Student athletes around the country work harder than most full time employees do at any job, an NCAA survey taken in 2006 reported that student athletes dedicated an average of 45 hours a week to just athletics alone (Jacobs).  This hard work from the athletes creates an industry that is worth more than nine billion dollars (Gaines), an industry that star college athletes do not even get a small part of financially. For years the NCAA has been enforcing rules and regulations that keep the student athletes who work hard for their teams from getting a piece of the proverbial pie.  Of course not every athlete in the NCAA deserves a salary or endorsement deal, but the star athletes who bring in millions for their schools most definitely do. This is just one of many problems the NCAA has with how its current system functions. I intend to reveal to people how unjust the NCAA is to its athletes and prove that prominent collegiate athletes should have the opportunity to profit from their talent before they enter professional sports leagues. I want to use my project to show people that the NCAA has a few fundamental flaws with the way it does things, fundamental flaws that can be fixed with simple solutions.  All of my sources offer credible evidence as to the NCAA’s clear shortcomings, and many of them also offer multiple possible solutions to these problems.  After years of hard work many student athletes are left with little to nothing for their time and dedication, allowing athletes to accept endorsement deals would help solve this problem and be a huge step forward in the way of student athlete rights. 

For years star college athletes have been deprived of the compensation they deserve by the NCAA’s rules.  The fact of the matter is, the NCAA preventing players from being able to accept any sort of compensation in college is just hurting the players.  Not to mention the fact that before former NCAA basketball star Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA, they were in fact profiting off of the names and likeness of their players without giving the players even a small piece of the enourmous proftis.  Yet, even after O’Bannon won his lawsuit against the NCAA, athletes are still prohibited from accepting any sort of compensation.  On top of this, while the NCAA and its member schools are now prohibited from using an athlete's name or likeness for a profit, they still make billions off of massive television contracts along with jersey, memorabilia, and ticket sales.  The NCAA’s current media rights contract alone is worth 10.8 billion dollars (NCAA.org), that’s 10.8 billion dollars that athletes never see a penny of.  The only real thing that the lawsuit actually changed was college sports video games.  EA Sports (video game designer) along with the NCAA made billions of dollars off of college sports video games (NCAA Football games primarily) from 1993 all the way until the O’Bannon lawsuit in 2014.  Yet despite the fact that EA sports and the NCAA made over 1.3 Billion dollars from just the NCAA Football game alone (Groves), neither organization reimbursed any of the former stars they represented in the video games unless they were forced to by the court.  People are making fortunes off of student athletes while the athletes themselves are not getting anything for their efferts other than an education, the fact that this has gone on for as long as it has is ridiculous.  

Compensating student athletes with more than just a scholarship and a small stipend would be difficult for lots of schools.  While plenty of big schools make millions of their athletic programs, there are also plenty of colleges out there who actually lose money due to their athletic department.  This is one of the most prominent arguments as to why student athletes should not be compensated.  People think it would just be too difficult to figure out which athlete gets paid what, and where the money would come from if the athlete went to a school which did not have the most profitable athletic department.  Honestly, this does sound extremely difficult, and I do not think that schools all over the country should have to overhaul their finances completely all to pay every single one of their athletes.  However, if the NCAA allowed its players to accept endorsement deals, all of these issues would go away.  The star players would be able to make big money off of big endorsement deals, and the players at smaller schools would still be able to profit off of their talent without draining their school’s athletic department financially.  Those who say finding a way to compensate NCAA athletes is “too difficult” are not accepting the fact that the players who deserve compensation would be able to receive this compensation from endorsement deals.  If an athlete is worth thousands of dollars to a company who wants the athlete to endorse their brand, why can’t the athlete capitalize on this opportunity?

Perhaps the main argument for the NCAA to keep preventing players from accepting endorsement deals is that allowing it would corrupt the NCAA’s “amateur” system. The NCAA believes that if they do indeed allow college athletes to accept endorsement deals that will be the only thing that kids will consider when choosing where they want to go to school.  They believe that athletes will end up going to the school that can help get them the best endorsement deal without factoring anything else into their descision.  In reality though, the NCAA recruitment process is already very corrupt.  Scandals have rocked the NCAA year after year at big athletic schools across the country. Somehow, the NCAA uses the claim that allowing players to accept endorsement deals would corrupt the recruitment system, yet it seems like the system can not get any more corrupt than it already is.  Star recruits are offered money, girls, cars, houses, endorsement deals, etc. despite the fact that the NCAA “prohibits” it. The number of reputable schools and players that have been involved in theses types of scandals is startling, almost every year a new scandal emerges.  For example, just recently ACC schools Miami and Louisville have been involved in massive recruitment scandals.  Louisville recruits and players were taken to private “sex parties” where escorts, strippers, and alcohol were all provided by people associated with the basketball program (Iacobelli).  In the last two years alone four schools in just the ACC have been involved in both recruitment and academic scandals, and when they are caught the repercussions really are not that bad.  Every time a new recruitment scandal emerges, the NCAA claims ignorance and enforces “sanctions” on those who were involved after investigations that take years have been completed. To those on the outside of the NCAA though, these sanctions never seem harsh enough, and people wonder how these situations can go on for as long as they do without the NCAA finding out. If athletes were just allowed to accept endorsement deals, there would not be as much temptation to accept all the other bribes and gifts offered to them by recruiters.  The fact that so many NCAA powerhouses break the rules when it comes to recruitment also sets the schools who actually follow the rules at a major disadvantage.  If a recruit is offered a full ride scholarship from two similar schools but one offers him/her a big endorsement deal with adidas on top of the scholarship you can’t blame the athlete for attending the school that offered him/her an endorsement deal.  If athletes were allowed by the NCAA to accept these deals, it would actually level the playing field.  Even the schools that actually play by the NCAA’s rules would be allowed to try and help get an athlete an endorsement deal, as opposed to just the schools that break the rules.  That is why this argument is not even close to credible, if the NCAA was not one of the most corrupt major athletic organizations in the world (perhaps the most corrupt other than the IOC or FIFA) it would be a valid argument. 

