
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the governing body of college athletics, is a multi-billion-dollar organization. During Fall, Saturdays are in many ways owned by the NCAA as millions and millions of people from all across the nation tune in to watch their favorite college football teams battle it out on the gridiron. In Spring, the NCAA essentially owns the entire month of March as sports fanatics change the channels on their televisions to watch the unpredictable and exciting time, which has been come to be known as “March Madness” or the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Through television deals, ticket sales, and merchandise sale money pours in by the millions for both the NCAA and specific Universities and Colleges. With all the financial success of collegiate sports it is hard to believe that the athletes, who have made NCAA the entertainment powerhouse which it is, are merely considered amateurs. With the title of “amateurism” comes a large amount of restrictions, which separates amateurs from professionals, the biggest of which being the inability to receive payment as compensation for competing. Universities, in turn provides student athletes with scholarships as compensation for the service of playing sports for them. These scholarships are all similar in composition consisting primarily of a full tuition reduction, a payment reduction for on campus housing, and a meal plan of three meals a day for five days of the week. At first glance it may seem like a fair trade. What else could a college student want? However, a deeper look shows that these “student athletes” are much more similar to faculty at a university rather than students. Day in and day out the lives of student athletes are a repetitive cycle of hours of practice, followed by classes, only to be followed yet again by practice or games. Once athletes reach the collegiate level, sports make the drastic jump from being a hobby to something that is job like. Although student athletes should not be compensated through a salary or hourly wage like professionals they still deserve the opportunity to make money off of the brand, which they have created for themselves along with the scholarship which they were originally provided with. This means that student athletes should be able to make a profit off of things such as autograph sales, jersey sales, and usage in videogames. The NCAA effectively forces players to play for them if they want to make it to the professional ranks, such as the NBA or NFL. If these elite student athletes are not allowed to go play professionally straight out of high school and are required to attend at least one year college then they should be compensated in an equivocal manner for the value which they bring their universities and the NCAA.

In high school I was fortunate enough to be a part of the basketball team. For four years I was fortunate enough to have formed a brotherhood with my teammates. With each senior class there was at least one of my teammates who would move on to play basketball at the collegiate level. During their breaks my former teammates would return back to the high school to say hi to their old coaches and friends. With each visit players would come back telling the same story. They would discuss how the jump from high school to college was huge, saying that in high school they had the opportunity to have a social life whereas in college it was basketball 24/7. Waking up at 5:30 every morning, lifting and working out from 6a.m -9a.m, classes from 10a.m-1p.m, film study and team meetings went from 2:15 p.m -3:15p.m, practice from 4p.m-6p.m, recovery and injury treatment from 6:30p.m- 8 p.m, followed by homework and studying for the rest of the night. This cycle would be repeated everyday leaving very little time to have an social life at all. Another common theme spoken by my former teammates were about the struggle during the weekends in which often times they would go hungry due to the fact that their meal plans only covered meals Monday-Friday. I remember sitting there listening to these stories thinking “why don’t these guys just go out and get food on the weekends?”. It  then occurred to me that they don’t have any time at all during the week to go get a job and work. Playing basketball for the school was their job. Also they were not allowed to receive any money from outside sources because it was considered a violation by the NCAA. Now, being a college student who not only receives money from my parents but works as well I will be the first to say that I have no idea how my friends who play sports in college survive. For starters with all the free time I have I still feel crunched for time with all my school work and other activities. Also being in college I have reached levels of being broke which I did not think were possible to achieve before. Student- athletes are in many way’s full time employees for their school. The hours of practice and work they put in so they can perform on game days and make large amounts of money for the school deserve to be compensated in a way in which they are not at the very least struggling to find food on the weekends. The stresses of being a collegiate athlete are unparalleled as written in Stephen Macciocchi’s “Practice Makes Perfect” Retests Effects in College Athletes. The fact that “athletes are expected to endure the hardships of 5:30 a.m practice and then are expected to go to an 8:30 a.m class and be bright eyed and full of energy is psychologically draining” (Macciocchi 1990). Macciocchi  also describes that having to perform on the playing field in order to keep their scholarship can also cause large amounts of anxiety. Student athletes are doing much more than playing just a game. They are representing an entire school and often times an entire city. For what athletes contribute to a school they deserve compensation which makes doing what they do a little bit easier and more comfortable for them.

The argument can be made that a free education is the best tradeoff for playing sports at a university. According to the NCAA’s official website there are over 480,000 student athletes of which only about 15,000 make it to the professional ranks of some sort. These are not very good odds. In Kenneth Arrow’s article Higher Education as a Filter Arrow describes how obtaining a higher education creates a filter which separates people in their work environment. Arrow makes the argument that the higher the level of education a student obtains can often result in thousands of dollars in difference in future salaries. For athletes to be able to obtain this education free of charge is an advantage which millions of other college students do not have. “College is a rite of passage for many young adults, not everyone gets the opportunity to attend but those who do have a plethora of doors open up for them which would not have otherwise been possible” (Miller 1997). Coming out of college debt free provides these athletes with larger potential earnings as they will not have to spend the next 20 years of their life paying off debt they would have otherwise accumulated. There is a very small proportion of athletes who make it to the next level from college, the scholarships which they are provided with allows them to instantly become competitive in the job market as soon as they graduate from their school.

