I know there is an old WSO thread on this but I want to rehash this age old conversation.
Recently, the University of Texas announced $10,500 lockers for every athlete on the football team and I think it's ridiculous that they can roll these out and still argue against paying athletes a large stipend while playing. UT's Athletic department made $180 million dollars all off of the performance of their student-athletes and the athletes don't see any of that money. I know that many of these schools would suffer without an athletics program because the donors to the school and the money revenue producing teams make would disappear.
Also, paying the athletes shouldn't be strictly from the school. The NCAA made 1.15 Billion off of ad revenue from the NCAA tournament which is more than the NFL and NBA playoffs. That's without counting ticket sales and merchandise. The NCAA should kick back some of their revenue to the students as well.
I'm not arguing that all student-athletes in every sport should be paid. I play a sport that runs a deficit so I understand I should never see this money. But, those student-athletes that play sports that are revenue producing should see a payment to them on top of their scholarships. Maybe paying athletes in college would coerce them to stay and finish their degree instead of the "one-and-done" fad.
If you don't think that they should be paid do you at least think that the NCAA should loosen rules regarding things student-athletes can do to receive payment? For example, letting them sell autographs which they are currently not allowed to do. Or, profit share if whoever is selling merchandise uses their likeness in the product. Even just letting them receive prize money they win if they are in a tournament with a cash prize.
What do you think? Should student-athletes be paid? Should the NCAA loosen it's rules? Or should everything remain the way it is.
Of course they should.
Other things need to be resolved prior to the athletes being paid. I think the NCAA needs to be forced somehow to audit football/basketball more closely to ensure that students are actually doing the work they are assigned for their classes. In many cases, coaches will highly discourage (or basically prevent) athletes from majoring what they want to major in because it would be too difficult or would conflict with practice. This shouldn't happen. If an athlete is a student athlete, they should be given the same academic freedoms of any other student. There also needs to be oversight in the amount of tutoring/support that these athletes are given. If a student requires a certain amount of tutoring or remedial education, they shouldn't be allowed to play. Big state schools need to stop taking advantage of African American athletes who come from poor backgrounds. They shove them through their schooling with fake classes and inordinate amount of tutoring leaving them entirely unprepared for graduate education or a real job. It's okay if they aren't able to graduate in 4 or even 5 years. Many students from poor backgrounds take even longer to finish their degrees because their high school and parents didn't prepare them for the academic rigors of college. I could go on and on about the ways that DI athletics robs students of a real education. I have no problem with student athletes being amateurs. But if the NCAA is going to stick by their "student athlete first" mantra, it needs to go both ways. And that means prioritizing the "student" part above the athlete part. If they stick with the current system, I would say that there should be some kind of pension for after they leave school. Maybe 3 to 5 years where they receive 30k per year or some basic living expenses in order to help them get on their feet and figure out their life at the very least.
That's the point. These guys aren't really students and the student-athlete label is convenient bullshit. They need to be paid. It is unbelievable they don't have rights to their own image. A player like Manziel would've likely made ~2-5 mil a year at A&M if he could advertise shit.
Maybe an ideal solution would be to pay them but put the money that they make into some kind of trust where they are only allowed to pull a certain percentage from it at a time. An absurd number of professional athletes go bankrupt. I doubt this would be any different for college athletes. This would both prepare college athletes for their future financially and would prevent shit like basketball players at A&M driving around in lambos on campus.
I don't even think D1 athletes fair too poorly. Its the kids who go D3 or D2, and the school is shit anyway on top of easy classes and they also don't get a name brand school on the resume.
Depending on the sport there are some REALLY GREAT D3 schools, with a name brand better than 90% of every school with a team in the NCAAB tourney.
e.g. Kenyon has an AMAZING swim team.
Updated List of "Shit" D3 Schools with easy classes: WUSTL U Chicago Carnegie Mellon Amherst Middleburry Wesleyan Johns Hopkins (D3 excluding Lax) Claremont-McKenna MIT
This just names a few great schools some of which have fantastic athletic programs (Amherst / WUSTL are always competing for the directors cup). In some instances, i think D3 athletes have distinct advantages versus D1 athletes. Especially at schools like the ones i listed above, they you truly are a student first. Kids can cut out of practice early to go to a study session, take a class that conflicts with practice, study abroad in the off-season and do any summer internship that they want. At D1 programs, the coaches are there to win games plain and simple. As long as you are above the GPA requirement to play, they could honestly care less about your study group or that summer internship. Had a kid at my school who wanted to do a summer internship instead of stick around campus for workouts and the coaches said "if you're good enough, they'll hire you without the internship."
Of course they should be paid. You have a group of individuals who are working for free and earning their employees millions of dollars. Even minor league baseball players, which NCAA basketball and football players essentially are for their respective sports, are paid.
