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Morgan Link

Should Student-Athletes In College Be Compensated Financially?

In 2012, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA") made

over a billion dollars of advertising revenue during its March basketball

tournament called "March Madness." How much money did the college

athletes that played in these games make? They made zero dollars. (Chaney-

Rice) The question arises whether this situation is fair. At all levels of college

team sports, student athletes dedicate massive amounts of time to

practicing and playing their sport. These students also risk their physical

well-being to participate in college athletics. In some cases, the student

receives a scholarship. In all cases, the school enjoys profits. For a school

with a nationally ranked college basketball or football team, the school

enjoys direct profits from the student's participation in the sport in the form

of ticket and memorabilia sales and advertising revenue for nationally

televised games. Schools with smaller athletic programs also enjoy profits

from college athletes although in a more indirect way by giving the school

higher visibility. Specifically, having competitive sports teams enhance the

college's reputation, attracts alumni donations, and draws more student

applicants to the school. Whether the school profits directly or indirectly,

colleges profit from student athletes without fully compensating the student

for their participation. As evidenced by the debt that many student athletes
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accumulate during their college career and the illegal gifts that student

athletes accept, scholarship awards are not sufficient compensation for the

contribution that the students make in light of what the colleges receive in

benefits.

The question of college athlete compensation dates back to the

earliest of intercollegiate competitions where abuses of the system led to

participants without academic credentials competing. In the first

intercollegiate competition, Harvard is rumored to have hired a coxswain who

was not a student in an effort to beat Yale. This win would please the

sponsor of the race and attract more money and notoriety for the school.

(Acquaviva and Johnson) In response to the problems of non-student athletes

competing in order to please sponsors and alumni, the NCAA was created.

The NCAA instituted many reforms including banning paying student athletes

for the work that they do on the field. Under the present NCAA rules, the

maximum amount of compensation that a student athlete can receive is

money for tuition, room and board in the form of a scholarship. (Axelson) -

The costs associated with this type of compensation vary from school to

school. As an example, Iowa State University calculates its scholarship and

other student athlete costs as follows, the average annual cost to the

university per student athlete on full scholarship is $62,713. (Fahenstock)

Although college-athletes are compensated through scholarships, the funds

only cover a fragment of student expenses. The article, "Should College

Football Players Be Paid to Play?" explains, Even with an athletic

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scholarship, some players are graduating without all of their educational

expenses paid, andaverage players will accumulate an additional $3,222 in

educational expenses not covered by scholarships." (Axelson) At the end of

their college years, many student athletes graduate with debt even if they

receive a scholarship to play a college sport.

Limiting student athletes' compensation to athletic scholarship

represents a disservice to students who are actually hard working employees

of the school. The NCAAs efforts to restrict compensation to tuition

scholarships have led to the cheating that the NCAA was ironically created to

prevent. The unfairness of the system has been recognized by the National

Labor Relations Board, a federal governmental agency, when it ruled last

March that players are employees that can unionize. The NLRB regional

director Peter Sun Ohr explained, the players' time commitment to their

sport and the fact that their scholarships were tied directly to their

performance on the field [are the] reasons for granting them union rights."

(Bennett) Since student athletic scholarships are based on performance on

the field and will be cut off if the student can no longer play or does not play

well, student-athletes compensation should not be limited by scholarship.

Instead, the student athlete should receive just compensation for the work

that he/she does. If the student athlete contributes thousands of dollars to

the colleges income, his/her compensation should not be limited by

arbitrary, antiquated regulations of the NCAA. College athletes deserve pay

because they are doing a job that requires the athletes to work long hours on
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their sport. Athletes practice over 20 hours per week, forty-nine weeks per

year. (Fahenstock) In addition to working hard for their school for no money

outside of scholarship funds, student athletes also risk injury for college

profits. College athletes risk every type of injury from a simple broken ankle

to a career-ending broken neck. Many students, like Taylor Branch, a high

school football player who turned down a scholarship to Georgia Tech

University, do not play college sports fearing lifetime medical problems.

(Nocera) For those athletes who play in college, the injuries incurred in

college prevent many of them from playing professionally for money later in

life. Due to the fact that college athletes do not get paid beyond the costs of

their tuition, room and board under NCAA rules, these athletes are open to

secret gifts from colleges, boosters, and/or alumni. Boosters and the

universities themselves have been caught giving extravagant gifts like cars,

trips, and cash to college athletes. (Acquaviva and Johnson) In summary,

since college athletes are now able to unionize, they should be paid for the

hours dedicated to and the risk of harm resulting from playing sports. Since

the official payments under a system that allowed compensation beyond

scholarships would fully compensate the athletes for the contributions being

made, the incentive to cheat the system with illegal compensation would

disappear.

Opponents to paying student athletes for representing their school in

sport argue that compensation is not possible for three reasons: (1)

scholarships are sufficient compensation; (2) most college sports do not

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make a profit; and (3) requiring paying athletes violates Title IX of the United

States Constitution. The first reason cited by the detractors to paying

college athletes for their efforts is that athletes are already being paid to

play through scholarship awards. According to this argument, these funds are

money. (Dorfman) Therefore, the discussion need not go any further. The

critics of student compensation further argue that since most college sports

do not make money for the school, the colleges do not have money to pay

student athletes beyond scholarship. In support of this position, the author of

the article, "Pay College Athletes? They're Already Paid up to $125,000 per

Year," writes, Only two or three sports typically make money: football, men's

basketball, and women's basketball. (Dorfman) This article further points

out that only 23 out of 228 Division I athletic programs managed to run a

surplus in 2012. (Dorfman) What these statistics mean is that few athletic

programs actually make money. This lack of money in college sports feeds

into the next argument that Title IX makes paying student athletes almost

impossible. Under Title IX, the law requires that men and women have equal

access to sports. As a result, if men are paid to play college athletics,

women also have to be paid to play in the same numbers. Since male sports

often generate more revenue than female sports, paying female athletes will

be economically difficult for the school. The statistics are that there are 100

male athletes in revenue generating sports to every fifteen women.

