Imagine you work at a physically demanding job where your boss tells you the following: you won’t be paid, you will make time outside of work for classes most people spend full time doing, those classes will be paid for, but you are to accept all the risk for any injury that you may receive which could result in you losing that support, doing work that gives your organization millions of dollars worth of benefit that you receive no part of, and that you should grin and be thankful that you get some education. Because even though your boss makes a seven figure salary, that doesn’t mean you’re doing any real work.
That is the situation that collegiate athletes face in the United States. The idea that college athletes should be paid is not a new one, and it is not one that is without controversy. The position held by the NCAA is that student athletes are first and foremost students and that they are primarily at college to gain an education and that is the reason why they should not be paid. However, this line of reasoning quickly breaks down upon examination. The three main factors that break down this viewpoint held by the NCAA are as follows: being a student athlete naturally conflicts with school, the education received is at times not equivalent to a true degree and the exorbitant amount of money that is gained by universities for the free services that they provide.
In a press conference before Super Bowl XLIX, Seattle Seahawk safety Richard Sherman discussed his time at Stanford as a student-athlete. In the response Sherman discussed many aspects of his life as a student-athlete, but in particular Sherman talked about the school-sport balance.
“But there were still guys like Andrew (Luck) who majored in engineering, an incredibly tough road to take when you're in football, because a lot of the classes conflict with your time as a football player. You have an engineering class from 2 to 3:30, there's no way you can do both. You can't go to meetings and take your engineering class from 2 to 3:30, so what do you do? What do you do? Do you switch your major or do you tell your coach, ‘Hey, I've got an engineering class from 2 to 3:30 and I have to go to that.' That's a conflict of interest. That's what people don't realize.”
Student athletes have to schedule their classes around practices, meetings, games and travel, and even if they can manage to juggle the commitments, the life is grueling. When conflicts do arise, the position of the NCAA would lead you to believe that all parties involved would allow study and school to take precedent, but Sherman also paints a less than forgiving picture of his school’s priorities. “You're not on scholarship for school and it sounds crazy when a student-athlete says that, but that's those are the things coaches tell them every day: ‘You're not on scholarship for school’” Sherman said.
I know that athletes are not the only ones that need to juggle work and school. Many of my friends have a job on the side, usually to support themselves in college. The difference with student athletes, however, is that their education may not be the quality you expect of a university. In 2011, a scandal came to light at the University of North Carolina that student athletes, for many years, took fake classes to boost grades. At Stanford the student athletes were given access to a list of ‘easy’ courses that were not given out to the main student body. Even if an athlete can schedule their courses around practices, there is no guarantee that the education they receive will actually be beneficial to them.
It’s also hard to believe that these athletes are amateurs when you look at how much money is floating around the game. Last year major networks Turner and CBS reached a deal to extend their broadcasting rights for 8 years for around $1.1 billion a year. Add in that number to the television deals that conferences receive for Football and Bowl games (around $300 million all told) and it would be easy to question whether these universities’ main priorities are to their athletes' academics. One way that these concerns could be answered is if the NCAA gave back all the money they earned from TV deals. In that case, I would be perfectly okay with them not paying the players and considering themselves a non-profit league.
But I don’t expect something that drastic to occur. I understand that a good portion of this money goes back to the university at large and can benefit other students as well as athletes. But this benefit is indirect, and it does nothing to assist athletes who lose scholarships because they are unable to play.
For that reason, student-athletes deserve to be compensated in some way for the work that they do. This could be in the form of a stipend, much like a graduate assistant might receive, a straight salary that would be determined by the size of television deals, or some form of insurance paid to players that are injured and unable to play amounting to the scholarship they received. I’m not expecting students around the country to be paid millions, but it’s hard to hear that in such a lucrative business the main reason for its success goes hungry.