Billy Williamson

Austin Carpenteiri 

11/21/2019

Assignment 3

College Athletes are Being Robbed

 

In 2015 the Texas A&M Athletic Department grossed a revenue of $192,000,000 (Lavigne 2016). The grand total of student-athlete revenue at this university? Zero dollars and zero cents. This is the harsh reality collegiate athletes across America have to endure. At the conclusion of World War II, representatives of the NCAA made sure to draw a hard line between college sports and professional sports. Together they created what we now know as amateurism. The committee deemed that athletes on scholarships are considered financially comfortable due to the fact that their education is being paid for. No student-athlete is to receive monetary incentives for their image, likeness, and appearances. In addition they are strictly prohibited in meeting professional personnel even if it is likely they will move on to professional sports (NCAA). The NCAA has long held handcuffs on these athletes, almost using them as slaves to support their multi-billion dollar industry. 

Now, just how much money is circulating through the NCAA thes colleges within their association? As of 5 years ago, their were 10 Power Five Athletic Departments that grossed an excess of $125 million while the median budget for teams of this caliber is $60 million. CBS recently paid the NCAA $800 million to air March Madness, while ESPN paid $610 million to air 4 games of the College Football Playoff. The top paid coach in college football, Nick Saban, has a contract worth $7 million and the salary of basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski (Savigne 2016) How is it that their is hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through the system, but players still have to ask their moms for money to buy a new pair of shoes. 

The latest example of the NCAA’s archaic rules negatively impacting a team and player can be seen at Ohio State. Chase Young, an all world talent has recently been suspended for the remainder of the regular season for a rules violation. What was the violation? His uncle let him borrow money, which he paid back, to purchase plane tickets for Young’s girlfriend to attend his championship game. Chase Young was a frontrunner to win college football’s Heisman Trophy, and had the potential to be selected as the #1 overall pick in this upcoming NFL draft. Now, Young is sitting in a dorm watching his teammates go to war without him every Saturday (Bumbaca 2019)

In spite of the law of the NCAA, many have begun to form a model in which player compensation is achievable. One of the more common concepts is the Olympic model. In this model there is a free market so each player can make as much money based off of what the market values them at. Athletes would be able to sell objects of their likeness, sign endorsement contracts, and be in touch with professional personnel. Many are opposed to this model though, because of the fact that the only high profile players will generate revenue and the NCAA would still make exponentially higher numbers than any athlete could. Joe Nocera, a sports business analyst for the New York times works to address this issue in his personal model. He believes player salary caps should be implemented for each sport. For example, all Power Five football teams would have a cap of $3 million, basketball teams with one of $650,000, which all seems very plausible since these teams have budgets on average of $60 million. He then wants to implement a free market similar to the Olympic Model but with more incentives. In his model players can not only make money from their names and likeness from the public, but the universities themselves can offer high caliber recruits as much as they want to get them in their school (Nocera 2016).

Until there is enough public recognition and disgruntledness the NCAA will continue to use their athletes as work horses to fund their multi-million dollar homes and gentlemen’s clubs memberships. Athletes like Chase Young will continue to suffer at the hands of these blatantly unfair rules and regulations until there are major policy changes within the organization.