As national collegiate sports becomes an ever larger and more lucrative industry, a debate has been brewing over whether the athletes that compete at the highest levels should be paid for their time and the revenue they provide for their universities. Indeed, the time athletes put in often resembles a full-time job, with grueling conditioning that many argue interferes with their studies.
History
The debate over compensation for student-athletes began in 1955 when the widow of Ray Dennison, who died of a head injury while playing football for Fort Lewis A&M, filed for workmen’s compensation death benefits. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Dennison’s college was “not in the football business” and as such, was not required to pay.
This ruling was influenced by the creation of the term “student-athlete” by Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first executive director, in the 1950s. According to the Aspen Institute, this classification was created for self-serving reasons on the part of the NCAA: if athletes performing at a high level were considered students first and athletes second, the payment of workmen’s compensation benefits could be avoided. A central component to this viewpoint is that student-athletes are amateurs, which is what differentiates college sports from professional leagues. Indeed, according to the NCAA bylaws, the student-athlete is “one who engaged in athletics for the education, physical, mental, and social benefits he derives therefrom, and to whom athletics is an avocation.”
The legal challenges to the NCAA are still underway in recent times as well. In 2009, Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA star basketball player, filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA in order to secure payment for the use of athletes’ names, images, and likenesses (NIL). In 2014, District Judge Claudia Wilkes ruled in favor of O’Bannon, and that the NCAA’s stance on not paying student-athletes violates anti-trust laws and constitutes an unreasonable restraint on fair trade and competition. She stated that universities would now be able to provide a full scholarship including cost of living expenses, meals, and housing to athletes, as well as pay them up to 5,000 a year for the use of their likenesses. The NCAA appealed this decision to the Ninth Circuit Court, which maintained that student-athletes are entitled to a scholarship covering the full cost of attendance, but rejected the ruling that athletes are also entitled to payment outside of educational expenses. Two Ninth Circuit judges wrote that “The difference between offering student-athletes education-related compensation and offering them cash sums untethered to educational expenses is not minor; it is a quantum leap.”
However, the legal battle is not over. A new case, Jenkins vs. NCAA, led by renowned sports attorney Jeffrey Kessler, will challenge limits placed on compensation for student athletes, and, if successful, has the potential to fundamentally reshape collegiate athletics by removing the amateurism that, rightly or wrongly, defines the industry.
Perspectives
Many legal experts and advocates see this as potential for a positive change. Robert McCormick, who was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board under Jimmy Carter, says “There are more demands put on these young men than any employee of the university,” and “These young men are laboring under very strict and arduous conditions, so they really are laborers in terms of the physical demands on them while they’re also trying to go to school and being required to go to school.” According to him and his wife, both now law professors at Michigan State University, these long and arduous practices should allow Division I student-athletes to unionize and negotiate their own hours, compensation, and working conditions. They, however, acknowledge this to be a perhaps unpopular opinion and is also not supported by current law.
Many, however, disagree with this perspective and question if universities can afford to pay student athletes in the first place, since most of their profits are reinvested into the athletic program itself, and that such revenues would be open to taxation. In addition, universities would be liable for student-athletes’ conduct as well as for benefits and workmen’s compensation.
The Future of College Athletics
The debate surrounding pay-for-play in college athletes and the legal challenges therein lead many to wonder about the future of collegiate athletics. If paying student-athletes becomes legal, which would occur if Jenkins vs. NCAA is decided in Jenkins’ favor, the fundamental spirit of college sports will change. The NCAA has always held amateurism up as a lofty ideal which is what differentiates college athletics from professional sports. Indeed, a case can be made that this itself is the reason that college athletics have become so popular. In college sports, one does not see players receiving multi-million dollar contracts and then refusing to play due to labor disputes, as is seen in professional leagues. Instead, the student-athlete is, for Jeff Brown, writing in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, comparable to the early Olympic athlete. When the Olympics began in Ancient Greece, there were strict laws against professional athletes competing. Rather, participation was confined to amateurs, which is derived from the Latin amare, meaning “to love”. Eventually, however, the Games degenerated into a business, with all the excesses inherent in such professionalism, and were finally abolished. For Brown, our society should be careful that college sports do not follow in the same footsteps. Indeed, in our concern for the well-being of student-athletes, we neglect the ideals that make the system possible in the first place.
