Pay for Play
The NCAA stands for the “National Collegiate Athletic Association” an organization founded in 1910 to protect the athletes and make their respective sport safer. Today however that is simply not the case anymore. With the money coming in for TV deals and massive coaching contracts the excuses to refuse to pay players just do not suffice anymore.
Athletics are the only thing in America where a young person can not profit from their labor. Andrew Luck, a Stanford grad once talked about how his professors would encourage students with the next big idea to move on from school, saying that the idea was more important than the education. It would be asinine to tell an aspiring tech genius looking to go to Silicon Valley that he couldn’t because of some hypocritical policy.
In the 2014 fiscal year, the NCAA made about $989 million in total revenue, just shy of $1 billion. Now, why would an organization claiming to be non-profit, and being there for the benefit of student athletes make such a large amount off the backs of students?
https://www.slideshare.net/secret/8Iu3ZFcriJLVef
The answer is in the word “amateurism.” This is the word used in NCAA legislation for decades now to maintain the “purity” of college athletics. It is explained in the NCAA constitution as protecting student-athletes from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises. However, when looking at the $527.4 million that the SEC pulled in from the first year of the College Football Playoff and the SEC Network the myth that programs can’t break even is a blatant lie.
Colin Cowherd, who for a long time was an advocate for the point that the university athletic system simply doesn’t make enough to pay the athletes, finally came around. I completely agree with the fact that universities will implement renovation deals for stadiums or brand new facilities that would make a Saudi prince blush worth hundreds of millions of dollars but can’t find it in the budget to have stipends for players.
https://soundcloud.com/carlos-cheesecake-peterson/pay-for-play-podcast-paying
A stipend is a fixed regular sum paid as a salary or allowance, something that the colleges have been shown to be allergic to when presented the idea. Collegiate athletes in many cases are viewed as mythical figures on college campuses for their touchdowns on Saturdays not for their A- on Tuesday. The current climate has created the notion that a scholarship should be enough and that the current athlete should be grateful that they are even receiving that.
The most poignant anecdote from Arian Foster was when he talked about how coming home from a football game in which he starred in, in front of over 100,000 people, he opens his fridge and he has nothing to eat. Having to tell his coach that he’s hungry and that he has no money is probably gonna lead to something stupid from him and his teammates should have been telling. The real cherry on top of it all was when he said that his coach providing food for his players is an NCAA VIOLATION. How does that make sense?
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The coaches are also a huge proponent. Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama football team is making upwards of $11.125 million simply to coach the game of football. To add insult to injury, the justification in his contract for receiving such a large salary was that it was a “talent charge.” How considerate of them.
All but 11 states in the United States can say that a college sport coach is the highest paid government employee.
The very thing that the NCAA has set out to protect the student-athlete of is exactly what they’re doing, all without paying those who earn the money. TV and marketing rights are by definition commercial exploitation. I suppose it’s okay as long as the universities and NCAA are getting all of it.
When you sign that national letter of intent to play for said university, you sell you soul. The NCAA, through policy and bylaws, own your likeness and rights to generate money for yourself. The ability to use your OWN name for promotional purposes is a violation of NCAA bylaws.
While the system talks about the purity of college football needs to be preserved, we need to force them to admit to the shift in the paradigm. It simply isn’t the same model anymore. It’s time to invoke change and allow people to receive what they “earn.”