Will Helms: Yes
“We struggled last year finding food on the weekends,” redshirt freshman receiver Terry Googer said shortly after receiving the first of his 10 school-sponsored stipends, “... I feel like the upgrade in money is going to really help us.”
This year is the first season athletes in Power Five conferences will receive money to cover the true cost of attendance at their respective universities.
In the past, scholarships have not covered personal expenses such as transportation costs, weekend meals, books and other hidden fees.
Since athletes are forbidden from holding any job that makes over $2,000 a year, many kids from poorer backgrounds are left to choose between food and textbooks. It is a violation for any college athlete to accept any gift, including but not limited to food, money, coupons and gift cards.
In 2014, South Carolina’s athletic teams brought in more than $100 million for the university. Despite growing travel costs, Gamecock athletics run at a profit just about every year.
That does not include the free advertising, positive publicity and exposure each team brings the university.
Athletes are expected to put their bodies on the line for their schools but cannot even receive workers’ compensation for injuries sustained while playing.
Essentially athletes are used as pawns and exploited for profit, without any sort of compensation aside from scholarships that cover tuition and some room and board.
Head football coach Steve Spurrier is the state’s highest-paid employee, but is forbidden from sharing anything with the athletes he coaches and mentors.
The college athlete practices at least 20 hours a week, but is given nothing in return. In a column I wrote in February, I pointed out that if universities were to pay the athletes of all major sports $2,500 a semester (roughly what the average work-study pays), the total cost would only amount to 34 percent of what the average Division I head coach makes each year.
Student athletes at Power Five conferences received their first stipends on Aug. 20. At South Carolina, each athlete will receive 10 payments of $420.10 as a check or direct deposit to be spent as they please.
Many will use the compensation to save for the future or to pay for food. Regardless of how each player spends his or her money, they’ve earned it, and it’s nice to see that the NCAA has finally recognized that at least a little bit.
Ben Turner: No
I have to begin with a disclaimer: I am personally in favor of paying student athletes cash rather than giving them a scholarship. The NCAA has already let schools start "paying" students a small stipend.
But I will play devils advocate for the NCAA’s position here and argue that the scholarship-based system should remain. I must concede there are several valid points to this argument.
Many have argued that the dollar amount of a scholarship is not adequate enough compensation for the many hours of practice, travel and play that athletes must put into it. But college graduates earn over $800,000 more than high school graduates over the course of a lifetime. That is a lot of dough.
Paying players, while giving more equality to those in revenue-generating sports, would not necessarily mean fair compensation for those in Olympic sports. If the pay scale were determined by how much money you bring in for the university, as a “free market” theoretically should work, that would mean athletes who work just as hard if not harder for their school than football and basketball players would be shafted.
If players were paid, it would mean even more pressure to perform, and academics for these players would be put in even more of a precarious position. If you can earn a bonus for good play as professional athletes can, why not skip class to try to improve your free throws or your spiral?
What about those players who are already in school more for the athletics than the academics? Take Cardale Jones, quarterback for the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, who tweeted, “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play football…we ain’t [sic] come to play school…classes are pointless.”
I blame the NFL and the NBA, who all but mandate players go to college for a limited amount of time. These barriers should be removed so that players who want to immediately play professionally should be allowed to do so, and players who wish to receive an education can go to college and play.
The NCAA has many systemic issues: the overpayment of coaches, administrators and athletic directors, the academic scandals that have rocked schools like the University of North Carolina, the careless way players are tossed aside after injury, the web of ridiculous rules they weave and many more.
I’m not sure that paying players can fix all of these issues.