Grueling work-outs. Studying and analyzing film and preparing for games. Rehabilitating sore, beaten up bodies. Forty to fifty-hour work weeks. Let's not forget the extra time spent on school work and academia either. This is what major Division I athletes' weeks consist of on an average weekly basis in and out of season. However, paying the student-athlete has been an extremely controversial and confusing issue that has been debated heavily for the past five years. The way I see it, college athletes are laborers who work full work weeks and even give up educational opportunities, sometimes even professional opportunities due to injuries, to play a sport at their school for little to no personal pay. Division I college athletes should be financially compensated, outside of just tuition costs, because their labor greatly contributes and produces the institutions they are under by bringing in massive amounts of revenue. The money to pay these student-athletes should come from wages provided by their institutions and/or the NCAA, booster 'donations,' a signing bonus once they commit, and any other external money (such as signing sponsorship deals, selling autographs/merchandise, and etc.) that could benefit the student-athlete. 

One of the main things that I recognized when first thinking about this issue was the moral and inherently political side of this controversy. The NCAA, and the student-athletes that this massive organization governs, is a classic example of an all-powerful institution that benefits inequitably from an under-valued and exploited group. It is simply not just that athletes' "talents are exploited for the financial benefit of others," as they continue to rack in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and see no personal income in return (Allen Sack NP). The terminology of "amateur" in regards to collegiate athletes is inaccurate to say the least. In a lawsuit filed against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the NCAA, the lawsuit cites a survey from the NCAA conducted in 2006 that revealed that student-athletes "spent forty-five hours per week on athletics," which is more than what is considered a full-time job (Peter Jacobs NP). The 2006 survey also revealed that student-athletes spent almost five hours per day just practicing for their respective sports (Jacobs NP). Robert and Amy McCormick, two law professors at Michigan State University argue that Division I athletes are "'employees' under federal labor laws and entitled to form unions and negotiate wages, hours and working conditions," just like any other employed entities in the United States (Kenneth J. Cooper NP). Collegiate-athletes work as much as any fully employed person would. Because of this, it is unjust that they not only do not get paid, but that they also have no rights pertaining to fighting for pay. These athletes' potential to make money is greatly restricted, and even prohibited by the NCAA, who makes millions of dollars from the likeness and abilities of the players who they govern. This equation just simply does not add up. In any other industry in this country, laborers would unionize, as they have thousands of time in the past. We must remember that Olympic athletes faced the same kind of discrimination when they were considered "amateur" athletes. However, the "international community decided it didn't make sense to demand that all the best athletes in the world take a vow of poverty," and I think the same mindset is needed in order to keep the NCAA up and running before its corruptness taints the entire collegiate-sport industry (Andrew Sharp NP).  Not only is the fact that the NCAA refuses to pay or allow its athletes to collect any external money, it is also illegal (Edelman NP). We must realize that the NCAA's adamant decision "prohibit the pay of student-athletes represents a form of wage fixing that likely violates antitrust law," which is a major infraction of one of the most prevalent laws protecting laborers in the United States (Edelman NP). Morally, it is wrong for these people to be restricted from fighting to earn what is rightfully there's. In terms of the money they "get" from tuition is not nearly equitable to the revenues the NCAA and their institutions make off of these athletes. 

By now, I know I have said that the NCAA makes enormous amounts of revenue off of college-athletes. I would like to make this claim more concise and detailed and provide some statistics pertaining to how much money I really mean. In 2011-2012, which were the most recent years in which the revenues made by the NCAA became accessible, the NCAA's total revenue was $871.6 million ("Revenue" NP). 81% of this money was earned through television and marketing rights with huge TV broadcasting corporations such as CBS, ESPN, TBS, and more. The NCAA signed a "10.8 billion, 14-year agreement with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting for rights to the Division I Men's Basketball Championship" in 2010 ("Revenue" NP). These numbers are absolutely staggering. Think about in these terms: if an out-of-state player recruited from high school is given a full-ride scholarship, to let's say the University of Alabama, which is the premier football program in all of college sports, then this athlete has earned a scholarship that is worth $40,352 per year, or $161,408 over four years ("University of Alabama Tuition, Costs and Financial Aid - CollegeData College Profile"). Although this is a large amount of money, and going to college for free is nothing to overlook, it is not even a fraction of what the NCAA makes. Compared to the revenue the NCAA makes, a full-ride scholarship to the University of Alabama is .0185% of this number. Let that sink in. In research conducted by USA Today, "salaries of new head football coaches at the bowl-eligible schools increased by 35 percent from 2011 to 2012,"and their average pay "ballooned to $1.64 million, an astonishing increase of more than 70 percent since 2006" (Dave Zirin). What these numbers are telling us are that coaches are reaping the benefits the quality of play produced by their players, who are the ones exerting themselves day in and day out to make these surpluses and increases of profits possible to their coaches. Some Division I college football coaches are the highest-paid state officials' in their respective states. At the end of 2014, "the highest paid state employees included 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches and only 11 non-sports professionals" (Jack Perkins). This means that coaches of "amateur" college athletes are getting paid more than the governor and other state legislators of their given states. If these coaches are given such incentives based off of winning and recruiting these star players out of high school to make their programs successful, then why shouldn't the players be able to take advantage of the same opportunities? The fact that coaches are able to make millions of dollars off of the performance of the athletes that they coach, who in return do not get financially compensated is not sensible. If collegiate coaches are making millions of dollars, then the price of tuition is simply not a fair amount of compensation for student-athletes.

