Every year, in the month of March thousands of Americans are glued in front of their televisions watching colleges battle in a tournament to determine who is best team in the nation. Fans frantically fill out brackets, looking at stats and deciphering players to best predict the results of the tournament when too often those who fill out a bracket based on mascot colors take all the winnings. But what you do not see on the surface is that this multibillion dollar industry is run on student-athletes who do not get a penny of those earnings. Not only has this “dance” gotten out of hand, but also the underlying system behind it, the NCAA. When the NCAA was formed in December 1905, the clear policy was that the student athletes were to be amateurs— that meant "any inducements" to attend a school based on their athletic skills were prohibited. There was no ambiguity that this policy did not allow scholarships based on athletic prowess. The issue at hand, then, is not whether or not college athletes should be paid per se, but rather whether they are compensated fairly.
Duke Freshmen: Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett
March madness brings in over $1 billion of TV advertising revenue alone, which is nearly more than the entire NFL postseason combined and accounts for approximately 90% of the NCAA’s total season revenue (Parker). One of the most important revenue streams are the broadcast rights. In 2010 the NCAA signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion contract with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. The deal was extended in April 2016 for a combined total rights fee of $8.8 billion that will keep the tournament on the networks until 2032. Last year, 68 teams earned an invitation to play in the tournament. Each of those team’s conferences will get a piece of a $220 million pot of money. For each game a team plays, its conference gets a payout, spread over six years. For playing one game the team’s conference gets roughly $1.7 million. If a team makes it all the way to the final game, it can earn as many as five units, totaling $8.3 million. If a team makes the final game from the first-four bracket, it could earn a total of six units. It is apparent that many teams are making a lot of money yet the people actually creating the product, the players, aren’t seeing any of that. Why?
Coach Majerus and Andre Miller
According to the NCAA, the players are student-athletes, not employees. They claim that these student-athletes are “amateurs” and must sign and abide by a 400 page book of rules. One clause states: “We own the likeness of your image forever and throughout the universe.” To put it simply, the NCAA rules prevent college athletes from being compensated in any way connected with their sport other than a limited athletic scholarship. They cannot even accept textbooks, a bag of groceries or a trip home to see their parents. Nor are they allowed to access the free market for their own promotional and marketing deals. Take a case where Rick Majerus, a college basketball coach formerly at Utah, had a player who just lost his parents (Berkowitz). He then proceeded to have lunch with the player and then send him on a plane home to see his family. The NCAA said that this act was a violation because it was giving an athlete something you wouldn't give another student. It is obvious that the NCAA doesn’t want students to receive any monetary compensation, but why?
Texas A&M Quarterback: Johnny Manziel brought his school a wave of media exposure that was worth an estimated $37 million in just a three month period
The NCAA persists that its players are “amateurs” and that paying players would result in the loss for the purity of sports and competition. It is true that paying players to play, would cause many to play for the money instead of for the love of the game. For years, the NCAA and its defenders have argued the player compensation ban is necessary to preserve the amateur nature of college sports and the educational mission of the NCAA and its member universities. Once that system is broken they claim that college sports will never be the same. Unfortunately bribery already exists in the system and students have trouble focusing on their academics and their athletics. A major example of this occurred with the Louisville head coach Rick Pitino where many prospects were bribed to attend. The only major difference between pro football and college football, besides a few rule changes, is that pros are paid and college athletes are not. If you had no idea what football was and saw two games, one NCAA game and one NFL game, you would probably say they were the same games played by different teams. You would see the same advertising, extensive coaching and training staff, interviews, etc. These students bring tremendous amount of revenue and play the game just like pro players but aren’t compensated enough for it.
The NCAA is a multibillion dollar monopoly where you don’t have to pay those who create the product anything. People always ask if we were to pay athletes, where this money would come from subsequently say that schools could not afford it. It is true that most schools do not make a profit, but profit means money earned after expenses are paid. Many schools find clever ways to find expenses to include to maintain a nonprofit. There is a reason why the top ten largest football stadiums in the US are owned by colleges and universities. The University of Michigan even claimed that on game days their stadium is the fourth largest city in the state! Additionally, 39 of the 50 states in the US have coaches as the highest paid state employees (Gibson). The average college football coaches salary is over $1 millions a year, compared to the student-athlete who is struggling through school, and whose family is struggling too (Gibson). It seems absurd to call a $6 billion industry one for “amateurs”.
