Sports

Paying College Athletes: Why It Should Be Done And How To Do It

For quite some time, there has been a great debate about whether or not college athletes should be paid. Some people believe that a scholarship should be a sufficient payment. After all, a scholarship can easily be worth $ 15,000 to $ 25,000 or more per year, plus a career after college that can be worth a million dollars for a lifetime. In addition, student athletes receive all kinds of benefits while they are in college, such as staying in luxury hotels, being seen on national television and all the notoriety that comes with being a regular athlete. It’s hard to put a price on all that.

However, considering the fact that certain college sports generate millions of dollars for college sports programs, many people believe that athletes are being used. If the average soccer scholarship is worth $ 20,000 per year, but the university earns $ 70,000 per year in revenue per scholarship player (note that this figure is only an estimate; the actual number may be higher), the university You will earn $ 50,000 per year, per fellow, or $ 200,000 over a four-year period.

It is very difficult to put a numerical value on exactly how much an athlete is worth to a university. A star quarterback will not only help sell tickets, but will also generate a lot of merchandise sales. The NCCA will not allow colleges to sell a college football jersey with a player’s name on it, but will sell the jersey with the player’s number, which is easily recognizable in local and sometimes national markets. Top universities make huge sums of money from just this type of merchandise, yet the student athlete whose number is used to sell merchandise will not see a penny of the profit. To say that the student athlete is not being exploited in this situation is an understatement.

It goes way beyond that. College sports shows win millions of television and advertising contracts. They also contribute millions of dollars in donations from sports boosters. Yes, salaries must be paid to sports directors and coaches, not to mention travel and other costs for student athletes, and it’s great that major college football and basketball programs help fund non-income sports programs. However, the fact of the matter is that compared to the amount of income that student athletes generate for their universities, what they receive in return is very small.

This is where it gets really interesting. An athlete can be “disciplined” for selling their tickets to a fan on game day, but how much money do NCAA directors make as a result of the efforts of student athletes? The reality is that college athletes literally pay a large portion of the wages of every person employed by the NCAA. If an NCAA executive is capable of driving a Mercedes, he can thank a star quarterback or running back for that, and maybe even several steps away.

So here’s the point: If the NCAA, coaches, and athletic directors can make huge sums of money from student athletes, shouldn’t student athletes have a piece of the pie, too? This is not to say that college athletes should be paid large amounts of money, but it would definitely be nice if their scholarships paid a little more to go out for pizza every now and then, or buy nice clothes, just a little money. extra to spend as a way of saying “thank you” for your efforts.

If for some reason college athletes could be paid, that opens up a whole new can of worms. Every athlete on a 125-player soccer team works very hard in training, but only 11 can start on offense and defense, do you only pay the starters? Also, if you were to pay the star quarterback more than you pay for an “ok” receiver, you will run into a lot of other problems. With that said, the first thing to avoid when paying college athletes is having student athletes squabble over how much money they make or should make, which is frequently the case in the NFL.

The second thing you want to avoid is an uneven playing field. While some universities at the Division I level could afford to pay athletes, many simply do not generate enough revenue. If a student athlete knows that they can earn more at USC than they will if they play for their state university, then the playing field becomes more uneven than it already is. Athletes would almost always choose “money schools” over other colleges. Technically, this happens today more than people realize, because the universities with the most tradition, the best coaches and the best records are usually the universities with the most money … but, if one university could pay athletes more than others universities, the playing field would be even more uneven.

If you are going to start paying athletes, all athletes must be paid the same amount of money, and all colleges should have the same amount of money to pay their athletes, which could be predetermined by the NCAA. Even if this amount were a small amount, like $ 1,000 PER YEAR, per player (which totals ($ 125,000 per year for a college football team with 125 players), paid every month during the school year, it would be much fairer student athletes … and most colleges at the Division I level certainly could afford it. For the few colleges that couldn’t afford it, the NCAA could always put up the extra money from the millions it generates from bowling Another alternative would be to cut the salaries of all NCAA executives who have been enriched by NCAA athletics by 25%, and give the difference to athletes …

Most of this article focused on college football programs. The revenue generated from basketball programs is even more staggering considering that the teams are smaller, the travel expenses are less expensive, and fewer scholarships must be awarded, making the earnings the NCAA makes from the college basketball programs are the same. more amazing.

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