One of the main counter-arguments against paying college athletes is that they are given a free education that pays its tuition in full. As I said earlier, a free college tuition is nothing to overlook or take for granted, especially with the amount of people out there who cannot afford any kind of education. However, as I delve into this a little further I want to point out why this is not necessarily a fair argument, but rather an assumption. First, we must consider the amount of time that student-athletes spend a week practicing or partaking in athletic activities, which was forty-five hours. Some people, like Jerry M. Hunter, believe that student-athletes "went [to school] get a college degree. They just happen to be playing sports" (Cooper). However, because of the amount of time that they are focusing on their sports, "athletes don't have free choice of what major they take if the classes conflict with practice schedules," which was pointed out by Amy McCormick of Michigan State University (Cooper). McCormick's point is a bit more realistic than Hunter's for two reasons. One of these being that Hunter is making a broad and untrue statement. We know that these star athletes who come to the NCAA to play sports have aspirations of playing professional sports. This is not to say that they aren't there for an education and I am in no way under-minding an education, but this is just the reality of college sports. As McCormick points out, the opportunities for college-athletes to strive in academia that best suits them is greatly prohibited by the sports they play. Because of the NCAA's antitrust exemption, it gives the organization immunity from the unionization of athletes to fight for compensation, which actually curbs education and the standard of play in the NCAA, because players will be more prone to leave school to go make money in professional leagues rather than finishing their educations at their respective institutions. This also leads to athlete's taking irrelevant classes and even gets schools into trouble by allocating student-athlete into unsatisfactory or even fake classes in order for them to be eligible to play at the college level. If the NCAA really did put education as its main priority it would look into passing the College Athlete Protection Act (CAP Act) to amend its antitrust exemption. The CAP Act would be able to do things for the student-athlete such as guarantee tuition regardless of performance, injury, or other factors that could keep an athlete from playing, create an academic trust fund for athletes who wish to pursue a pre/post-graduate degree, and even give the athlete the right to partake in money-making activated such as signing endorsements, selling autographs, and etc. (Sack). However, we have not seen such reforms or any real action taken against the NCAA's antitrust protection. Because of this, we will continue to performance in the classroom take a back seat to performance on the field.

There are many reasonable, sensible, and well-formulated counter-arguments regarding not paying collegiate athletes. Many believe that student-athletes are students first and, "are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports" (Horace Mitchell). Mitchell also believes that college-athletes are merely playing sports to "earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses," and the idea that they should be paid anything beyond this is asking for too much (Mitchell). As Mitchell's argument should be considered and analyzed, I think he is leaving out key factors that many athletes and their supporters think about quite often. We must remember that athletes get paid about .02% of what the NCAA makes off of them in revenue per year, and these are just the best athletes that get paid their scholarships paid in full. Another claim that is commonly made by the NCAA and their supporters includes the assumption that "compensating student-athletes would destroy competitive balance in college sports" (Edelman). However, I encourage one to look at this in a different light. Players are coming and leaving the NCAA scene as fast as possible in order to graduate to the big-leagues and make millions of dollars off of contracts, sponsorships, and other endorsements. This means that some of the best players in the NCAA are leaving early, which is taking the best talent out of the NCAA, and displacing them prematurely into professional leagues, which hinders the competition there as well. Another counterargument includes that college-athletes know exactly what they are signing up for and should expect to not be paid. They should also realize that college athletics is not all about an education, emotion, and amateurism, but rather it is a business where its laborers are willingly signing to play under whatever circumstances the NCAA decides to place upon them (Scoop Jackson). As Jackson's point of view makes sense, the moral aspect of this is all out of whack. Some of these players are extremely talented athletes who come from underprivileged backgrounds. Of course they are going to take the free tuition for the chance to make money in the future, or to get a free education and attend an academic institution. We must also keep in mind the fact that it is many athletes' dream to play college sports and they will play at all costs. However, this does not make it just or fair that they do not even have the right to unionize or fight for their rights to earn money from the NCAA or any other external entity, which is counterproductive and unjust.

