There is a heavily debated topic currently in American sports and that is should college athletes be paid? It has become a very popular topic due to the fact that the Northwestern University football team is currently trying to unionize. Their main goal is to receive health insurance to cover them if injuries occur. If they do unionize it would be inevitable that they would receive benefits that the NCAA does not currently allow student athletes to have.
In the article “The Olympics Show Why College Sports Should Give Up on Amateurism,” Mr. Patrick Hruby takes a firm stand against the whole concept of amateurism in college sports. His main comparison is the contemporary NCAA and the Olympics in the 1960s, when they first started allowing “professional” athletes to compete. Olympic historian Bill Mallon has been quoted in an interview saying that the Olympics would be “dead in eight years” if they were to allow professional athletes to compete (Quote by Mallon from Hruby). In a more recent interview Mallon was questioned again on the topic, his response had changed quite a bit. He explained how the Olympics are stronger/ more popular than ever, and it’s still growing. Hruby believes it’s safe to say that the notion of amateurism has outlived its usefulness. He explains that it just doesn’t fit the time period we live in.
First and foremost, the Olympics used to have the vaguest definition of amateurism, athletes who had simply refused to turn professional. Athletes who did receive compensation for their sports performance were considered professionals, and not allowed to compete in the Olympics. The main problem is that there is no agreed-upon definition of amateurism. If you want to get technical, since there is no firm definition, amateurism doesn’t exist in today’s world, merely a notion. Schools don’t allow student athletes to accept money or free items, they do allow them to accept free or discounted tuition, room and board, as well as books.
Hruby notes that even with all of the rules the NCAA has, many college athletes still receive benefits whether it’s money or other items. Sometimes, “Friends of the college program” will meet with potential recruits under the radar. An example of an improper benefit would be a post-game “money handshake” from those friends of the program. When you really think about it, is it really wrong to do that? How is it any different than receiving a signing bonus and or a performance bonus in investment banking? It’s not that different. This whole situation is almost comparable to prohibition. If you don’t allow the people to do something, it could possibly lead to a crime and corruption problem, a problem that otherwise wouldn’t exist. In the words of French sportswriter Gaston Meyer, “Do not forbid what you can’t prevent” (Quote by Meyer from Hruby).
Hruby thinks that the NCAA should follow the trail that the Olympics blazed. The Olympics doesn’t pay their participants, but rather they simply allow them to get paid. In this situation, the university athletes wouldn’t be employees. The NCAA would just allow the student athletes to appear in commercials and receive sponsorships. Hruby sums up his article by stating that the everyday fan doesn’t care whether or not college athletes get paid or not, they have no control over it. All they care is about is whether or not their teams win or loses.
Before reading this article I was a firm believer in not paying college athletes. I myself don’t have the luxury to have everything school wise paid for me. I am paying for school myself, while working. So my initial opinion was based off of envy and jealousy. After I read this article, I have a whole new perspective on the debate. I am taking a complete 180 and now believe that we should pay college athletes. In the money hungry world we now live in, we cannot pay some people and no others without stirring up some controversy. Also the fact that improper benefits does happen and will continue to happen, just bares the question, why not allow it?
The second article I found contradicts Hruby’s viewpoint. Richard Burton, a Sports Management professor at Syracuse University, argues that student athletes are paid with their free tuition, room and board, etc. He has the same viewpoint as I did before reading Mr. Hruby’s article. Burton states that, “Since you can’t trade knowledge (i.e., mental enhancement) for an immediate financial asset, higher education is often (and falsely) assumed to have no value for athletes.” He believes that with the free education the athletes are receiving and the non-existent loans they will not have to pay off. They are set up perfectly to succeed once graduating their university. That is of course if they do not make it professionally in their respective sport. They are set up to succeed, but whether or not they end up doing so it up to the student athlete themselves.
The point that Hruby made that really convinced me to switch sides was that the NCAA should just follow what the Olympics currently does. It’s obvious that the player’s respective university does not want to pay them out of pocket, even though I’m sure they can easy afford to do so. Just allow the players to receive sponsorships to do the cliché fast food commercials and what have you. In my opinion, I consider that a win win situation for both the students and university
I will play devil’s advocate against myself here. Say you allow college athletes to accept sponsorships those commercials and such would probably only go to the top 5% of college athletes (I’m probably being generous on the number as well). So that being said, not every student athlete would get paid. That might stir up controversy about giving the student athletes a weekly wage or something along those lines. But regardless nobody is ever happy, so I’m not sure if they’ll ever fully come to a solution for whether to pay college student athletes.
Work Cited
Burton, Richard. “College Athletes Are Already Paid With Their Education.” US New 2 April 2013. Web. 07 May 2014.
Hruby, Patrick. “The Olympics Show Why College Sports Should Give Up on Amateurism.” The Atlantic 25 July 2012. Web. 07 May 2014.