In 2015, March Madness had 11.3 million viewers, according to the NCAA.com. March Madness is very popular, and generates a lot of revenue for the NCAA. Instead of paying the players, the NCAA keeps the money. It is the only business that does not pay their employees. College players being paid has been a topic that has been debated for a long time and continues to be debated.
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College athletes should be paid for all they do for the NCAA and the sacrifices they make. Players risk their health by going out there and competing every game. While this may apply more to football, injuries happen in basketball too. Health is not the only sacrifice being made as education is sacrificed as well. Students have to miss classes to go to games being played out of state. The NCAA always defends not paying players by keeping them students first.
The reason why students cannot be paid is because of the Amateurism Certification for Initial-Eligibility. This certification is used to ensure that students focus on academics first. How are students going to focus on academics when they are missing classes? Every time you watch Wednesday night ESPN NBA Basketball, look at the advertisements. You will consistently see college basketball games that are played during weekdays. Every time you see this you will know that students are missing classes. Just today, I saw a commercial on SNY advertising college basketball for games on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. This made me think of students missing three days of school during the week.
An article on Forbes, titled, "21 Reasons Student Athletes Should Be Allowed To Unionize"says, “At some schools, the road to the NCAA men’s basketball championship may require student-athletes to miss up to a quarter of all class days during their spring semester." If I miss one or two days of classes, I am lost for weeks. I can only imagine if I missed a quarter of my classes. The students suffer academically and the reason why they cannot get paid is because the NCAA claims to be looking out for their academics.
For football, the risks are even worse; college football players put their lives on the line every week for the NCAA and do not get paid. Concussions have become a growing issue in the NFL, but concussions happen at all levels. In an article by Julie Beck in The Atlantic, a recent study from Boston University showed that out of 165 brains from high school, college, and the NFL 139 of them (79 percent) showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The article also says that CTE is a “degenerative disease believed to stem from repetitive brain injury.”
The players of the NFL make millions from playing football while college players get nothing, and are taking the same risks as NFL players. College athletes can ruin the rest of their lives from concussions and not live as long as they should. Eric Legrand, a defensive tackle from Rutgers, got injured in a game in 2010 and was paralyzed from the neck down. What happened to Legrand can happen to any college athlete because of the danger of playing football. An example in college basketball is when Kevin Ware broke his leg in Louisville and his basketball career will never be the same.
When asking the question on if college athletes should be paid, you have to wonder if the NCAA can afford it. The answer is yes, and it is not even close. According to USA Today, the NCAA made $1 billion in revenue in 2014. Some schools are also able to pay athletes as Alabama head coach, Nick Saban, makes $4 million a year -- and this comes from Alabama’s athletic budget. Granted, Saban is a good coach, but it is not fair for him to make $4 million and the players make nothing. Saban is not taking any risks; it is the players risking their careers and generating the money for the NCAA.
Students play the roles of employees with how much time they put into their sports. The article from Forbes, says “The typical Division I college football player devotes 43.3 hours per week to his sport -- 3.3 more hours than the typical American work week.” Athletes are also not allowed to earn outside money or else they will be suspended. One of the best sports journalists Michael Wilbon wrote an article on ESPN.com titled, "College Athletes Deserve To Be Paid," in which heuses the example, “If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal.” The point Wilbon is making is that it is hypocritical to say that if athletes make money it does not make them students while other college students make money all the time.
Student athletes not being paid has been an issue for many years and only very little has been done about it. Athletes had a chance earlier this year to promote a change when they filed lawsuits against the NCAA in August. In an article by Robert Litan in The Wall Street Journal titled, "Should College Athletes Be Paid? The Fight Is Far From Over" hedetails the court case in which “male and female basketball players in Division I schools (the 'big money' college sports) are contesting the NCAA’s bans on salary and revenue sharing as unlawful restraints of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act. These lawsuits seek a free market, as in any other labor market, for the services of the athletes who make possible the multibillion-dollar industry of college sports.” The NCAA ended up winning the case because of amateurism.
Many people use the excuse that college athletes should not be paid because they will make money as professionals. The issue is that, according to NCAA, only 1.6 percent of football players make it to the NFL. The number is even worse for men’s basketball, at 1.2 percent, and is 0.9 percent for women’s basketball. I am not saying that every athlete should have $20 million contracts, but there should be a system in place for salaries. The salaries should be based on how much money the school makes and how much revenue the sport generates. It is not fair that students devote all this time and have nothing to show for it except billions of dollars in the NCAA’s pockets.