If the NCAA or its institutions do not want to pay college athletes directly to play collegiate sports, which I believe to be a fair solution to this problem, they should let athletes collect on other sources of money. As schools do not want to put athlete's on their payroll, "here's plenty of other money out there, and denying stars a chance to capitalize on that feels, at best, counterproductive," because if the NCAA isn't going to pay these athletes, there is no reason external sources should not be allowed to (Andrew Sharp). Joe Nocera came up with other plans such as a payroll cap to play major Division I entities such as basketball and football teams $650,000 and $3 million respectively, which would be fair compensation due to to the fact that some coaches alone, such as Jim Harbaugh, get paid $7 million plus. He also suggested a flat wage of $25,000 per athlete per team (regarding the football and basketball teams that bring in the most money), and for the NCAA to allow external sources of money from boosters or fans to fund collegiate-athlete compensation (Joe Nocera). Allowing athletes to collect off of external sources would also keep schools out of trouble, as there have been many cases regarding schools paying athletes under the table to compete at their institutions or covering up athletes' pursuits of cashing in on their likeness and reputation, which should not even be illegal to start with. 

Now, to answer the great dilemma in my own terms is exactly what I conducted my research for. To be able to formulate and think about how I believe these athletes should be paid is exactly the problem I wanted to work on. However, I must add that I could not come up with this solution without all of the great work done before me. The way my payment plan would work be that Division I college-athletes get paid a fixed wage based on playing-time/scholarship received, excluding any penalty to tuition based off of performance, injury, and etc. This would benefit the athlete and the school, because the athlete could not get his tuition taken away for any performance based reason, and the school could cut/add wages based on the performance of the athlete. Here we have a mix to keep the athlete's incentive high, so they can collect on money, but does not put them in jeopardy of losing their scholarship and hence their educational opportunities. In my plan, starting athletes would earn $15 an hour, and everyone else would be paid anywhere from $7.25 (the minimum wage) to $9 an hour, based on the school's discretion. Bonuses for performance, such as touchdowns scored, records broken, and etc. could be rewarded with a bonus of up to $500. By the numbers, the NCAA gives out about 150,000 scholarships to athletes a year ("Scholarships" NP). Theoretically, let's assume that the a wage of $10-$15 is given to these athletes, because they are the ones who were offered a scholarship and are expected to perform to higher standards. The other 300,000 would be paid closer to minimum wage. The NCAA would pay half of this sum, while the schools would pull from their lucrative revenues to pay the other half to their athletes. This would cost the NCAA a good amount of money, given that there are 460,000 athletes, but they could easily fund it with the help of their institutions, and the athletes deserve it. This would also keep schools from going over the allotted time that athletes can participate in sports per week, which would in turn keep them out of trouble and give athletes more time to work on school while they are receiving a financial incentive for their hard work. Another way to pay athletes and benefit the school would be to offer athletes signing bonuses upon commitment up to $10,000-$15,000. This way, athletes could make money right off the bat and it would give them incentive to choose schools over others who would not necessarily pay them. There would have to be a limit/restrictions of rewarding 3-5 players so the richest teams couldn't just sign every good player because they can offer the most money. This would give less dominant teams the opportunity to cash out on major prospects who would otherwise go to bigger schools, hence the restriction limit. On top of this, athletes should have free reign to collect on any external money, endorsements, sponsorships, and etc. with the agreement that the school can also collect off of the likeness of their athletes by allowing the NCAA to continue to make money on video games players' jerseys, and other entities that are based off of the likeness of their athletes. The NCAA must understand that this would make the student-athlete happier, it would end the headache of the discrepancies of the issue and the lawsuits they are always under.  The NCAA would still be a multi-billion-dollar industry, and could potentially make even more money off of entities such as video games, even if they did pay their laborers. The NCAA needs to start treating their employees correctly and with respect, because that is exactly what these athletes deserve. 

The controversy of the compensation of student-athletes will always be a pressing issue because of the mixed notions and opinions regarding the issue. There are dozens of factors to consider when reflecting on this topic for both sides of the argument. However, in any way one breaks it down, there is still the prevalence of an exploited and inferior workforce who is being used by a bigger and more powerful corporation to make an enormous amount of money, and it is not morally just. Tuition costs are not enough for student-athletes, especially compared to how much money is given to others who are not nearly as deserving as the athlete who is held to extremely demanding expectations. It is time to begin rewarding our collegiate-athletes financially, through wages/signing bonuses and any other money they can collect due to their likeness through things such as endorsements and signing merchandise for money. As athletes and the sports they plat are evolving, it is time for the NCAA and their monetary policy to change with it, for the sake and integrity of college sports.

