The NCAA and "Student-Athletes"

The National College Athletic Association's (NCAA) March Madness tournament is big business. That is obvious. According to SBNation, the NCAA's TV deal for the tournament with Turner Broadcasting System, an American media company, is worth US$19.6 billion in total. The first deal was originally signed in 2010 and was originally written so that Turner would pay US$10.8 billion over the course of 14 years for broadcasting rights for the tournament. The deal was extended in 2016, for an additional 8 years. This cost Turner another US$8.8 billion, and it means that the company will have broadcasting rights until 2032.

The tournament is by far the largest source of income for the NCAA. The NCAA's official financial statement for the 2017-18 year shows that the Association generated US$ 844, 267, 484 in revenue, from television and marketing rights fees. Over 777 million dollars from this was the result of their evidently lucrative deal with Turner.

Considering all of this, it would be assumed that the athletes, the reasons people are watching basketball games, would be paid extremely high salaries and bonuses. However, this is not the case. Collegiate athletes, or student-athletes as they are more commonly known, are required to sign an agreement which prohibits them from earning an income as a result of their sport. If this is not signed, athletes are prevented from competing in collegiate athletics. The repercussions of this include a significantly reduced probability of being signed to professional sports teams; and the loss of an athletic scholarship which covers the full cost of a university education.

This ban extends to receiving income from sources other than the NCAA or the university itself. The rule requires athletes to sell their likeness to the NCAA for the period of time they are college athletes. Essentially, this means that if an athlete is making money because they are a student-athlete, they must forgo their athletic scholarship or have their money confiscated. An example of this is the case of Donald De La Haye, a kicker at the University of Central Florida.

De La Haye's source of income was his YouTube channel, which now has over 1.2 million subscribers. His YouTube channel was "monetised"; they received advertisements from various corporations. The NCAA ruled last year that the UCF kicker was ineligible for competition; the Association cited this rule:

A student-athlete may establish his or her own business, provided the student-athlete’s name, photograph, appearance, or athletics reputation are not used to promote the business.

NCAA RULES
AND REGULATIONS
GUIDEBOOK

The debate that then arises is whether student-athletes should be paid salaries, and if so, whether they should then have their scholarships taken away from them. Usually, the three options in the debate are:

• Pay the athletes, and allow them to keep their scholarships

• Pay the athletes, and take away their scholarships

• Preserve the status quo (no salary but keep scholarships in place)

However, I have an alternative solution, which is to reduce the role of sports in academic institutions. Collegiate athletics are detrimental to the operation of most universities; they cost money and lower academic standards. Between the years 2005 and 2009, just 7 public universities broke even or made profits from collegiate athletics. In addition to this, it is widely documented that standards are routinely lowered for student-athletes in order to keep them eligible for sports. In a 2017 interview with Bleacher Report, the then-UCLA, now-Arizona quarterback Josh Rosen claimed that "[American] football and school don't go together.. They just don't. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs."

Rosen's claims are supported by reports claiming that some athletes spend an average of over 40 hours-a-week training, despite official NCAA regulations restricting athletes to just 20 hours a week.

Athletes are often enrolled in classes that are significantly less rigorous than their non-athlete peers, in order to maintain the grade requirements to compete under NCAA guidelines. For these reasons, one would have to be majorly misinformed if they believed that athletes were receiving an academic education.

Graph showing number of hours per week spent on athletic activities.

Moreover, athletes are frequently given "paper classes"; classes that have no lectures and that usually require just one final essay. In March 2014, whistleblowers leaked one of the essays required for a paper class at the University of North Carolina. It was just 146 words, has 6 noticeable grammar and punctuation mistakes, and, given the level of vocabulary and sentence structure, could easily be mistaken for the work of a 7-year-old. The paper received an A-.


In order to solve this problem, programmes in major sports at major universities should be abolished and replaced with intermediary leagues between school and the professional leagues. Alternatively, athletes could go straight to the professional leagues after school. Athletes could then, of their own volition, enroll in university courses. This would not only increase academic standards, by removing athletes that failed to meet the general standards, but it would also improve standards of play in the various sports as well. Athletes would focus their efforts entirely on their sport and would be more motivated to play, as their incomes would be dependent on market forces.

This solution would be beneficial for both those who believe in stricter academic standards, as well as those in favour of higher levels of play in sport. What do you think? Should college athletes be paid salaries? Should universities even have sports teams?