College sports are one of Americas great pastimes, Whether it be watching football on Saturdays or tuning into March Madness during the spring, but what the fans don’t see on the screen is that the NCAA is exploiting their players’ talent to increase profits. When the NCAA was created in 1906, football was a more dangerous game. In the 1905 season, eighteen players were killed mid-game, so current president at the time Theodore Roosevelt created the NCAA in order to make safety regulations. The National Collegiate Athletic Association states on their website that “The NCAA was founded in 1906 to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time” (NCAA.org), but times are different now and not only is the NCAA failing to keep players from being exploited, they are now the ones exploiting the players. The exploitation of these student-athletes is due to the NCAA’s Amateurism rule, not allowing them to receive money or advertise themselves in any way or receive any of the money coming from big television deals or school sponsorships. Also the scholarships being given can be handed out as easily as they can be taken back. This means a college can promise a student an education and the second they are no longer of use to the team anymore, that promise can be taken away. In order for the NCAA to successfully protect their players from exploitation, they must loosen up on rules regarding players advertising themselves, reward players for their success and use the money that these players earned for the school to help prepare them for post-college life.

The NCAA claims that every student athlete is an Amateur and that they are a student first and an athlete second. Amateurism requirements do not allow “Contracts with professional teams, Salary for participating in athletics, Prize money above actual and necessary expenses, Play with professionals, Tryouts, practice or competition with a professional team, Benefits from an agent or prospective agent, Agreement to be represented by an agent or Delayed initial full-time collegiate enrollment to participate in organized sports competition” according to NCAA.org. The NCAA believes that this is important in keeping the game pure and to set the priority of school over athletics, but the rules are preventing these athletes from doing many things that have no effect on their education. Some of these athletes need money to help support their family, but are not allowed to due to the NCAA rules, so this leads to kids receiving money in illegal ways. An example of this was seen by the great NFL wide receiver A.J Green. In college “Green admitted to selling his 2009 Independence bowl jersey to a former North Carolina player for a thousand dollars” (Schlabach, ESPN.com) which is not allowed under NCAA rules and led to a four game suspension. The argument isn’t whether he broke the rule, which he clearly did, its about whether the rule should be there in the first place. A player cannot sell their memorabilia, but according to the rules a school can. According to Cnbc’s Darren Rovell, In the past “Auburn sold the pants worn by Cam Newton in the title game for $1,500, while Michigan sold the pants worn by Denard Robinson… against Notre Dame for $1,300” (Rovell 24). The schools are making a lot of money off of these players and their talent even without these sales, but still will not let a great player like Cam Newton or A.J Green sell a piece of memorabilia that they earned from their play. They are exploiting their players by not letting these players sell their own gear, and then letting schools go out and sell it themselves without giving any of the money to the players.

The NCAA is one of the biggest organizations in America. So big that some people will compare this to a cartel, but since it is a non-profit organization, nobody can challenge them legally on it. According to the Antitrust Bulletin in the Law Journal Library, “Economists have leveled three major charges against the NCAA. First, The NCAA operates as an employer cartel that suppresses athletes’ wages. Second, it creates market inefficiencies that transfer income from athletes to coaches and colleges. Third, The NCAA breeds hypocrisy which results in cheating on rules” (Mckenzie and Sullivan 377). By suppressing the pay of athletes, the NCAA Is receiving more profit than they know what to do with. According to Steve Berkowitz of Cbssports.com, “The NCAA had total revenue of nearly $1 billion during its 2014 fiscal year.” (Berkowitz). But according to NCAA.org their expenses were only $800 million which means there is a lot of leftover money. You also see a lot of this money going to the schools and coaches, but not to the athletes. Www.Thebestschools.org did a list of the top twenty-five highest paid college coaches, and you can see a lot of money is going to paying these guys. The highest paying coach, Jim Harbaugh, University of Michigan football coach, makes about nine million a year while the twenty-fifth highest, Mark Richt, University of Miami football coach, makes about four million a year. These coaches make a lot of money and are very crucial in the development of players in the NCAA, but they are not the ones making most of that money, it’s the student-athletes that are. Because all this money is going to the colleges and coaches, players find ways to cheat the system and get money illegally which leads to great careers getting wiped from the record books. One example of this was the great Reggie Bush who was a running back at the University of Southern California. In 2005, the great Trojan running back ran for over 2000 yards and won the Heisman trophy which he claimed was one of his biggest accomplishments in the documentary “30 for 30: Trojan war” aired on ESPN. After Bush got drafted to the New Orleans Saints an unknown source came out and said they heard that the former USC player had been receiving gifts from outside sources. This led to an investigation in which Bush was found guilty and striped of all of his records and his Heisman. Now obviously Bush should have been following the rules that the NCAA laid out, but these rules shouldn’t be there in the first place and now a college legend will not have left his mark on the college football world. The NCAA may say that it is trying to protect the players, but in reality, they are exploiting them and making millions from it.

