Payfor Play

The topic of paying college athletes has recently inclined to new heights and is starting to receive the coverage and attention it deserves. However, in my opinion, the question was never if college players get paid or not. Numerous athletes have been caught doing it and it seems like every week there is new counts of previous college athletes admitting to their willingness to accept such benefits. The benefits received that have been most popular of recent NCAA scandals are items such as cars, money, and expensive dinners with impressive celebrities or meetings with agents that are associated with the business of the professional sports. The question now is why is it against NCAA policy for student-athletes to receive benefits such as funding from the NCAA. College athletes deserve payments from the NCAA organization because the people on the rosters are the reason for the enormous amount of revenue each sport produces during the season. The NCAA organization is a business that receives an average amount of 34 million dollars from one BCS bowl game according to Travis Waldron. In 2011, the NCAA revenue from an annual three-week march madness tournament is 770 million dollars (Nocera). An article by Travis Waldron explains that the bowl system for football, the BCS, is classified as tax-exempt nonprofit charities, set up with missions to do public good with the money they earn and spend. Recent evidence from the Republic cited in Travis Waldrons article makes me second guess what public good means to the NCAA because since the BCS began (in 1998),

average pay for the CEOs who run each bowl has more than doubled and now exceeds $500,000 a year. The NCAA have taken advantage of the earnings they are provided while student-athletes, the reason for the events, are left to ride there scholarships for a living during college. Its greedy of the NCAA to hold back the earnings from major sporting events to keep themselves financially stable while fans like myself realize that what that organization is doing is morally wrong and disrespectful to the people who provide the excitement and the overall experience of the game. While I make this argument, I would also like to make one thing clear; I do not think scholarships should go under-appreciated in college. Scholarships provide free education and in that aspect, students should be thankful for those financial rewards. However, student athletes shouldnt be held in the same category as the other scholarship students for many different reasons explained in a YouTube video posted by ESPN which depicts many athletes stating their reasons for having or not having extra money given to them. The amount of hours a person must commit their sport should be considered when discussing whether scholarships are enough for studentathletes. For most sports, commitment is not just about during the games. An athlete may have sport related work in the morning before school, after school, evening, and weekends. The aspect of time consumption needs to be put into the conversation and how involved athletes are from a day to day basis while other scholarship students are allowed the opportunity for on campus jobs. The fact that the college students are unable to provide for themselves during school because of their involvement in their sport which leads to the inability to get jobs during their college career is a huge factor

to why these students need more than a scholarship for financial help. Most schools have a variety of people with different backgrounds and some are a long way away from home and the money from scholarships does not provide the financial support. Not only are some athletes struggling to see distant family that they left to go attend school but some athletes are recruited out of certain areas of the country that may not have the support of a good family or a stable financial living. For those students the scholarships solely help them retain text books and help keep their tuition paid for. The scholarships provide no room for spending money for food off campus or just spending money to get through the everyday struggles of the college life. A solution was thought to be made when the NCAAs Division 1 Board of Directors has twice approved allowing schools to give athletes a stipend to cover expenses such as clothes, off-campus meals and travel that are not covered by their scholarships. The only dilemma was that the Larger schools with bigger budgets are better prepared to pay such stipends, and could push for a reconstruction that allows them to act without the smaller schools vote(Polzer). This idea is a start but not the solution athletes or coaches want because the NCAA would have the ability to pick and choose which athletes were qualified for the stipend which would lead to unhappy athletes that feel neglected by their University. The movement gives us the idea that the NCAA is attempting to adjust their stand on paying players. Discussions and debates give the idea of paying players a chance to gain momentum and have an effect on where the NCAA goes from here.

The NCAA and the topic of paying players are continuously getting more and more aggressive in finding a solution. The intensity of the situation grows with every university scandal involving a player accused of receiving benefits. The NCAA needs a change in the policy it provides us. It continues to be unsatisfying to the fans of the game and the athletes that participate. The NCAA wants to gain the respect theyve lost and make a case for not being the greedy corporate bad guys they seem to be establishing themselves as. The NCAA is progressing every day. Slowly but surely there will be changes made to the layout of the NCAA and its avoidance of giving college athletes what they deserve, a piece of the revenue.

Work Cited Waldron, Travis. How College Football Bowls Earn Millions in Profits But Pay Almost Nothing In Taxes. Think Progress. 9 January 2012. Web.

Polzer, Tim Mark Emmert: NCAA wont budge on paying college athletes. Sports Illustrated. NCAAF, 17 September 2013. Web.

RecrutingNation: Should College Athletes be Paid? Youtube. ESPN. 11 January 2013. Web. Nocera, Joe Lets Start Paying College Athletes NYTimes. 11 December 30 2011. Web.