Should College Athletes Be Paid? Mark Murphy

Nocera

Information In 2011 the salaries of just the top fifteen coaches in college football made a combined 53.4 million dollars. (Nocera). In 2011 the combined salaries of the 13,877 Division I college football players was $0. (Nocera).

Information N.C.A.A.’s board of directors, composed of college and university presidents, with the backing of Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, agreed to make it permissible for a division I institution to give their athletes a $2,000 stipend. (Nocera). However, after only a month over 125 schools had signed an “override request” so the N.C.A.A. suspended the stipend. (Nocera).

Pro Payment College football and men’s basketball alone produce of 6 billion dollars in revenue a year, and with the broadcasting rights, Turner Broadcasting and CBS signed a 14 year 10.8 billion dollar contract for the rights of broadcasting the NCAA Men’s March Madness tournament. (Nocera). “How could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?” (Wilbon)

Pro Payment “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.” (Wilbon) They're talking about giving athletes what they're "worth." It's a convincing argument when cast alongside the mind-boggling dollars that are pouring in. Branch points out the SEC recently surpassed the $1 billion mark for football receipts. (Davis)

Pro Payment “It is obvious that big companies benefit from unpaid athletes. The video game business is a multi-billion dollar industry that uses college athlete’s images and names with little to no compensation for players. I would argue that players do deserve some compensation for giving away their identities as marketable commodities.” (Ramachandran)

Against Payment “Student-athletes earn free tuition, which over the course of four years can exceed $200,000. They are also provided with housing, textbooks, food and academic tutoring. When they travel to road games, they are given per diems for meals. They also get coaching, training, game experience and media exposure they "earn" in their respective crafts.” (Davis).

Against Payment Out of the 322 schools competing in NCAA Division I fewer than a dozen are making money. (Davis). Paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is not practical at all and it is probably not feasible. Many athletic departments run at a deficit, which makes it difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody. (Wilborn).

Against Payment “Seeing that the NFL will not accept a player who is not three years removed from his senior year in high school, the "fair market value" for a freshman or sophomore in college is actually zero. Yet, the NCAA is still "compensating" those players with a free education and other expenses, even if they are among the 98 percent who will never make a dime playing football. If anything, most of these guys are overpaid.” (Wilborn).

Against Payment Some try to argue that giving a stipend will keep college athletes from talking to and accepting money from agents. But a stipend will only give players a few thousand dollars a year, what is the likelihood of a player not accepting the large amounts of money an agent will give them if they are only making a small amount from the school? (Davis). There is one theory that has outside marketing providing money for the players but then that would just lead to bidding wars for players. Use Oregon and Maryland for example, Oregon could have Nike bidding on players for them and Under Armour could be bidding for Maryland. (Davis)

Works Cited Davis, Seth. Should College Athletes be Paid? Why, They Already Are. April 16, sportsillustrated.cnn.com Nocera, Joe. Let’s Start Paying College Athletes. April 16, Ramachandran, Vasant. Should College Athletes Get Paid? April 16, stanfordreview.org Wilbon, Michael. College Athletes Deserve to be Paid. April 16, espn.go.com