Money and college athletics

The question is simple. The answer is much more complicated. Should college athletes be paid? They do everything that professional athletes do, from the practices to the games to the travel to the interviews to the autograph-signings to being in the public eye. Some would argue they do more, balancing mandatory class attendance and, oftentimes, tutoring sessions to boot. They are, for all intents and purposes, professionals. Their schools make money off of them, after all. The only thing keeping college athletes amateurs is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) calling them amateurs – and the fact that they don’t get paid for their troubles. Sure, in most cases college athletes do get full athletic scholarships – which range in value from $15 to $50 thousand – but those clearly pale in terms of value to the average salaries professional athletes receive for similar duties. An example: the average NFL salary in 2009, the latest year with figures available, was just a tad under $2 million. Compare that to the average college football scholarship value per year of roughly $35 thousand, and you realize that pros get paid roughly 57 times as much as their college counterparts. So, yes, college athletes should be paid. College athletes, specifically college football and basketball players, should be paid in the same way pro athletes should be paid – because, quite simply, they bring in nearly equal amounts of money, in many cases, for their athletic exploits to schools as professionals do to owners.

It’s important to note here, in the interest of fairness, that the NCAA is a voluntary, private association. Member schools are not technically obligated to be part of the NCAA. It’s also important to note that the NCAA essentially has a monopoly when it comes to big, revenue-producing collegiate athletic governing bodies. Sure, there are other entities like the NAIA that provide similar services to member institutions, but when’s the last time you saw an NAIA school on television – or even heard of an NAIA school, for that matter? It doesn’t happen. Even the small schools that are seen on television at the oddest hours with limited viewers are members of the NCAA’s Division II or III. Schools don’t have another legitimate choice or opportunity besides subscribing to the NCAA and following its sometimes-monopolistic  restrictions. The much-stated mission of the NCAA – “to provide exercise, competition and social benefits through sports” – says nothing about money. So why then is the NCAA allowed to enter or even justified in entering multi-million dollar TV contracts for its member institutions that provide absolutely zero benefit for its athletes.

A frightening example: every major college basketball conference in the United States -- save for one, the Pac-10 – has adjusted its conference schedule over the last decade to accommodate increasingly stringent television guidelines on where and when to play its games so it can be broadcast. The Pac-10, as we said, hasn’t adjusted it, and, thus, the Pac-10 has the fewest games on national television and the fewest games on any television of the six power conferences – including the SEC, Big 12, Big 10, ACC, Pac-10 and Big East. The Pac-10 has a new commissioner in place since 2010, Larry Scott, who is attempting to get his conference on television more. How is he going to do that? Simple: instead of playing only on Thursdays and Saturdays, like the Pac-10 has done since its inception, Scott will make it known that his conference’s teams are willing to play on other days of the week in order to be on television. Never mind that Thursdays and Saturdays are clearly the best options for the student-athletes’ academic and personal lives, as it allows them to miss the least possible amount of class and other commitments. Scott – and the rest of the country’s commissioners too, so you can’t fault him specifically – will have to throw those commitments by the wayside when he negotiates a new television deal. Texas, for example, in the Big 12, regularly plays conference games on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Same for Syracuse. Duke, the class of the Atlantic Coast Conference, has played games on each day of the week this season. No, the student-athletes don’t get any say in which days the games are played on. And, no, the student-athletes don’t get compensated more if the schedule – which, conveniently, results in more money for the NCAA and its schools – inconveniences them in any way. They will just keep toiling along at a wage that, if you calculate out their scholarship funds to how many hours they are required to work as part of the agreement, is quite miniscule.

Other common counter-arguments to the student-athletes-getting-paid way of thinking: We can’t pay just college football players and college basketball players. That would be unfair. If we’re going to pay them, we should pay all college athletes, like lacrosse, water polo and golf athletes. The problem with that argument, as many scholars have graciously pointed out over the years, is that it completely contradicts the post-college career options for the athletes. What? Well, college football and basketball players have many opportunities to make significant money playing their sport professionally after college. College lacrosse players? The number of lacrosse athletes who are able to make a living playing professionally is very small. It’s quite simple: we pay the college-athletes just as they are paid in the professional ranks – based on their money-making capabilities. Another counter: College athletes are already being paid, in terms of scholarship money, much more than the average undergraduate student. Why would we up that figure when undergraduate students all across the United States are going far, far into debt to cover tuition costs while student-athletes. That would be unfair. Actually, no it wouldn’t. For two reasons: (1) because regular undergraduate students are actually allowed to keep up a job while taking classes at a university and student-athletes aren’t, and (2) because student-athletes, again, bring in heap money for a university and undergraduates don’t. And, on that note, it’s important to note that, even at schools like the University of Southern California or Stanford University, while tuition itself runs into the high-$30,000’s alone, giving away free tuition in a scholarship doesn’t cost a school nearly as much as it would seem. In fact, some say the tuition cost of a scholarship is less than $2,000, accounting, essentially, only for the costs one of more seat in a classroom and an extra five or 10 minutes of paper-grading for a professor or teacher’s assistant a few times a semester.

