Paying College Basketball and Football Players

Paying College Basketball and Football Players

The top fifteen highest paid college football coaches make a combined $53.4 million dollars annually, while 13,877 Division I collegiate football players get paid zero dollars altogether per year (http://www.nytimes.com/).  College basketball makes 770 million dollars only off of the March Madness tournament, but the players do not see a cent of this revenue (Ibid).  One may wonder why there is all this money, yet the true makers of the money do not prosper.  The reason is that college athletes cannot receive payment; it is illegal.  These athletes are students, so the NCAA has ruled that athletes should not receive compensation beyond a scholarship.  These players’ lives revolve around their sport, and with no free time they cannot work a job.  Free time is hard to come by, and school work and playing takes up most of their time.  Although these players get scholarships, they do deserve pay because revenue is so high and time to have a job is theoretically impossible.  To solve this problem, there should be a system put into place that will pay college football and college basketball players, while at the same time it could help hold the academic integrity; it may also increase academic performance.

The problem with players not getting paid is that these student athletes who bring in the revenue have little to no spending money, their coaches are overpaid, and the NCAA is swimming in cash earned by these players.  People argue that these student athletes would have no way of surviving at this level without the help of the colleges and role models who surround them, but getting to college is a feat in itself for some of these kids, and the breadwinners are these student athletes.  The problem with some players is that their expenses are weighing down on them.  An average college student’s expenses amount to 2,066 dollars per year (http://www.collegeboard.org/).  These expenses are not taken care of by the colleges; therefore the student athletes have to supply the money to pay for these expenses themselves.

Some players come from destitute backgrounds, and most of these players only know the life of the streets.  These specific kids come to college and stick to their street ways.  Four TCU football players were arrested on February 15, 2012 for selling marijuana, cocaine, Ecstasy, and prescription drugs (http://www.espn.com/).  Many people at the university argued that this could have been avoided if drug tests and better discipline was implemented, but would it really help?  These kids have no cash flow, and no time to make money either.  They did not go about making money in a good way, but to these kids from the ghetto who have no money, dirty money is still money.  No time to work and no cash flow most likely led these players to becoming drug dealers.  They are kids, but they are also human, and everyone knows that to function well in society money becomes a necessity.  These TCU players and all other college football and college basketball players have no money, but on the other side of the spectrum, their coaches have plenty of cash.

In college football and basketball, the salaries of the coaches are in the millions.  In college football “this season, at least 64 coaches are making more than $1 million. Of those, 32 are being paid more than $2 million, nine are making more than $3 million, and three are making more than $4 million. Texas' Mack Brown tops the list; he's being paid more than $5 million (http://www.usatoday.com)/.”  Rick Pitino, the head basketball coach at Louisville University, makes over 7 million dollars per year (Ibid).  These numbers show why players feel cheated.  Student athletes are the ones who perform on the court or field, yet they are the ones who are cheated out of millions of dollars.  Players also have to participate in talking to the media just like the coaches have to.  Players are just important to the university as the coaches are and without the players the games would not be entertaining.  The market is booming while these players’ pockets are being picked, and the revenue is at an all time high.

A surplus of money comes into these basketball and football programs; the numbers are mind blowing.  TV deals are the main reason for the huge revenue that is being produced in these two sports.  “Last year, Turner Broadcasting and CBS signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal for the television rights to the N.C.A.A.’s men’s basketball national championship tournament (http://www.nytimes.com)/.”  “On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS (Bowl Championship series) $500 million (http://www.espn.com)/.”  All of the revenue that these two sports produce from these television contracts is getting to the point of insanity.  There is now so much money in advertising that these contracts are penciled in with no thought; money is just part of the games now, and the NCAA loves it.  The problem at hand is that many players do not love it; they feel exploited and used, as they should.  Another problem is that paying these student athletes is considered immoral to many people in society, but these ideals can easily be shifted with some very simple changes to the system.

Many people feel that a student should not receive money or benefits because it will degrade the integrity of the game and steer athletes focus away from school.  This is most likely true, but to eliminate this problem there can be incentives to encourage academic studies.  Encouraging kids to stay in school is a major factor in today’s day in age because a majority of the better players in basketball leave after one year of college, and players in football leave after the minimum requirement of three years in college.  Good players leave college early every year to go pro in football or basketball.  This is becoming a major problem, and in many ways it is hurting the games.  This can easily be eliminated by implementing a salary based pay system at the college level in football and basketball.  Joe Nocera of the New York Times proposed a great idea for this salary system.

A good start to the salary system would be“$3 million for the salaries for the football team, and $650,000 for basketball, with a minimum salary of $25,000 per athlete (http://www.nytimes.com)/.”  These salaries would leave the teams with plenty of money to distribute to their players, but some schools would be in deficits.  Schools that are in deficits can have the option of paying all players on a minimum salary of $10,000 per player.  Conferences will also have to pitch in money to help schools pay players.  Conferences should be responsible for thirty percent of each school’s payment to players.  Conferences should have to pay because they are the ones who gain the most money from the big television deals, so they have plenty of money to hand out to the schools who need it to pay their players.  For example, the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big 12, Pac 12, and Big East receive an average of $114.6 million dollars a year from the Bowl Championship series alone (http://www.espn.com/).  This leaves a lot of revenue that schools all across these conferences can bring in.  The football players’ payments can easily be solved by schools obtaining money from conference revenue.  Basketball is not as hard to figure out because there are very few players to pay on basketball teams.  Basketball rosters are slim, but they are still not as slim as they should be.  This could be a problem that teams run into at the time of pay day, so how to solve it?  The NCAA will have to trim roster sizes. 

