During these dog days of Summer, before college football training camps open, there is a searching for relevant topics to debate. More than ever, the case is being made for paying college athletes. Some colleges are making tens of millions in revenue and sponsorship money thanks to the athletic departments. How about throwing a little cash to the kids doing the work? In recent weeks, people like college basketball analyst Jay Bilas, noted ESPN, many coaches and others have made the case that the players deserve a cut of what they are producing for their schools. Last week, LWOS College Football Department Head Donald King wrote a compelling piece about the end of amateurism in college sports. Donald is a Stanford guy, so he has to have some gravitas, right?
They are correct in so many ways. The NCAA is in need of a dramatic overhaul. The system of haves and have-nots extends across many lines straight to a system of serfdom for some. Schools sell jerseys with the name of a player on the back and the player gets nothing from it, (of course the answer is for the schools to sell things other than jerseys). College sports has become so big and unwieldy, it is impossible for the NCAA officials to manage it all. Some schools are making tens of millions in revenue thanks to the athletic departments. How about spreading the wealth a little? All valid points. Also wrong and unworkable.
To this point, all anyone has come up with is a theory….pay the players doing the work. Give them a stipend…a little spending cash on top of their scholarships. Over the years, though, whatever wisdom I have gained tells me that theories do not work without details, and no one, and I mean no one, has presented the details to make this work.
Who gets paid? I recently had a conversation with a former D1 college football player who also has a couple of Super Bowl rings. His answer to this question was, “Follow the green.” In other words pay the players in the sports making money. Ok. Now we’re off and running. We are going to pay football players and basketball players. But wait. At Stanford, Notre Dame, UConn, Tennessee and Baylor, among others, the women’s basketball teams sell out arenas and bring in some cash. So pay the women’s basketball players at those schools? What abut the others? No? Well that creates a massive recruiting imbalance in favor of a few schools, doesn’t it? And frankly, look around the college football landscape and not all D1 programs are thriving. There are plenty of programs that will drown financially under the added regulation of paying players on top of their scholarships.
I also engaged in a lively on-air radio debate with noted sports columnist Jason Whitlock. I asked him what we were supposed to do about the non-football and non-basketball athletes. Does the swim team get paid? They are putting in the hours and the effort also. Whitlock said only the money making sports would get paid. Everyone else would still have their scholarships. Sounds reasonable, I said. Until you realize that by having to pay out hundreds of thousands in extra benefits to football and basketball players every month for six to seven months every year, they are draining financial resources used to pay for non-revenue sports like men’s and women’s tennis. It has long been accepted that money made in the major sports goes to pay for the “smaller” sports. I proffered that if we are shifting those monies to cash payouts for football and basketball players, schools will start dropping the other sports. Viable athletes who are getting a college education thanks to their volleyball scholarship are going to be out of luck because they chose the wrong sport a decade ago. Whitlock said he was okay with that and I suspect he is not alone.
I reminded him that if you start cutting women’s sports, you likely also have some Title IX violations. Whitlock and others on the show said that should be a non-issue in this determination. Sure. Unless you are the one running the university and the federal department of education notifies you that you no longer qualify for millions of dollars in much needed federal funding because you violated Title IX provisions.
How Much Do We Pay? Let’s assume for a moment that all the stars and moons align with dancing unicorns and all of the unresolved issues above do not exist. We then have to figure out how much to pay these players. The general thought is a monthly stipend of a few thousand dollars helps bridge the gap between what their scholarship covers and their real world expenses. Let’s agree to give them all $2k monthly and call it good. Hold on though. $2k per month goes a lot further in Athens, Georgia and Lincoln, Nebraska than it does it Seattle, Washington or Los Angeles, California. So again, we are unintentionally tampering with the scales of recruiting balance. Do players get cost of living increases each year? Are we going to pay the third string linebacker the same as the starting running back? How do think that goes over for the running back? Hey, the back-up center can’t help it that he’s not lightning quick like a receiver, but he is going to get paid less. Yes, I get that this is how it works at the next level. But we are not talking about the 32-team NFL with 53 man rosters, owned by billionaires. We are talking about hundreds of public and private educational institutions, with much larger teams and costs.
When a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board recently granted Northwestern football players the right to unionize, analysts saw this as the beginning of the play for pay model. Of course people failed to look at the details of the ruling. The players never brought revenue sharing to the table. Their issues were keeping their scholarships even if they get hurt and can no longer play, and extended health care for injuries attained while they played for the school. Frankly every college athlete deserves those things and schools should jump on now before they are forced to later. But read the NLRB ruling. It says these athletes were employees of the school because of the hours they put in for the school, and their scholarships were proof of financial compensation. Oops. If the scholarships already count as compensation, a lot of 20 year old athletes better get ready to learn how to pay taxes on their $50,000 scholarship.
Be careful what you ask for athletes. Follow the details. There are many things that need to be overhauled with the NCAA for it to operate with reasonable functionality and governance. The amateurism of old is dead. However, when we don’t pay attention to details we get few answers and we wind up with things like a ridiculous four team college football playoff. That’s a diatribe for another time.
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