(Dorfman) As a result, under a system where athletes are compensated,

fewer women would be paid for sport than men. This circumstance arguably
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violates Title IX of the Constitution. Critics of compensating student athletes

fairly for their efforts on the field justify not paying student athletes on the

false arguments that the colleges do not have the money to compensate

them and/or that scholarship is sufficient compensation. However, if these

arguments were true, many college sports would no longer exist.

The argument that colleges do not have the funds to pay college

athletes is outdated based on the various sources of revenue that have

developed over the years. Moreover, scholarships simply are insufficient

compensation for the efforts that student athletes give to the school. Even if

a student gets a full athletic scholarship, the scholarship does not cover all of

the costs of education. The article, Point/Counterpoint: Paying College

Athletes, estimates that even with a full scholarship, an athlete will have

to pay somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000 out of pocket to bridge the

cost-of-living gap. (Johnson) This argument rebuts the detractors point that

college athletes are fully compensated for their work on the field with a free

education. The next argument that critics of paying college athletes make is

that colleges do not have money to spend on college athletic programs. This

argument is not supported by the facts. From college sports, universities

earn income from alumni donations and ticket sales. Additionally, the NCAA

generates billions of dollars in income off of college sports. The colleges

spend this money on coaches and facilities and not on paying the athletes

directly. (Hartnett) Even if the college does not make a direct profit off of the

sport, the college does gain notoriety. The article "Why College Athletes
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Should Be Paid, comments, 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. (Hartnett) This

notoriety will attract more students and alumni donations allowing the school

to profit indirectly from the sport. When the NCAA was created in 1906,

television contracts and promotional items that generate money did not

exist. (Hartnett) Since college sports are much more lucrative today than in

1906, the NCAA now has money that it never had before. This money can be

used to ensure that Title IX is not violated. With its profits, the NCAA can pay

all college athletes the money needed to ensure that an equal number of

men and women get paid. Essentially, the arguments against paying college

athletes are antiquated. The detractors fail to take into account that source

of revenue exist today that did not exist before the NCAA was created. As

the statistics demonstrate, scholarship money is not adequate compensation

for students because it does not cover all expenses. Furthermore, college

sports in general generate sufficient income to pay the student athletes for

their efforts.

The reasons that colleges do not pay the tremendously hardworking

college athletes who make sacrifices for the benefit of their universities are

based on outdated views. From the first intercollegiate competition in the

regatta between Yale and Harvard, Harvard used a coxswain who was not

even a student at Harvard. He was a paid athlete. (Acquaviva and Johnson).

From that time until today, student athletes receive compensation to play
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sports in illegal ways. (Acquaviva and Johnson) Even the NCAA has

recognized that scholarships are not enough to compensate players for the

work that the athletes do. The NCAA decided to allow colleges to give

athletes an extra $2,000.00 over the scholarship award. This stipend was

later reversed because schools argued that they could not afford the extra

payments. (Nocera) However, the fact that the stipend passed shows that

students are not getting a fair deal with only scholarships. The major

argument against the payment of student athletes is that not all schools who

give scholarships make money from having college sports teams. Since the

NCAA makes over a billion dollars in profits, the NCAA can share those profits

with those non-income producing schools/sports to ensure that all student

athletes are fairly compensated for the work that they do in order to ensure

that their school has a sports program.

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Works Cited

Axelson, Ben. "Should College Football Players Be Paid to Play?" Syracuse.

Syracuse Media Group, 25 Sept. 213. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

Bennett, Brian. "Northwestern Players Get Union Vote." ESPN. ESPN Internet

Ventures, 27 Mar. 2014. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.

Cheney-Rice, Zak. "Here's How Many Billions College Players Will Make

during March Madness This Year." Mic. Mic Network, 19 Mar. 2014. Web.

22 Feb. 2015.

"Clowney: Pay College Athletes." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures., 13 Feb.

2014. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.

Dorfman, Jeffery. "Pay College Athletes? They're Already Paid up to $125,000

per Year." Forbes. N.p., 29 Aug. 2013. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.

Fahenstock, Alex. "Should College Athletes Get Paid?" The Wilkes Beacon.

The Beacon, 25 Feb. 2014. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.

Hartnett, Tyson. "Why College Athletes Should Be Paid." Huffington Post.

TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.

Johnson, Dennis A., Ed.D., and John Acquaviva, Ph.D. "Point/Counterpoint:

Paying College Athletes." The Sport Journal. WordPress, 15 June 2012.

Web. 5 Feb. 2015.

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Nocera, Joe. "Lets Start Paying College Athletes." The New York Times. Ed.

Dean Robinson. The New York Times Company, 30 Dec. 2011. Web. 16

Feb. 2015.

"Pros, Cons on Pay for Play." USA Today. USA TODAY, Gannett Co. Inc., 31

Aug. 2004. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.