Student athletes should not need more compensation, a free education and a small stipend is enough, a college education alone is worth thousands and thousands of dollars.  This is what many people who oppose allowing student athletes to accept endorsements say, however the majority of these athletes are actually receiving less of an education than other students on campus who do not participate in athletics. the term “student athlete” is a term that has been created and highly touted by the NCAA.  In the term “student athlete” the word student comes first, yet the majority of the athletes in big football or basketball programs around the NCAA know that their education comes second to their athletic pursuits.  The rigorous workout and practice schedules (40-50 hours a week in season) upheld by their coaches and trainers prevents them from being able to take full advantage of their education, not to mention that some athletes in these programs do not even have the intellectual ability to take advantage of their education. Football players at USC are not even allowed to take classes before 12:15 PM just because they have morning practice, so if a class is only offered before then they are unable take it.  At other schools (and maybe even at USC you never know) athletes are even given fake classes to boost their GPA and keep their athletic eligibility intact.  A couple years ago University of North Carolina Chapel Hill was involved in a scandal for this exact reason (Iacobelli).  Of course even though allegations were proven to be truthful UNC’s punishment was nonexistent, and the school’s flawless reputation was barely even tarnished.  The sad thing is that this is just one of many academic fraud scandals in the NCAA, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Yes, the value of a good college education cannot be labeled with a price, but if these athletes are getting a subpar education than is it really worth that much?  One thing is for sure, it is definitely not worth enough to justify keeping athletes from being able to accept endorsement deals. 

“Any kid who is good enough to get an endorsement deal will get his money once he gets to the NBA” said Syracuse head basketball coach Jim Boeheim (Carlson).  There are plenty of people out there who share Jim’s opinion on the matter of college athletes being able to accept endorsement deals, they say that if they are good enough to get a deal, it would make sense that they will make their money when they get to the professional leagues.  Unfortunately though, for a number of these athletes this is not true.  There are plenty of college stars out there who flop in the major leagues, and on top of that there are also plenty out there who get career ending injuries before they can capitalize on their talents.  In football especially, star college athletes suffer career changing and even ending injuries all of the time.  It is a dangerous sport and the athletes put their bodies on the line, so it makes sense to allow them to capitalize on their stardom while their bodies are still intact.  Marcus Latimore, former South Carolina running back is a perfect example of this type of situation.  Latimore is the career touchdown record holder at our school, and was praised repeatedly throughout his career by everyone from ESPN analysts to Nick Saban, arguably the best college football coach ever.  All of Marcus’s success took a toll on his body though, and his career was ended by a brutal injury before he could play a single NFL snap.  Following his injury, “Doctors worried about being able to save his leg and later gave him a 20 percent chance of ever walking normally again” (Aschoff).  For all of his hard work and success in the NCAA this is what Marcus was left with, a permanently damaged knee.  Injuries are not the only thing that prevents college stars from succeeding in the professional sports leagues, some players just simply can not find their place in the big leagues despite their success in college.  Whether they are just thrown out of their comfort zone, or they are lost in the minor leagues there are plenty of college stars out there with little to nothing to show for their fruitful college careers.  If they could accept endorsements in college, at least they would have some sort of monetary compensation to show for their dedication.

Because of the NCAA’s rules, its athletes really cannot make much financially prior to moving on to the next step in their lives.  Their schedules are simply too packed because of their combined academic and athletic commitments for them to get a job while they are at school, and of course they are unable to accept endorsement deals.  It is because of this reason that the majority of these athletes who make it to the big leagues go on massive spending sprees once they finally do get paid.  Of course going on a quick spending spree after making a couple million dollars is no big deal, but a great deal of these athletes simply have no idea how to manage all of this money when they have made little to nothing in terms of income for their whole life.  Introducing athletes to financial compensation while they are still in college will give them more time to learn how to handle large sums of money.  Sports Illustrated reported that %78 of former NFL players are either bankrupt or under extreme financial stress within just two years of their retirement (Torre).  This statistic is an outrageous statistic for a group of people who make millions of dollars a year, an outrageous statistic that is the result of these players having no previous financial responsibility.

 For years and years, NCAA athletes have been shafted by the very system the earn money for.  For many athletes seeking a career in professional sports, there is simply no avenue to their goal that does not involve playing in the NCAA.  This makes the NCAA and other massive organizations millions.  Yet somehow, despite all of the money made off of their skills on the field/court, they do not get any of this money.  While the universities they play for accept million dollar endorsement deals, they are not allowed a single piece of the action.  They get a college education and sometimes a small stipend, not even close to the amount of compensation they should be able to accept.  Leaving NCAA stars unable to receive compensation creates a multitude of problems.  The simple solution of allowing NCAA players to accept endorsement deals is a valid solution to the majority if not all of these problems yet the NCAA still refuses to allow it.  Players would no longer be tempted by illegal bribes, they would have legal endorsement offers.  They would gain the chance to learn financial responsibility in college, something that evidence shows they clearly do not learn from the current system.  No longer would star players who had their careers ended short by injury be stuck with nothing to show for their years of hard work.  And on top of this the level of corruption in the NCAA would drop, studies also show that the college sports market would not really change were athletes allowed to accept endorsements.  Not even the NCAA stands to lose from this rule change were it to be pushed through,  All of the evidence makes it clear, allowing NCAA athletes to accept endorsement deals is the only viable solution to the problems they face.   

  