It is undisputed that student-athletes, specifically Division I Men’s football and basketball players, bring in vast sums of money for their universities. Indeed, the 2015 total revenue for the 5 major conferences (ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC-12) exceeded two billion dollars, most of which comes from media contracts, licensing, sponsorships, and royalties. While the industry becomes larger and head coaches’ salaries increase to astronomical heights, players, although often recipients of full scholarships including meals and all necessary expenses, receive none of the profits. Many argue this is unjust. Although this is a rather convincing argument, it is worth considering how such a system of paid athletes would function. First, university athletics programs would lose their tax-exempt status, because, as strictly commercial ventures, universities could hardly justify that their athletics programs are related to education. They would then be required to pay taxes on their revenues, which would limit the amount they could spend on less popular sports and on athlete scholarships. Secondly, if athletes become employees, this could “open a Pandora’s box for employment claims, including salaries, the right to form unions, and worker’s compensation benefits.” (Brown) This does not even begin to cover the bidding wars that would inevitably arise for top athletes among universities and the overwhelming business concerns and contractual obligations that student-athletes would be expected to contend with. None of this is in the best interests of student athletes.
Despite this, it is clear that some aspects of the NCAA’s current system of amateurism need to be changed, as there is no doubt that college sports have become considerably more commercialized in recent years. First, the NCAA allows for universities to force athletes to wear jerseys displaying corporate sponsor logos. This, for Brown, “clearly crosses the line between a fair mix of amateurism and commercialism.” This should be stopped, as it turns student-athletes into walking billboards and neglects the spirit of college athletics. Secondly, the value of a college education should be emphasized by the NCAA and its member universities. As Teddy Roosevelt said in 1907, “It is a very poor business indeed for a college man to learn nothing but sport.” It is a great opportunity for young men and women to play a sport for their university, but it is important for universities not to lose sight of the fact that their primary mission is education.
The Movement on Campus
UNC has been at the center of the debate surrounding the future of college athletics fairly recently when, in 2014, it was found to have encouraged student athletes to enroll in “scam” classes in the African and Afro-American Studies department. In these classes, attendance was optional, and grades were dependent on only one very leniently-graded paper, earning them the nickname “paper classes”. The purpose of these classes was so that student-athletes, primarily men’s basketball and football players, could receive an easy boost to their GPA and thus be allowed to play. The NCAA conducted a years-long investigation into this matter, and concluded that the university was not at fault, because these “paper classes” were available to all students, not merely athletes, thus rendering the NCAA effectively powerless due to it being an academic, not athletic issue.
Conclusion
The debate over pay-for-play, and the role of athletics at universities in general, is one with no easy answers. Proponents of pay-for-play raise many valid points, such as that the time and effort student-athletes spend on their sport and the revenue they bring in for their school is such that it is not only unfair, but also immoral, to deprive them of what is seen as just compensation. Opponents see the professionalization of college sports as self-defeating, as the amateurism is what makes viewers interested in the first place. They see the neglect of the classification of student-athletes as students first as detrimental to athlete’s futures and for the university as a whole.
America has commercialized college sports in a way unlike any other nation. This brings great benefits for students, student-athletes, viewers at home, and entertainment companies. We, however, must not neglect that which makes our system of college sports special in the first place: amateurism at its purest form.
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Works Cited
Tracy, Marc. “N.C.A.A.: North Carolina Will Not Be Punished for Academic Scandal.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Oct. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/sports/unc-north-carolina-ncaa.html.
McCann, Michael. “Supreme Court Decision Leaves NCAA Amateurism in Limbo.” Sports Illustrated, 3 Oct. 2016, www.si.com/college/2016/10/03/ed-obannon-ncaa-lawsuit-supreme-court.
Solomon, Jon. “The History Behind the Debate Over Paying NCAA Athletes.” The Aspen Institute, 24 May 2018, www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/history-behind-debate-paying-ncaa-athletes/.
Brown, Jeff K. “Compensation for the Student-Athlete: Preservation of Amateurism.” Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 5, no. 3, 1995–1996, p. 147–154. HeinOnline, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/kjpp5&i=537.
Cooper, Kenneth J. “Should College Athletes be Paid to Play?” Diverse Issues in Higher Education, vol. 28, no. 10, Jun 23, 2011, pp. 12–13. ProQuest, http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/874652804?accountid=14244.