I don't think they should be paid by the school or by the NCAA, creates so many issues with taxpayer & donor dollars going to athletes.
what I do think they should be allowed to do is market themselves and get paid by companies. or if the coach wants to market the team, fine (like say Jim Harbaugh gets Michigan to do a bunch of Air Jordan commercials, players should share in those profits).
Taxpayer dollars? UT's sports teams bring in $100+ million in revenue yearly.
There are only a handful of schools that have athletic depts that are self-sufficient.
Except that there are only a few schools that break even with sports (24 according to the NCAA)
The biggest barrier to paying athlete is actually lack of money. People like to point out those schools that make huge profits, but they are not representative of the vast majority of colleges. I would also argue that since the vast majority of athletes get free tuition and extra access to resources (tutoring, etc) they are already being paid.
The only downside to paying the athletes is that it would become a few teams were even more dominant than they are now. Could you imagine how strong the recruits would be if you had schools like Notre Dame, Texas, USC, and Alabama paying millions of dollars per year to students while schools like Rutgers probably would end up with regular college athletes and would get decimated on the field.
I generally think we should allow it though, in spite of that potential pitfall. At a bare minimum, for advertising, signatures, etc. That ban is just ridiculous.
^I think this point is one of the greatest detriments of paying players.
The way I see it, schools that normally wouldn't be spending millions on football can invest their endowment into paying the best players, knowing that it's essentially capex that will payoff in the form of greater athletic revenues and donations from alumni. It's not like it's money thrown down the drain if a mediocre school spent $10M on athletes. They'd probably be a pretty damn good team if they spent a lot. It makes it anyone's game to become the next Alabama.
I think something needs to be done about football specifically. Let's examine the 5 major US sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer). Of the major sports, if you are incredibly talented right out of high school, you can immediately jump ship to the pros if you play hockey, soccer, or baseball. In fact, most great hockey and soccer players are playing their sport at an amateur-pro level during high school and then go pro directly after. In basketball and football, you are required to wait a certain amount of time before entering the NBA (1 year) or NFL (3 years) and graduating high school. While basketball has that restriction, players do have the option to play in a Euro league or Australian league for a year while getting paid a significant amount of money (a 5* just skipped college completely and went to go play in the Australian pro league for a year instead. He's getting paid in the "mid six figures" while his car and housing are getting paid for as well. He'll be getting drafted this year). Next is the case of Hamidou Diallo. This guy took a redshirt year at Kentucky, didn't play in 1 single game, and still declared for the upcoming NBA draft. This brings the conversation to football. Not only are you forced to wait 3 years before you can declare for the draft, but there is no alternative to college football. Both the CFL and the AFL have different rules than the NFL and the talent level is so much lower than in college football that scouts aren't going to take a risk on a player who takes that route. So basically football players are forced to play college football, a sport that has a huge amount of injuries, for 3 years if they ever want to turn pro. Something needs to be done to even this out cause it seems incredibly crappy for football players.
That's why no one gives a shit about college: Hockey, Baseball, and Soccer. Along with countless other smaller sports. All the really good players that age are Pro already so the competition isn't as fierce.
I think the primary difference between football and the other sports lies in the sheer physicality of the sport (i.e. it's emphasis on physical maturity). Very few (probably 0) high school seniors are physically mature enough to be capable of competing at the NFL level. Football is a sport defined by physical/explosive strength and athleticism. There is a huge difference between a physically gifted 17-18 year old and a 24-28 year old who is also physically gifted but who has spent 3-5 years being groomed physically and mentally to compete at the next level.
Because of this, I think the talent pool of young players in the NFL is more "field-ready" than in other sports. Almost all rookies are expected to contribute from day one or they get shown the door. The NFL essentially uses college football as its development camp. The NFL is not in the business of grooming talent; they plug-and-play. They expect their draft picks to be fully trained and physically capable of playing in the NFL.
This all makes sense, but admittedly it doesn't answer OP's question. College football essentially acts as an "unpaid" internship (I put it in quotes because it isn't really unpaid, since they get free tuition, room and board, and other perks). It's basically a necessary hoop to jump through for aspiring pro football players. Different context, but it's not all that dissimilar from the target school/finance clubs/internship/SA/analyst gig aspiring IBers put themselves through. So the real question is: does free education and room and board constitute appropriate compensation for going through what is essentially the NFL training program?
There would have to be a universal wage to avoid free agency like offers to make richer schools more dominant. At the very least, they should have some sort of a pension or trust like a previous poster said. Something should also be done to insure student athletes who get injured are able to finish their degree with the scholarship still covering him or her. NCAA has made some progress with the stupid rules regarding meals, but those types of things need to be addressed as well.
Former small school athlete here.
