It is my reading of your article that all students suffer, therefore no student deserves to get paid, they are all interns and they should be happy to have the opportunity to be used. The idea that every university has a right to expect a return on their investments, like a business, if fine as long as it is applied to every scholarship given. Does an institution expect the same return on a full scholarship for English as they do football? Have you given a return on your scholarships (academic and athletic)?

I agree that university deserves all the TV and advertising money. That’ll keep the athletic program going, but preventing a student from making money from their own name is not only being challenged in court as unconstitutional, but also simply ridiculous. Please give me the reason that NCAA has prohibiting these students, versus every other student, from making money from their name. These rules don’t stand for future doctors, lawyers, professors, researches, teachers, etc. Students can be paid for research, speaking engagements, being published, performances and various other things as long as they aren’t NCAA athletes. Please let me know the difference between having a full scholarship as an electrical engineer and then getting paid to speak at a conference and AJ Green selling signed memorabilia?

How about this middle ground: Since only 2% of athletes actually have enough talent to leave school early and become a professional lets try a student athlete trust fund. The university will invest an amount of money to that trust that reflects an athlete’s contribution to the university. If a student doesn’t graduate within 7 years of their first year then their money gets distributed to other student athletes.

One last thing you fail to clarify is who should be paid? Coaches, ADs, Aflac, Nike, Under Armour, etc make millions of dollars a piece on labor that is basically mandated to play for them if they want to become a professional in their field (I’m referring to the NBA and NFL age rules). Or should the amateur status be removed and college sports look more like little league baseball where everything is volunteer and no money is to be made.

I’m not going to change your mind about the amount of time that athletes spend working on their craft. I got to know a lot of football players at Michigan and they spend more time than you understand handling responsibilities that “non-athletes” don’t: practice, dinners, interviews, training, film, travel, pre-game, post-game, rehabilitating injuries, that prevent so many athletes from being in other “normal” student activities (like fraternities, student government, journalism, music, etc) and perhaps most importantly; a job. Yes, it is a decision for a student to make, sports over these other things, but being critical of a student for not taking “advantage” of all the opportunities a college campus offers is disingenuous and ignorant of what players actually go through. Apparently you see the glamour and glitz, the cars and the homes, but you clearly haven’t been the shoulder to cry on when a coach threatens to deport a student if they can’t make it through the A-Gap or there stipend can’t cover rent for their parent(s) or the kid who got injured and had their scholarship revoked. Athletic scholarships aren’t 4-year contracts, they are 1-year agreements, so they can be pulled at any time and leave a student without recourse or opportunity to simply be a student because they can no longer afford it. It’s a raw deal in so many ways…anyway, I highly suggest you read Taylor Branches article from the Atlantic, because the first few paragraphs may actually get you to change your mind about the possibilities and rationale behind paying students to be athletes.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

1. Fair enough. That comment was more geared towards the football and basketball athletes. Let’s make no mistake about it, though. There are other sports, but they bring in pennies compared to what football and basketball bring in.

2. In Division I, each football team gets 85 scholarships and each basketball team gets 13 scholarships. And yes, it is incremental depending on how much their parents make, how much endowment a school has, how much federal aid is being given, etc. However, that doesn’t change the value of the actual education. If the average is $25K and you only have to pay $9K per year, it still does not change the fact that the scholarship athletes are paying nothing and that the education itself is still worth $25K. All $25K is covered. Regarding the NCAA, apples and oranges are being compared. You’re talking about how much the NCAA made from the tournament as opposed to how much each school made and how much was paid for that school’s scholarships. I’ll even use my alma mater again as an example. Based on the 2009 Forbes list, the USC football team value was $68 million and the profit was $33 million (keep in mind that USC was also 62% more valuable than any other team in the Pac-10 that year). If you divide $33 million by 85 scholarships, you get $388,235. Again, it’s an investment for the school and it may not be fair, but it’s not quite as large as you would think it would be. Also keep in mind that just because you’re on scholarship doesn’t necessarily mean you are earning the school money. 85 players aren’t always going to see the field. I’ve seen players who were third-stringers their entire collegiate career, but their education was still being paid for…

3. Don’t believe the hype… football and basketball players are not putting in 40 hours per week in their sport on average. It is a lot of hard work, and they spend a lot of time practicing and watching film, but it is certainly not equivalent to a full-time job. I ran track, which was year-round practicing and also a lot of hard work, and it was nowhere near 40 hours per week…

4. Cam Newton also signed a fully-guaranteed 4-year, $22 million dollar deal with the Panthers. If not for the new collective bargaining agreement that was put into place because of the lockout this year, he certainly would’ve made a lot more money and would’ve gotten a lot more guaranteed money. Nevertheless, $22 million is certainly much more than the school made off of him personally. Based on your arguments that it’s more about the money, who do you think laughed last and best? The schools do not complain when many of their players turn professional and sign these extremely lucrative deals. No matter how it’s looked at, it will never be totally equal…

Again, I can appreciate your comments, DG, and I certainly hope that I’m not giving the impression that I’m demonizing money or anything. We all want to make more money. However, I want many of these athletes to realize that it’s about more than just the money. They’ve been given an excellent opportunity and almost all other students would trade places with them in a second… take advantage of the opportunity…

1. You can not make a statement that, “Most collegiate athletes are simply using their scholarship as an opportunity to become a professional athlete and nothing else.” Because most are not. Remember there are other sports besides football and basketball the money drivers. And even within those sports MOST know that they will not make the pros most likely after their first year if not before.

2. There are about 349 division I schools, and if we estimate that between football and basketball there are 115 players each, and of those 80 get full rides, we would be looking at about 28,000 players that are getting their education paid for. The average cost for college per year (estimated between public and private) is about $25k. This means that schools provide (remember the incremental cost of a student is not equal to the amount they would pay for college) about $700,000,000 per year. Now just for the right to produce the NCAA basketball tournament the NCAA signed a 14 year, 10.8 billion dollar deal. So just on the tournament revenue alone the NCAA made $714,000,000 million dollars. This doesn’t include the revenue from regular basketball games or any football games at all.

3. The recent report stated that the average football and basketball player put in roughly 40 hours of work a week on there sport in season. This is the equivalent of $12.00 per hour @ $25K school cost per year. The schools use this to generate on average $17 million in revenue a year at the DI schools. So if we go back to our number of 80 students on scholarship lets do the math. 80 * $25K = $2 million per year to generate $17 million per year. This means that the school profits $15 million per year or makes $90.00 per hour per athlete, when they only make $12.00 per hour. A $78.00 difference.

4. Students are not allowed to license their own image, even though the school can. So if Cam Newton generates $1 million extra in revenue by virtue of attendance, marketing, and jersey sales he is entitled to none of those dollars even after he has graduated from the university.

It all adds up to an exploitative situation where under the ‘guise’ of providing education, people are generating millions of dollars off of these kids, coaches are making millions of dollars off of these kids, and then we are told it “is about amateur sports and education”. I see Puleeeze.