Now, this argument has been going on for a while, and a ton of legitimate sources have spoken up in support over the years. In a 1994 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Competitiveness of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, longtime college basketball coach and former college basketball player Dick DeVenzio argued fiercely that college athletes should be paid – at the very least a stipend, he said. “What crucial purpose is being served by keeping athletes penniless?” DeVenzio asked the House. “There is no convincing proof that amateurism is morally superior to professionalism. What negatives would occur if athletes were permitted to receive money from Nike or Chevrolet or any other commercial enterprise – the way coaches can now? What if trust funds, not actual cash, were permitted for athletes? This would obviously benefit athletes and their families tremendously. Why is this not allowed? What terrible thing would happen if athletes were permitted to benefit financially from their special talents and popularity?” Continued DeVenzio just a bit later, after appealing to the Congress about how Martin Luther King Jr. would see no morality in the NCAA rules allowing coaches and others to benefit from the current system but which do not allow athletes to take advantage of any of their economic opportunities: “The NCAA should not be permitted to continue to make rules which deprive athletes of enjoying the economic opportunities that come along with excellence in a popular American sport…The NCAA has shown no willingness nor the ability to make positive reforms on behalf of athletes and their families. The courts have consistently ruled that athletes come under the umbrella or rules or voluntary associations. It is incumbent upon Congress to step in as an advocate on behalf of athletes.”

Wrote C. Peter Goplerud III, the Dean at the Drake University Law School, in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy with a piece entitled Sports Law as a Reflection of Society’s Laws and Values: “Collegiate sports clearly are big business. Television revenues and gate receipts are enormous at most of the top Division I schools; the lesser schools do not receive huge amounts, but it does significantly help run the program at most places. Division I schools reported sports revenues of approximately $1.8 billion for 1995-96. It is clear that it is the athletes who are responsible for filling the stands for Michigan football and Kentucky basketball, but all they may legally receive is room, board, tuition, fees and books.”

Goplerud’s right, and even as all the time has passed since the original publication of the piece, nothing substantial has changed in regards to the student-athletes’ pay. The only difference, of course, it that Division I schools pull in even more money. Goplerud takes his previous points and expands them to another level, arguing that NCAA’s money-focused mentality ruins any semblance of amateurism remaining among the athletics governing body. “For example, the University of Michigan collected approximately $4.9 million in royalties from the sale of licensed products bearing the school’s athletic logos…Much of this money came from the sale of jerseys or other items bearing the numbers of outstanding athletes. The sales occur because of the popularity and prowess of the athlete. The athlete, of course, receives nothing from the sale of his or her jersey in the campus bookstore. It is difficult to be sympathetic to concerns for the loss of amateurism in collegiate sports as a result of consideration for stipends. When a school makes an estimated $4 million in revenues directly traceable to the participation of one basketball player, concerns over the loss of amateurism are difficult to swallow. Intercollegiate athletics revolves around big money. Winning brings more money to programs and, thus, coaches are under pressure to produce. Those who do produce at the Division I level can expect six and seven figure annual incomes. Athletes spend 12 months a year playing, practicing and training for their particular sport.”

Goplerud then provides key examples of college coaches who are in support of stipends for their athletes in the University of Nebraska’s Tom Osborne and the University of Iowa’s Hayden Fry, but the truth is that the majority of polled college coaches do in fact believe their players should be getting paid more than they are currently. The list of coaches in favor of that includes Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina’s Roy Williams and a host more – even though each coach would likely stand to experience a pay cut if it is indeed decided to provide a stipend to collegiate athletes. Then the lawyer brings up the inherent problems in any stipend plan: “However, even many who conceptually support the proposal acknowledge the enormous practical and financial difficulties presented,” Goplerud writes. “The financial impact is such that the proposal probably has no chance for passage.”

My view is as follows, keeping in mind everything that’s already been mentioned about counter and pro arguments: all Division I college football and basketball athletes should be paid a stipend of approximately $300 a month, to help account for growing nationwide expenses, to help compensate for their inability to take on a job while on scholarship for extra cash and to allow the student-athletes to capitalize – at least in a slight bit – on the money they help to produce. The $300, payable out to $3600 a year and not taxable (The NCAA’s tax-free, as always) isn’t much, but it helps to make ends meet for student-athletes. But that’s not it. In an attempt to compensate more elite collegiate athletes worthy of extra payment, I am in favor of instituting a trust fund that student-athletes can apply for upon receiving their undergraduate degree, creating a legitimate incentive to stay in school and also providing a sort of entrepreneurial start-up capability after maybe a shorter-than-planned NBA or NFL career. As DeVenzio told Congress in 1994: “Trust funds linked to education achievement would obviously encourage more athletes to get diplomas; and there are no known negatives.” Where will this trust fund and stipend money come from? A good portion of it can come straight from the institutions that have profited millions and millions of dollars over the years from their collegiate football and basketball programs. Much of the rest of it can come from a reduced coach’s salary. For example, Alabama’s Nick Saban make upwards of $3 million a year. He has 80 scholarship players on his roster for the Crimson Tide. In order to provide every single one of his 80 players a $300 monthly stipend for an entire year, Saban would have to give up less than 10 percent of his yearly salary, approximately $288,000. It’s not hard to find potential sources for these funds to adequately compensate these student-athletes.

With all that said, it’s important to note before concluding that all student-athletes do currently receive a monthly stipend that covers some incidental costs like food and school supplies. Rent is paid for under the terms of the scholarship, but the money to given to athletes – at USC, for example, it’s a tad over $600 – doesn’t come close to cutting it. Many student-athletes are forced to rely on contributions from their parents or loans in order to meet all costs during college – and, worse still, a number of players who have illegally taken money from an agent over the years have admitted that an immediate lack of funds was the single biggest cause they knowing chose to break the rules. Heck, even the late former NCAA president Myles Brand admitted in 2003, six years before his passing, that it makes perfect sense to up the money student-athletes get in the form of a stipend and a couple hundred per month to the low figure, obviously understanding the incredible potential paying our collegiate athletes has in terms of saving college sports in the long-term and keeping the NFL ultra-profitable with no developmental league to speak of that requires funding, check-ins and other costs. The only potential problems to the stipends, in my eyes and the eyes of many others on the job, are directed at money sources for the stipend. Assuming that question’s been adequately answered, there’s really not much else left to say on the topic. Premier college basketball and football student-athletes deserve to be paid.