Based on my experience, I think that student athletes should be paid a stipend of minimum wage at 20 hours per week (technically the maximum time allowed for official sports activities.) The main problem for athletes is that they don't have time to get a part-time job to earn spending money while in school like a normal student would. A stipend would at least afford them the same level of cash flow as a non-athlete.
The problem with allowing kids to sell their autographs, pictures, etc is that schools would just have their boosters guarantee a payment of $xx,xxx for recruits signatures every year, which would effectively turn into a bidding war. At that point, might as well just open the flood gates and do away with any notion of amateurism.
Also a former small school athlete, and I 100% agree with all of this. SB'd.
I always laughed at the 20 hours per week rule and i'm sure you did too. I think a lot of people don't realize that this doesn't include the time it takes to get ready for practice, going to the training room / PT, and all of the "optional" lifting / meetings during the week as well.
That is why they get scholarships. If their grades don't keep up, get them off of the field. I have a family member who played D1 and D2 football and managed to get two engineering degrees. I do not see any reason to pay them a salary.
Pay them. Revoke the non-profit status of all sports leagues (NCAA, NFL etc.) and tax.
as a current division 1 athlete I think the ncaa should loosen rules and let boosters give cash as well as all mentioned in post. I think that the programs that make the money should pay their players, and the small schools with no revenue generation, the athletes dont get paid. I dont expect myself to ever get paid, simply because the talent and revenue potential simply is on a different level.
-interested to see how this plays out in coming years.
I think it should be the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis (I think $7.25) with a 25% premium if GPA exceeds 3.0. I believe the earlier comment that "these are not students" is completely false, you're generalizing a population and doubt you played yourself (which I did). NCAA rules vary by division but take 20 hours of practice/workouts per week and you're talking $145. Doesn't sound like much but tying hours put in and money goes a long way mentally for the athletes. Keep in mind a lot of these guys would love to get part time jobs but just don't have the hours in the day and not a lot of employers offering jobs for 2-3 hours a day in their limited free time.
Not at all paid. Are there things the NCAA should loosen up a bit? Absolutely.
Many here get this but most others do not but those kids have a network for life with their university assuming they don't go out and get in mass trouble, etc. I have a neighbor who played a couple years in the NFL but simply didn't make it. He has had so many "odd titled" jobs with the athletic department the past couple of years that they may as well just paid him a salary to stay home.
Besides that these kids don't live the typical campus life of the other students. They have access to better food, work out facilities, and tutors for those that need it. The small percentage who play Division I sports but will not go pro will have a wealth of references and opportunities to get their careers started that the other 99.9% of kids on campus do not.
If you play at the Division 1 level you're extremely limited in your ability to intern during the summers because of summer workouts. Secondly, although the network is great of former teammates, a lot of those teammates at the high level may be headed back home to work relatively blue collar jobs post college where as guys' buddies on this platform may be an analyst at an IB and moving upward. Also, zero study abroad op to leverage if you're in D1, would love to hear a coach's opinion of taking a semester off to study abroad. Can certainly make arguments for both but the athlete's resume is virtually blank after college where as a normal student has a greater ability to fill theirs.
The small percentage that play D1 but don't go pro? It varies by sport, but if you think the majority of D1 athletes go pro, you are sadly mistaken.
Should student-athletes be paid? Yes. And they are paid handsomely, especially the football and basketball players, who receive free tuition, free housing, free food, free tutors, free books, free training, maximum exposure to the NBA and NFL scouts, and recently huge cost of living stipends were added to the scholarships (not surprisingly, the scummy SEC schools immediately operated in bad faith and pushed their numbers to the absolute limit politics would allow). (If, say, a federal judge mandated that schools pay student-athletes, they would probably give them the cash value of their scholarships and the feds would tax the student-athletes, making everyone worse off.) What P5 conferences should do is promote a salary cap for coaches as their pay is absolutely ludicrous.
The reality is, the vast majority of athletics departments are not profitable. Adding additional pay would simply serve to separate the University of Texas-like athletic programs from the Wake Forest-like programs. People will tune out if/when college sports become so lopsided that the result of a game is a foregone conclusion.
This discussion makes me think of the Crack Baby Athletic Association. In particular, Eric Cartman doing what Eric Cartman does best...
That said, let's make something very clear here. Very few athletic departments actually are able to self-fund their athletics programs. There are 25 FBS Schools that actually turn a profit. The other 103 schools run at a deficit. Of those 25 schools, only 11 are able to Self-Fund their programs. These schools that are able to turn a profit use that money to help fund all of the other sports played at their university. This includes the sports required under Title IX. Simply put, only 8.6% of Division 1 FBS Teams can fully support their athletics without subsidies. Most schools who self-fund aren't necessarily able to pay their athletes and it may drive them to take subsidies. If you pay your student athletes the federal minimum wage for 20 hours a week from the start of school or practice, whichever is earlier, to May or the end of their season, whichever is later, it gets expensive. It would cost about half a million dollars just to pay a full football roster for the ~10 month period. This may end up driving teams that can self-fund into the red and require them to take subsidies. I just want that to sink in for a moment because paying student athletes needs to come from somewhere.