The NCAA’s rules on scholarships are simple. A college can give a recruit a full-ride to their school as long as they are healthy and follow rules and regulations of the school. According to the NCAA, this only includes “Tuition and fees, room, board and course-related books” (NCAA.org). With this scholarship, players are expected to keep the required gpa needed to stay in school and also put in about 40 hours a week into their sport. This is not an easy task but the players know what is expected of them before they sign with a team. A school also can decide if they want to continue a scholarship after every year and gives a player a chance to appeal if they are told they will not receive their scholarship in the next year. The problem with this is that there is no safety net for these players. This means that an injury will not only end your athletic career, but your educational career as well. One example of a player losing his scholarship after an injury was a South Carolina Defensive end named Stanley Doughty. After his Junior year, Doughty left school for the draft. After not getting selected, he received a call from the Kansas City Chiefs who asked if he would like to come in for a meeting. Kansas City was interested in Doughty, but after an MRI they discovered his spine had been altered from past injuries and that he won’t play a single snap in the NFL. This was an injury that the University of South Carolina let him play three years with, but didn’t tell him that it would be a problem in the future. After hearing this he went back to South Carolina to finish his senior year. In 2005, Doughty got injured in a game against Tennessee after getting hit by a running back which sadly ended his career. After this, he planned on finishing his education, but that isn’t was happened. Doughty was left living in his parents’ house with only a few credits left until graduation and expensive medical bills. The following quote is from an interview with Meghan Walsh, a writer for the Atlantic. “Sandra Doughty, who was reluctant to send her son so far away, recalls how the recruiter kept saying if anything happened, they would take care of him, and they would call immediately.” But when Doughty went down, he received false hope from South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier and eventually his phone calls were ignored. These kids put a lot of work in order to better themselves and the school, but the schools only recognize what they receive and what they will receive from a player. By allowing Doughty to play all four years with a dangerous spine injury and then stripping his scholarship once that injury ends his career, they exploited him for his talents and left him with nothing but college credit hours from a school he cannot afford without a scholarship. 

Many people believe that these student-athletes do not receive anything, but that is not true. One of the largest parts of College sports is the opportunity to go to a college for next to nothing. An education is worth more than anyone can really say. People estimate that a scholarship saves you around $200,000 depending on which school you go to, but an education alone is worth a lot more. It’s true that some players that you see out on the field are going to make it to the pros and won’t work a day in their life, but less than two percent of the kids make it to the next level so an education is worth a lot to them. People believe that this is the perfect solution to the argument on the NCAA exploiting players, and it may have been at one point, but now these kids demand more. An education is very beneficial, but now in college sports, players will leave college early because they know that the next level of play is where the money is at. This is bad for college sports because now people are no longer coming to play in the NCAA in order to receive education, but only go because they are required to be there for one or two years before they can go to the professional level. If players stayed all four years, they would have a safety net for the future if their careers end quickly, but only giving them an education Is not enough to keep them at school. That is why this solution is no longer beneficial for the players and the game, just the NCAA who reaps from the benefits of these kids who are forced to come for a year before heading right back out.

Another possible solution to keep the NCAA from exploiting their athletes was just to pay players a set amount of money, but with this came a lot of questions that could not be answered very easily. Saying that the student athletes should be paid is easier said than done because there is more than just the big money making sports like Basketball and Football. This led to questions like “Would they pay all athletes or only the players in popular sports?” and “How much would each player receive?” These are questions that would need to be answered in order for the NCAA to even consider changing any rules it has out, but as of now there is not many answers that would lead to any sort of change. This is a solution that in theory could work but has too many questions with it that cannot be answered.

The best possible solution is not to abolish the rule stating that players cannot receive money, but to adjust the rules to make them more fair to the student athletes. Possible regulations on players that could be removed are rules regarding selling memorabilia, gear and autographs. If a player is popular enough to be able to sell merchandise promoting them, then they should be allowed to. This does not affect their education in any way and allows them to benefit more from playing in the NCAA. Another rule that should be changed is the restriction on players receiving prize money for winning tournaments. Winning a national championship in college sports is the best accomplishment you can achieve in any sport in college, whether it be in rowing or in football. If the NCAA allowed players to receive money for winning these championships, then games would be even more competitive. Many players believe that staying in college in order to pursue a national championship is pointless because it does not give you much other than free gear and bragging rights, but if there was a cash prize involved as well, players will compete even harder. Even with all these rules being lifted, there is still a lot of money that is going everywhere but the players. A solution to this problem is that the colleges, instead of spending over five million on a coach, can invest in tools that will help students in the future like a personal financial advisor that will help teach these college players how to save up the money that they earn in college so that if they do make it to the professional level, they know how to better spend their money. 

The NCAA was made in order to provide safety and prevent student athletes from being exploited by outside parties, but due to unfair and outdated rules, the NCAA is now the one exploiting their players. There have been many attempts to prevent this but it still persists. Some solutions like paying players a fee are too broad, but others like giving just an education is just not enough anymore. More and more kids leave every year as soon as they can and others don’t even bother taking their chances and play in professional leagues outside of the U.S just to avoid the NCAA’s unfair rules, so now should be the time that the rules get adjusted. By getting rid of some simple restrictions like allowing players to receive money for selling gear, memorabilia and other items and also rewarding players for winning tournaments, the NCAA can keep the money coming in from tv deals and put it back into the programs. By doing this, you can get these kids better help for staying focused in school and for thriving outside of school. 
