Consider, for example, college basketball, one of the most popular college sports and a sport that nearly every college whether coeducational or single-gender participates in competitively. Every year, in January the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) hosts the men’s college basketball championship tournament, commonly known as “March Madness”. This is a month long tournament the begins with 68 teams all competing to be the best. In 2013, the NCAA generated nearly U.S. $1 billion in total revenue. However, a breakdown of where that revenue was generated would reveal approximately U.S. $800 million of that revenue or about 84 percent came from the “March Madness” Tournament (Garda, 2014)
With so much money being produced in a one-month span of time, one would think that the athletes, the people most responsible to the generation of such significant amounts of revenue would be able to enjoy the “fruits of their labor”. Unfortunately, while the coaches and other team personnel have salaries and may even get bonuses for how well their teams play, the players themselves get absolutely nothing. To be sure, the coaches of Division I basketball teams, such as perennial winners Duke, Kentucky. Louisville, and North Carolina “regularly earn annual salaries in excess of U.S. $1 million”, which is significantly higher than the salaries of some university presidents and world-renowned professors (Garda, 2014). One of the most common arguments for not allowing college athletes to be paid come from college administrators who argue that the original and continuing principle that underlies all college sport is the principle of sports amateurism which provides that sports is only secondary to the primary goal of educating young men and women to be upstanding and outstanding member of the community when they graduate (Edelman & Mitchell, 2013).
While it is true that for many of the players, they are given scholarships that offer a range of subsidies such as no tuition and free or discounted room and board costs; the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of non-athletes that also receive scholarships but do not generate any money or, at least, the amounts of money as described above for their schools.
Moreover, not only are the athletes not paid for the money that they earn for the schools, but they are also restricted from making their own money outside of sports. For instance, 2012 Heisman Trophy and Texas A&M student winner Johnny Manziel was suspended from participating in the first half of the opening game of the 2013 season because, the NCAA and his university has determined that his signing of autographs that they felt “trinket brokers would surely profit from (Sean, 2013). It is important to note here, that other scholarship students, such as computer science majors, would not be restricted, like Manziel, from working outside of class with a technology company. In fact, some of the world’s leading technology companies were started by scholarship students that worked while in school. For Manziel and other athletes, however, trying to sell his skills or notoriety would result in his suspension from the team. On the one hand, the colleges make enormous amounts of money on the backs of the athletes. While on the other hand, they commit the student to a life of student poverty in that they are not paid by the college and are not allowed to earn money for themselves.
References
Edelman, M. & Mitchell, H. (2013). Should college student-athletes be paid? U.S. New Digital Weekly, 5(52). 17.
Garda, J. D. (2014). Paying college athletes. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e0h&AN=102781423&site=eds-live&scope=site
Sean, G. (2013, Sep. 16). Should this kid be making $225,047 a year for playing college football? Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=90102203&site=eds-live&scope=site
