.

Gonzalez, a Republican from Ohio, said he believes the federal government needs to act quickly to avoid potential problems.

California passed a state law Monday that prohibits colleges in that state from punishing college athletes if they accept money in exchange for the use of their name, image or likeness. The law, which will not go into effect until January 2023, does not require schools to pay their athletes directly.

Lawmakers from more than a dozen other states have expressed interest in proposing similar laws or have already submitted proposals in recent weeks. Some of those proposals include other stipulations such as schools paying athletes directly or setting up funds for them to pay for health care after their careers in college athletics are over.

The NCAA has said it recognizes the need to modify its current rules, which prohibit players from accepting any money from outside sources, but they strongly prefer one nationwide rule rather than each state coming up with slightly different variations.

Gonzalez believes a federal law is the correct way to move forward.

"I actually think that we need to do something quickly, within the next year," Gonzalez told ESPN. "I don't think you have three years to figure this out. I think decisions will start happening immediately."

He said he wants to create legislation that gives athletes the chance to make money while also setting up some way to protect athletes from what Gonzalez described as "bad actors."

"There are a lot of people who are trying to get a piece of the athlete who do not have their best interest in mind and are out for nefarious means," said Gonzalez, who was an All-Big Ten receiver at Ohio State before playing in the NFL for five years. "You can imagine a world where, if there were no guardrails in place, that it could get out of hand pretty quickly. That's the lane you're trying to carve. How do you do this to provide necessary and deserved benefits while not inviting a bigger problem alongside it?"

Gonzalez said he has had informal conversations on the subject with Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, the co-leader of a working group assembled by the NCAA to evaluate ways in which the association could change its rules on name, image and likeness rights. Smith is expected to report the group's recommendations to the NCAA's board of governors at the end of October.

ESPN's Mike Greenberg and Jalen Rose touch on all of sports' biggest topics weekdays beginning at 7 a.m. ET on ESPN. Today, Jalen Rose, Paul Finebaum and Domonique Foxworth provide their perspective on California's amateur athlete ruling. Listen now!

Gonzalez plans to wait to draft his legislation until after Smith makes his recommendation to the NCAA. Gonzalez said he has examined the issue with his staff in the past, but their conversation "kicked into gear" after California passed its new law Monday.

There is already one federal bill related to name, image and likeness rights working its way through the legislature in Washington. Rep. Mark Walker from North Carolina has proposed changing the tax code to force the NCAA to allow players to make money from endorsements or risk losing their nonprofit tax exemptions. That bill is currently in front of the House Ways and Means Committee in the early part of its path through the lawmaking process.

Gonzalez said he hasn't spoken with Walker directly, but said he has had conversations with various members of Congress. Walker's bill does not currently include the "guardrails" that Gonzalez thinks are necessary.

Gonzalez said he thinks he will be able to garner bipartisan support when he makes his proposal at some point in the next few months.

While he wants to take his time to make sure they draft a bill that properly addresses some of the consequences of allowing players to make more money, Gonzalez also feels a sense of urgency. California's law is three years away from going into effect, but juniors and seniors in high school who are currently making decisions on where they will play collegiate sports would be able to take advantage of the law by the time their collegiate careers are over.

California's law could give schools in that state a strong recruiting advantage, which would prompt other states to move quickly to catch up. Florida state Rep. Chip LaMarca, for example, said he hopes to get a law on the books in his state as early as 2020.

Gonzalez said a federal law would take precedent over state laws if one is passed, but he feels the need to move quickly to avoid confusion for young athletes who may take each state's new proposed approach into consideration when picking their schools.

He said he plans to move forward soon after Smith and the NCAA make their recommendations.

"My plan is to wait on that," Gonzalez said. "I trust Gene. I know he's thoughtful in this. ... I want to see that play out, and then he and I will have discussions on how we can solve the goals that we all have."

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Congressman to propose federal Fair Pay law

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Oct 2, 2019 Dan MurphyESPN Staff Writer Close Covers the Big Ten Joined ESPN.com in 2014 Graduate of the University of Notre Dame U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a former Ohio State football standout, is planning to propose a new national law to give college athletes the opportunity to make endorsement money.

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C- February 26, 2020
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Bill allowing college athletes to be paid advances in Nebraska legislature

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Bill allowing college athletes to be paid advances in Nebraska legislature

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C- september 30, 2019
R- Yes
A- espn
A- No
P-  To inform

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With LeBron watching, California's governor signed a college athletes endorsements bill | The Jump