Magazine Article

Daniel Pak

NCAA ATHLETES ARE KINGS, MINUS THE WEALTH;

The NCAA refuses to update their rules of compensation, and student athletes are paying for it

Nigel Hayes begging for money/making a statement about fair compensation (Courtesy of Bader Beat)

When Zion Williamson broke his shoe, the entire world held their breath. Williamson is the projected number 1 pick in this year’s upcoming draft. In the basketball world, he is known for his highlight reel dunks and his insane combination of strength and athleticism. In the world of NCAA sports, he is the prized cash cow. The NCAA tournament was the second most watched since 1991 (Pelzman, 2019). ESPN’s college basketball viewership was up 15% (Koster, 2019). The only thing truly different about this year was Williamson.

However, a myriad of issues popped up when Williamson got hurt on February 20th. There was the issue of the age requirement to play in the NBA. There was the argument of if Zion should come back and play at all after getting hurt or if he should wait until the NBA. However, the biggest issue is that Zion didn’t make a penny for his efforts.

For the first time last year, the NCAA raked in $1 billion (Garcia, 2018). The athletes apart of the system saw none of that money, due to the NCAA’s amateurism rules. The dictionary defines amateurism as “An athlete who has never accepted money, or who accepts money under restrictions specified by a regulatory body, for participating in a competition (The Free Dictionary, 2016).” In this case, the NCAA is the regulatory body. They make the rules, decides who gets to play and doesn’t, and decides who gets paid and who doesn’t.

Nick Saban is the coach of the Alabama University football team. He is scheduled to make over $8 million a year (Berkowitz, 2018). When you think about it, it doesn’t quite seem fair that the players he’s coaching take in nothing while he makes more money per year then others will make in a lifetime. Players put their bodies on the line are often the ones selling merchandise. It’s very rare for fans to purchase merchandise because of the coach of a team. A personal anecdote; my brother bought a jersey with Zion Williamson’s name on it. Zion didn’t make a cent.

So why doesn’t the NCAA pay the players if they’re paying the coaches? Well the NCAA will tell you they do pay the players—in tuition. As most of you may know, Division I and II colleges can offer athletic scholarships to students who will come in and play for their sports teams. This is good for the college because often athletics will bring in the most amount of money. For example, I was the student accountant for the Portland State Box office last year and kept track of how much money Portland State made from all its activities. Football made the most money and it wasn’t even close.

Zion Williamson in pain after breaking his shoe (courtesy of CBS)

Often, this can be good for the student athlete too. Most students can’t pay for college on their own. I take out $12,000 in student loans per year, and my brother will need 3 times that when he starts college. And that’s where the NCAA places a big part of their argument. They often come out with generic sentences like “We offer once in a lifetime opportunities” and “The tuition we offer is equal to a payment.”

Normally this would be a good argument, and then you remember the $1 billion dollars in revenue. The players don’t make any money, the coaches make less than $10 million each (often significantly less), the schools take in some money, so where does the rest of it go? The NCAA. The NCAA lets the players play without compensation, and then takes all the money for themselves. No one is watching the games or paying for the tickets because it’s a NCAA event or because Nick Saban is coaching. They watch for people like Zion Williamson and thousands of others.

So, the public is mostly in agreement: college athletes should be compensated more fairly for their efforts. Why don’t we just pay them? Well that’s not exactly simple either. College football and men’s basketball made $757 million combined in 1999 (Kahn, 2007). This money comes from T.V. deals, merchandise, sponsors, and a horde of other revenue sources. If you contrast that to a sport like tennis, you begin to see the problem. Although college sports generate $1 billion, it’s not distributed equally across the sports. This brings up a host of other questions. Do we only pay some athletes? If we pay all athletes, how much do we pay them? Do we allow colleges to make offers to recruits like professional teams do to free agents?

That last question could cause a big problem. Obviously, schools have different budgets. Alabama and Alabama A&M would not be able to pay their players the same. This brings up a host of different issues. Previously, money is supposedly not a motivator for the players. They were decided on playing time, facilities, fit, and other factors about the school. Now if you have a player who came from a poor background, their pay level could be the main factor.

Take Western Kentucky’s Charles Bassey. Bassey is a projected second rick pick this year in the NBA draft. He was a very high recruit, and got looks from dozens of schools. The main reason he chose Western Kentucky was for the coaching staff. However, as it appears, Bassey is now headed to the NBA in search of a paycheck. Now think about how his recruiting would change. With the money side now a factor, Bassey would be less likely to look at a smaller Western Kentucky, and more likely to look at a bigger University of Kentucky.

And that would be one of the biggest downfalls of paying the players. It hurts smaller schools already low chances of landing a prized recruit. Western Kentucky hasn’t had an NBA prospect in almost 10 years. NBA prospects bring a variety of things like funds and exposure. If small schools can’t get that, they’re stuck in the NCAA equivalent of a poverty trap.    

Charles Bassey (Courtesy of NBC sports)

The NCAA has hidden behind this fact. Often the NCAA will bring up that “it’s just too complicated” to pay the players. Really, that’s not even a valid argument. I’m sure it was really complicated to navigate the fallout when slavery was abolished. The point is that people still felt it was wrong, and they figured it out. Athletes are currently suffering because the NCAA choose to avoid and deflect the issue.