With all that said, the NCAA believes that their players are given a great opportunity to study at the great universities in the United States, right? Not so fast. The NCAA inflates graduation rates by comparing student athletes, who are by definition “full-time students”, to a broad student body consisting of both full-time and part-time students. For instance, the NCAA uses a six-year measurement that adjusts for athletes who leave universities “in good academic standing," however part-time students are more likely to take longer than six years to graduate. Research from the Collegiate Sports Research Institute at the University of South Carolina found that between 2006-2012, Division 1 football players graduated at a rate 18 percent lower than their peers; men's basketball players at a rate 20 percent lower; and women's basketball players at 9 percent lower (Nusbaum). Of the 80-90 percent that do graduate, many students have taken classes that have very little value or finish with degrees in areas that won’t help them get work. According to the NCAA documentary: The Business of Amateurs, the University of North Carolina for years had so called “paper classes” in African American studies that would boost a student athlete’s grade point average during the summer. Many students-athletes would also be enrolled in Swahili, and during an interview with HBO Real Sports admitted to neither having a use for it nor could they even speak any Swahili. This is probably one of the major issues which they would learn about in one of their African American studies courses.
Ultimately however, an education is only useful if you can actually attend the university, where you don’t get injured and lose your scholarship, or that you actually have time to study. In sports, there is tremendous amounts of risk. Any hit by a 200 lb plus grown man while returning a punt, or driving to the hoop could mean injury. Injury in this type of industry could be just sitting out for a game or worse a loss of scholarships. It has been revealed that when Walter Byers took over the NCAA in 1951 as Executive Director, he coined the term “student-athlete” to specifically to avoid workers’ compensation for injuries, now over sixty years later it is still working. Last year alone there were approximately 21,000 football related injuries, of which 800 were serious spinal injuries (Solomon). Take Kyle Hardrick who had received a scholarship from the University of Oklahoma but after tearing his lateral meniscus, he lost his scholarship and was left to pay $10,000 while his insurance covered $20,000. He eventually was unable to attend that university because of all the bills and dropped out. The university that had claimed to be giving Kyle an education for his play all of sudden retreated because they had squeezed out everything they could from Kyle and were moving on. To say that these players who risk their careers every single day they step onto the field, court or ice like Kyle are currently fully compensated is just ridiculous.
In the end, the NCAA is a multibillion dollar industry which is in a very unique situation where their primary “amateur” labor force does not see any of the monetary gain and compensation. I am not saying we need to pay these athletes millions of dollars or to pay all of them, but to pay everybody nothing just is wrong. Often times, we see the end product whether it be college or pro and enjoy what we see but ignore the intricacies behind it. In reality, only 1.6% of College football athletes and 1.2% of Men’s Basketball athletes become pro athletes. Unfortunately for the rest of the 98%, they walk into the job market with their six African American studies and Swahili credits and if they’re lucky, no student or medical bills. Even as many dreams are crushed and made during the Madness of March, the greatest loss is that of reality. Reality that the multibillion dollar business takes 100% of all the revenue and that the players whose labor produces all the money get nearly none. Not to say March Madness is only evil, but one must step back and consider the big picture and ask, is this fair?
References:
“Amateurism." NCAA Home Page. NCAA, 25 Nov. 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
Berkowitz, Steve, Jodi Upton, and Christopher Schnaars. "USA TODAY Sports." USA TODAY Sports. USA Today, 2014.
"Crossfire: Should College Athletes Be Paid?" YouTube. YouTube, 20 Mar. 2014. Web.
Gibson, Charlotte. “Who Gets Paid More, Your College Coach or Your Governor?” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 20 Mar. 2018, www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22454170/highest-paid-state-employees-include-ncaa-coaches-nick-saban-john-calipari-dabo-swinney-bill-self-bob-huggins.
Gumbel, Bryant. "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel”. HBO. Home Box Office, n.d. Web.
Nusbaum, Eric. “The NCAA's Exploitation of Student Athletes Would Make Fidel Castro Proud.” The New Republic, 18 Mar. 2014, newrepublic.com/article/117059/ncaa-student-athletes-are-exploited-much-amateurs-cuba.
Parker, Tim. “What Does the NCAA Really Net from March Madness?” Investopedia, Investopedia, 21 Oct. 2018, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/031516/how-much-does- ncaa-make-march-madness.asp.
Solomon, Jon."College Athletes' Rights: NCAA Requires Health Insurance, but Schools Decide What to Pay." Alabama Today. Alabama Media Group, 19 Feb. 2012. Web. 29 Apr. 2015.