CASE 4: COMPENSATION FOR COLLEGE ATHLETES?

SHOULD WE PAY COLLEGE ATHLETES?College football analyst Lou Holtz and Dr. Boyce Watkins debate whether the NCAA should provide financial compensation for student athletes.

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/935247413001/should-we-pay-college-athletes/

No

Yes

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATIONNew rule llows players to work on- or off- campus so long as their employment income does not exceed $2,000Prohibits student-athletes from: Being represented by an agent or entering into an agreement with an

agent that is “not effective” until after the last game Negotiate or sign a contract for any sport in which the player intends

to compete or market their name or image* Accepting expense or gifts of any kind, even meals or

transportation, from an agent who wishes to provide services to the athlete

Receiving preferential benefits or treatment because of the player’s reputation, skill, or pay-back potential as a professional athlete

Receiving royalties from the use of their likeness, even after graduation

NATIONAL COLLEGE PLAYERS ASSOCIATION (NCPA)

“an organization in existence since 2001 to demand reform of NCAA athletes” (Bachtell)

“Athletes from schools in the Big 10, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 have been sporting APU on equipment during games. APU stands for All Players United and is a project of the NCPA” (Bachtell).“Given the culture surrounding big school sports programs, any protest is extremely rare, which makes this all the more remarkable” (Bachtell).“The APU protest represents a challenge to the idea that athletes have to ask for permission to speak” (Bachtell).Not demanding pay to play athletics…Want scholarships to match to full cost of attending school…Also demanding the NCAA do something to reduce concussions and pay for medical treatment of inured athletes…including covering medical expenses for players once they leave college, guarnateed scholarship for permanently injured players, brain-trauma reform and establishment of a trust fund to help raise graduation rates” (Bachtell)

NCAA AND CONCUSSIONS“While the NFL and youth football programs have been forced to acknowledge the impact of concussions, the NCAA has remained silent, refusing to take steps to improve the safety of players” (Bachtell).

“The NFL and the NFL Players Association [have] negotiated a lot of good policy and rule changes. They’ve redirected resources, investing a hundred million dollars in research. The NCAA can be doing the same things”-Ramogi Huma, founder of the NCPA

“Players are being hurt on the job and they are being stuck with medical bills”-Kain Colter, quarterback for the Northweatern University Widcats

“I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that NFL players have a union, they’re grown men, they can make some of those decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence the do to their bodies”-President Obama

“STUDENT-ATHLETE”“Much of the NCAA’s moral authority…is vested in its claim to protect what it calls the ‘student-athlete’…Meant to conjure the nobility of amateurism, and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor” (Branch).“deliberately ambiguous” (Branch)“NCAA’s ‘student-athlete- formulation as a shield…The organization continues to invoke it as both a legalistic defense and a noble ideal” (

FOR COMPENSATION“Players are covered in more ads than stock cars and generate billions of dollars, all to the roar of millions of fans for whom college sports are tantamount to religion” (Zirin).

“The same system that spends so much on revenue-generating sports and is the stage of the sports world’s most egregious

scandals, from Notre Dame to Penn State, also exploits athletes to a degree that renders such scandals inevitable” (Zirin).

“Average annual pay [for head coaches] has ballooned up to $1.64 million, an astonishing increase of more than 70 percent since 2006…As tuition hikes, furloughs, layoffs and cuts in student aid have continued unabated” (Zirin).

FOR COMPENSATION“These are more than full-time jobs. When I played at Syracuse in the early 1960s, it wasn’t like that. We had a regular season and twenty days of spring practice. Now it’s year-round. It’s a more cyclical system now than when I played…You get hurt, tough…you’re out. And there’s no workers comp for injuries” –Dave Meggyesy, former Syracuse all-American linebacker

“Elite college athletes rarely have a chance to take advantage of that education…The average college basketball player…practices between two to three hours a day, plays two or three games a week and participates in a number of strength and conditioning sessions on top of that. There is little time left over to pursue an education in earnest” (Scott).

FOR COMPENSATION“Because the NFL and the NBA both have age restrictions,

players must spend time in college before turning pro. This forces high school athletes with no academic inclination to

go along with the ruse that they are students…College athletes are paid in a currency that many of them cannot or

will not use” (Scott).“There is more than enough money being made to give college athletes a small cut” (Scott).

“The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young

athletes” (Branch).

AGAINST COMPENSATION

“The popularity of NCAA sports is based on the fact that it provides competition between amateur student-athletes. This is what makes NCAA sports so compelling…College athletes are not the best athletes—professionals are…It is not the pure quality of NCAA athletes that makes it so attractive to people, it is athletic competition involving amateur student athletes” (Bartz)

“The NCAA model provides enormous opportunities for male and female college athletes beyond the two revenue sports. The NCAA

model uses the income from the revenue sports to support the broader goal of providing the most opportunity for the most college athletes”

(Bartz). “Adding direct pay will put financial pressure on schools to drop non-revenue sports…Since all but a few student athletes are

receiving benefits worth more than any revenue they are generating…any change will mainly reward only a few select players” (Dorfman).

AGAINST COMPENSATION

“”Student athletes receive free professional coaching, strength and fitness training, and support from athletic trainers and physical therapists…Football and basketball players pay $2,000-$3,000 per week for similar training…Using these valuations, and adding in the value of a scholarship, a student athlete at a major conference school on full scholarship is likely receiving a package of education, room, board, and coaching/training worth between $50,00 and $125,000 per year” (Dorfman).

“The best college athletes gain valuable publicity from playing college athletics…This lowers the uncertainty about

their future performance and means they’ll get larger contracts when they go pro….[This] carries a huge economic

value…[and] could also be considered pay” (Dorfman).

AGAINST COMPENSATION

“The bulk of the revenues generated from college athletics (ticket sales, media revenue, alumni contributions) are due to the school’s brand…not individual student-athletes” (Rishe).

“Most student-athletes go on to become professionals in an industry outside their sport of acclaim…[They likely] (a)

would not have attended college at all without an athletic scholarship or (b) would have attended schools with a lesser

academic pedigree…The $400,000 lifetime return is potentially higher since many of these student-athletes

attend ‘brand name’ schools with quality academic reputations” (Rishe).

AGAINST COMPENSATION

“Athletes should play for the love of the game and nothing else” (Scott).

IN THE WORDS OF THE NCAA……it would be “utterly unacceptable…to convert students into employees…I can’t say it often enough, obviously, that student athletes are students. They are not employees” –NCAA president Mark Emmert in 2010

WHO IS REALLY GENERATING THE REVENUE?Is it the student-athletes, or is it the brand name that the school has built over time?• Major source of revenue=“ticket sales, alumni, and TV money” (Rishe)

How many of these result from the fans’ connection towards individual student-athletes…or the fans’ connection towards their school?

• “Most season ticket holders have had their tickets for years…despite the constant turnover of players every 3-4 years” (Rishe).

• “The riches associated with college athletics largely stem from the emotional connection, demand, and tastes that fans have with and for the school…not the student athletes themselves” (Rishe).

• “If fan loyalties were tied to individual student athletes than teams, we’d see greater fluctuations in team attendance each time a core group of star players move on. By and large, that doesn’t happen. The old core is almost always replaced by a new wave of talent” (Rishe).

IF THERE IS PAY, SHOULD THERE BE A CAP?“If payment begins and there is no cap, the bidding war among colleges for some players will be hard to control” (Dorfman).“Allowing free market financial bidding upon high school athletes would likely exacerbate the degree of competitive imbalance in college athletics” (Rishe).