Student athletes on the surface seemingly receive the best possible deal by receiving a free education. Being able to go through college without having to worry about paying back student loans over the next 20 years is a feeling which most college students can not relate to. However, these college students know that their primary reasoning for attending a college is to obtain an education which will in turn help them get a job in the future. Student-athletes do not have this luxury. In Richard McKenzie’s article Does the NCAA Exploit College Athletes- An Economics and Legal Reinterpretation McKenzie describes the unfair treatment by the NCAA towards their athletes. His article discusses how the NCAA pushes the idea of these athletes being “student-athletes” with emphasis on “student” coming first. This is a false claim made by the NCAA. “If one were to ask a football or basketball player at a University if they would rather get an A in the class or perform well on the playing field nine out of ten would say they would rather perform well on the field.” (Mckenzie 1987). The reasoning behind this is solely due to one reason, keeping their scholarships. A player’s scholarship ultimately lies in the hands of their coach and if they player is not performing to standard of which they are expected to be at a coach can take away this scholarship in a blink of an eye. It is because of this McKenzie says that athletes will take that extra hour in the gym over studying any day of the week. In the 2013 documentary Schooled: The Price of College Sports directed by Richard Finkell, the film discusses the worth of athletes to their universities and how universities and the NCAA exploit them for their talents. A point is brought up in the film saying “Major sports institutions are also significant academic institutions” (Finkell 2013) meaning that there is a high academic standard for which these universities have to keep. Unlike a typical applicant, players are not accepted into universities based on their academic excellence in high school but rather on their athletic ability. This becomes an issue when athletes are unable to perform at the academic level which the university expects of them. So how are universities supposed to maintain a high academic standard while still recruiting the best athletes to maintain a high standard on the playing field? In order to do this, universities have developed a system in which they simply enroll these athletes in classes with the intent to pass them no matter what. An example of Adrian Foster, former running back for the University of Tennessee, was taken in the film. Foster discusses some of these “ghost classes” which he took at Tennessee in which all he had to simply do was attend the class and he received an A. Although this is considered a major NCAA violation no action was ever taken by the NCAA and thus athletes and universities were allowed to get away with these ghost classes. These classes may bring the GPA of these athletes up however, they are still not learning anything in essence making their “degree just a meaningless piece of paper” (Finkell 2013). These are just examples of how the NCAA and universities devalues education towards many student athletes regardless of the athletes’ chances of making it into the professional ranks. As for those star players at each university who seemingly have an undeniable chance of making it into the pro’s the value of education is even less as discussed in Allen Sanderson’s The Case for Paying College Athletes. College is the required rest stop in between high school and becoming a professional. For many sports the only way to become a professional is by attending at least one year at a college, but this one year is a year which many athletes feel like they do not need thus making it more so of an obligation. (Sanderson 2016). Sanderson cites the example of current Philadelphia 76er and former LSU forward Ben Simons. Following his senior year of high school it was said that Simons could have entered the NBA draft straight out of high school and been the number one overall pick. Due to new rules Simons was required to attend at least one year at a university, choosing LSU the alma mater of his godfather. During his freshman year Simons played at an incredibly high level leaving no doubt in the minds of NBA scouts that he would still be the first overall pick. As soon as basketball season ended at LSU, four months prior to the academic calendar ending, Simons simply just stopped going to class. He did so because he knew in the coming months he would be drafted by a NBA team and would be making millions of dollars. Therefore, there was no point in him attending classes which would provide him with no value in the future. This is the case for several athletes who know they are good enough to make it to the professional ranks with ease (Sanderson 2016).  What is considered by the NCAA to be “student-athletes” are more so “athlete-students” than anything else. They attend universities to be athletes first and students second. “Students who commit to universities to are thinking they are only one step away from becoming a pro, so when in school the education which they obtain are for their back option because their primary goal is to turn playing the sport they love into a job” (Finkell 2013). So why compensate these athletes, who put in countless hours of practice and generate millions of dollars for their school, with something which provides little value to many of them, an education.

Student athletes are money makers for universities. Colleges are making more money off of student athletes than what they are putting in. Athletic scholarships are worth at max a few hundred thousand dollars per player over a span of four years while colleges and the NCAA make billions of dollars over that same span of four years. Athletes put in a tremendous amount effort and although a free education is extremely beneficial in the long run, players are attending universities in order to be athletes first and students second. Since such a small portion of collegiate athletes actually make it to the professional ranks, athletes should still receive scholarships, which cover their education free of charge, but they should also be allowed to make money off of their own brand (autograph and jersey sales etc.)