Roster sizes on college basketball and college football teams are way too high.  Cutting roster sizes would be vital to making the system possible.  Football roster sizes would be capped off at 90 players; this would cut many unneeded players for a lot of schools, considering some schools have roster sizes over 120 players (Ibid).  Scholarships on football teams would also drop from 85 to 63 a year, freeing up an average of $440,000 a year for schools (Ibid).  Basketball roster sizes would be cut to 13 players per team, and this would allow 10 scholarship athletes per year (Ibid).  Cutting these roster sizes saves money on traveling expenses, food costs, equipment costs, and scholarships.  There is so much money being spent in college sports that is not necessary, and eliminating these unnecessary costs will free up money to make a salary system possible. 

This salary system serves two purposes, paying these deserving players and giving players the incentive to stay in school and play harder.  This system will not only pay these players for being on the team and serving the school with their athletic abilities though; the system will reward the academically motivated in a way that no one has thought of before.  Athletes that make the dean’s list will receive a $10,000 bonus for that year.  For example, if a player is paid the minimum salary of $25,000, they will be paid $35,000 on the year.  If that player were to stay four years and make the dean’s list every year, then that player will have made $140,000 in their college tenure.  For players who are stars of the team and have jerseys being sold in stores, they will have the right to obtain a 10% portion of the profit off of their merchandise sold.  These players can only receive this money if they stay their entire four years of college and graduate.  This incentive will help keep some star players around rather than letting these players leave like they have for years now.

Another solution is putting a graduate athletic program into effect; this is also another great incentive for players to stick around and broaden their horizons.  Out of 5,500 players in college basketball, only 50 went to become pros last year (http://www.nytimes.com/).  This is a strong reason why further education should strongly be encouraged amongst these athletes.  The hope of going pro is something that every college athlete wants, but the reality is that it is not something that happens very often.  What a graduate athletic program would do is allow players to have the option to get a master’s degree in their major and be allowed to play two more years.  These players will still be compensated, but on a lower level.  Players who want to obtain their masters will be paid a flat rate of $25,000, and this cannot be raised or lowered.  A transfer option will come along with this program also; this option is in place because some graduate programs are not offered at certain schools.  This program will educate more athletes, keep the veterans in the game, and it will show the younger kids that getting a master’s degree and being an athlete is possible.  The pay for play and the incentives to strive for a better education would be put into place, but doubters would still argue that these kids do not do enough to deserve the money; this can be refuted by placing broad responsibilities on these players’ backs.

Most college athletes are viewed as role models in this day and age, so when these college athletes disobey the rules it opens many eyes for the wrong reasons.  Strict rules and harsh punishments can eliminate these basic issues though.  Players who violate one NCAA or team rule should automatically be suspended one game and fined $5,000, and a second offense would result in a direct dismissal from the team.  Punishment in the NCAA is too light with the system that is in place; students can get in trouble multiple times and barely feel in the wrong for what they have done because their schools do not strongly enforce the rules.  Stephen Garcia, former quarterback of the South Carolina Gamecocks, was suspended five times before they finally dismissed him from the team (http://www.espn.com/).  This lack of discipline gives the school and the NCAA a bad reputation because it showed that no matter what a player does, he can get away with it if he is winning games.  This gave the wrong message to the fans, and if he had been dismissed after his second offense this would have never became an issue.  These athletes are role models, and no type of role model should be getting in trouble as much as Garcia did.  New rules and punishments can easily nip this in the bud with absolutely no problems.

On top of enforcing harsher behavior requirements, schools should enforce harsher academic requirements, too.  Every player should maintain a 2.9 GPA to stay on his team, and a 3.3 GPA must be kept intact to receive his money for playing.  Implementing GPA requirements will cause athletes to get their face in their books and out of trouble because the kids who want to cause trouble also want money; the money should easily overpower the urge to go out and be promiscuous as many college students like to be.  Another requirement of being in the position that these athletes are in is required community outreach.  Teams can choose how they want to outreach to the community, or players can do their community service on their own, but players will be expected to do two hours of community service every week.  This may seem like too much, but the money that they make and the benefits that they reap should make this a very reasonable proposal.

Clearly the system that is in place is one that hurts these athletes while the people who run the show make all the money.  College basketball and college football are becoming American staples; on Saturdays, stadiums fill up with thousand or people to watch players battle on the gridiron, and from November to April arenas are packed full of people to watch players dribble, shoot, dunk, and pass on opponents.  These events add up, and the total revenue has reached the billion marks.  It is about time to change the system, and the solutions are all laid out in a manner that will hold academic integrity while most likely increasing graduation rates.  Who would disapprove of this system if he or she really analyzed how beneficial this could be for not only the game, but the students, too.  Scholarships would be rewarded, money would be given to the deserving, and the NCAA’s market would expand because the game would become more competitive.  Not only are these solutions beneficial, but they are revolutionary; the trick is persuading the public opinion that pay for play is the only way.