I do believe that student athletes need to be paid. I firmly believe that boosters should be forbidden from paying student athletes. College sports do not need another SMU, Nevin Shapiro, or Laremy Tunsil situation. Boosters have no place paying players. Everything needs to be above board. There is also the distinction between Public and Private schools. Private schools have no excuse to not pay their athletes. I was fully behind the Northwestern lawsuit to allow players to unionize. Public schools, on the other hand, should be required to treat athletes as employees of the school.
If I could, I would propose a fairly egalitarian system that would reward academic success and tie in graduation rates and racial parity into the formula. For starters, there are two pools of for funding, general employment and Revenue/Donor driven. Revenue/Donor Driven is funding through donation and deals outside of "Traditional" revenue sources such as Television Rights (which often go to cover funding across the entire athletic department), ticket sales and non-Regular Season athletic events (ex. Bowl Games, NCAA tournaments, etc. that are part of the sport). These deals might include video game licensing rights, the use of Student Athletes in school-sponsored endorsements (ex. If Nike went to Jim Harbaugh and asked to use Wilton Speight for an ad, the income earned from the deal would go into this pool). This becomes the first drawdown pool to pay athletes. Instead of athletes being caught for selling memorabilia, donors would be able to support the entire school's student athletes. If it is exhausted, then athletes are paid out of a general employment fund through the school like they would a traditional stipend. In order to stress the importance of keeping things above board, any athlete found in violation of their employment contract would immediately be dismissed from the team effective immediately, the matter goes before a review board, and the player may be expelled from the university to show how serious this is.
The base salary would be the Federal Minimum Wage. Athletes would be paid for 30 Hours a week (representing practice, game time, travel time, and additional consideration for personal time spent outside of practice reviewing game film, etc.). Athletes would then be able to qualify for certain bonuses. For example, the entire pool of football players would be eligible for a bonus if the school meets a benchmark on Athlete FGR rate (the most stringent measure for graduation) and a higher bonus if the school exceeds it, the entire team meets an average GPA of 3.0, or is able to increase and maintain the increase in the parity of graduation between white and black athletes. This way, academics are incentivized over football. Certain schools will be better at meeting these thresholds than others. For example, Penn State has one of the highest parity rates for graduation between white and black athletes and one of the highest FGRs for football players. Contrast that with Alabama, which has a 30% discrepancy between graduation rate parity and a roughly ~%45 FGR Rate. This would ideally force schools to focus more on ensuring the academic success of their players. The only issue, however, becomes enforcement in order to prevent a situation where a school tries to do what UNC did.
does a bear shit on the pope?
100% for the Football players... sorry "Men's water polo"... but you are costing the school money They should be able to make money off of autographs too.
For the sports that make the school money... The school makes millions off of AD sales, Merchandise, and etc. The "student-athletes" are most likely redshirted and will take 5 years of underwater basketweaving They are LOCKED IN to the school at threat of losing a year of eligibility. Most scholarships are on a one year basis Between meetings, practice, and weight room they don't have time to wait tables at the local burger joint for spending money.
Here is the issue with paying players.
Under title 9 law, you would have to pay EVERY player. Not just Football and Mens basketball. These 2 sports drive roughly 90% of revenue for athletic departments. Now imagine if you pay a football player 30,000 a year, which seems about fair. You now have to pay a woman diver that same 30,000 a year, a cross country runner 30,000 etc. No athletic department in the country can afford this, as they barely make any money at all to begin with.
What we should do however is adopt the college baseball system. You can enter the draft out of high school, and find out what the market value of your skills are. If you don't like the value you go to college for a minimum of 3 years and then re-enter the draft. The basketball 1 and done is not a bad method either. I firmly believe that if you are old enough to go around the world and get shot at for this country, you should be able to sell your talents for the maximum value that the market is willing to bear.
If I were a college freshman football player and had a great year and would be a first round pick, I would like to enter the draft. But under current rules you cannot do that. That is the major flaw in this system, is not allowing individuals to get the proper value for their talents. Baseballs system is correct in my opinion and you rarely hear complaints about that.
Just my .02 and yes, I listen to Clay Travis that is where I heard this interesting argument.
Too late to the post though, I was going to post about all of this if this thread did not exist.
Interesting thoughts. I tend to agree. I think the NCAA needs to amend its rules with regard to the NFL draft. Something like 25% of players that declared early for the draft weren't selected. They should be allowed to continue with their college career if undrafted.
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