While scholarships cover tuition, often they don’t cover food. When Shabazz Napier won a national championship for the university of Connecticut in 2013, he said something that should disturb everyone. “There are hungry nights I go to bed and I’m starving (Ganim, 2014).” That’s insane. Napier wasn’t just a benchwarmer either; he was the most outstanding player of the NCAA tournament and first team all American. That means he was one of the best in country. If the NCAA won’t pay the it’s best players enough to feed themselves, imagine the college athletes we don’t know the names of.

Shabazz Napier, hopefully on a full stomach (courtesy of The New Yorker)

One of the biggest arguments people like to make against this is that “student athletes should just get jobs to cover their expenses.” At first thought, it’s not a bad idea. College students often get jobs to help pay the bills. Even if you’re in a club, the university is still expecting you to make your payments. I have a job. However, there is a big difference between me and someone like Shabazz Napier.

Student athletes have trouble getting jobs because their sport is already a full-time job. It dominates your schedule. Most college students fit their schedule around their classes. College athletes fit their schedule around practice. They have regular practice, weight training, and film. To be good like Zion Williamson or Shabazz Napier, it takes extra time outside of that working on your skills. Then you have your classes. They must be enrolled full time and pass their classes to keep their scholarship and be able to play their sport. So, you must go to class and do your homework. When are these kids supposed to pick up a shift a movie theater? They don’t get weekends off. In fact, during the season of their sport, they must take online classes due to all the travel. That’s enough stress as it is not including the food problem, or all the pressure coming from outside sources.

Student athletes are stuck. There’s not a lot of change they can make. A good majority of them don’t have enough money to keep themselves going at a sustainable level. However, the NCAA seems to think that paying these players will open more problems. NCAA president Mark Emmert believes that athletes being paid would change their lifestyle. They wouldn’t live in the residence hall or eat in the dining hall. Basically, they wouldn’t have the college experience (Hruby, 2018). I’d argue that the college experience is not starving yourself. There’s also a whole host of other problems that come out of it.

When players are going into college, this is the first time a lot of them feel they’ve had value to the world. Some of these kids come from poor backgrounds, and they didn’t have very much. Take Deandre Ayton. Ayton was the third best player coming out of high school, and eventual first overall pick of the NBA draft. He was born in the Bahamas, and had no idea about basketball until scouts came and caught him in band practice. He then went through a process of working two part time jobs to pay for his basketball training camp, moving countries, and then switching high schools of within the foreign country.

In any other profession except sports, we would reward that story regardless of his place in life. Ayton worked hard through a rough childhood to achieve his dreams. Kids get money to start their own businesses from billionaires. Why shouldn’t be able to be paid for all the sacrifices he and his family made. Which explains the next part of the story.

In March, it was discovered that Deandre Ayton was paid $100,000 to play basketball by the university of Arizona head coach Sean Miller. This is not unusual. College athletes have been paid since the money started rolling in. Colleges want to grab the best prospects, so they can make money and have more success. There are countless examples of this. Cam Newton, OJ Mayo, Maurkice Pouncy, Chris Webber, AJ Green, Dez Bryant, Reggie Bush. If athletes were fully and fairly compensated for their work, they wouldn’t have to put together backroom deals with shady agents and shoe companies to pay for their living expenses.

The scandals go beyond money too. They extend into the classroom. In 2014, it came to light that the University of North Carolina had falsified an entire field of study. The African American studies program contained classes that did not require you showed up to class. Some of which required you write just one paper. Even then, some of the athletes had the paper written for them. This is the precious education the NCAA cares about. These scandals are the result of the NCAA making a ridiculous amount of money, and the people making that money, the student athletes, not seeing any of it.

Now just take a second to imagine if those players had money on the line. People do not want you to mess with their paycheck. And now, these kids must go to class not just for basketball, but also for the paycheck. They’re already putting in all the hours and the work of a job, they just aren’t receiving money for it.

Some people would argue that it’s unethical to tie pay to sports for kids who are so young. I feel like those people aren’t seeing the full story. Kids start going into the workforce as young as 16 in this country (legally). Not just that, but there was a time when kids could go straight to the NBA out of high school. Kids college age and younger could (and still are) paid for their efforts. This issue really isn’t about if we should pay kids to play sports; it’s about if the NCAA wants to distribute the profit it makes or not.

There’s an aspect of social class involved in here too. A study by Kirsten Hextrum found that middle class athletes are more suited to be college athletes than lower class athletes (2018). Because of course they are. Think about it. Middle class athletes are more suited to the environment. They go to the camps that their parents pay for. They got taught the skills they need to improve upon. They go to nice facilities to practice. Now compare that the lower-class athletes. When they scrap to the top, it’s not through the camps. If they go, they’re going on scholarship because they can’t afford it. Some nights, they’re going to bed hungry, or they’re cold, or they’re listening to their parents fight. Then they fight and fight and reach their dreams, and now they’re in college playing the sport they love. After all that, the NCAA has the gall to say “You can’t make any money from all your hard work. Of course, they’re going to take backroom deals. Especially if they have a family back home struggling with rent.

This idea of not being able to use your own likeness is ridiculous. Back in the early 2000, the NCAA was manufacturing video games about college basketball and football. They contained all the teams and all the players on the teams. They prided themselves on making it as real as possible, with true to life rankings, faces, and movements. However, they didn’t put names on the characters. This was done intentionally to go along with the NCAA’s amateurism rules.

There are a few key things to note about the video games. The first is that all the schools involved got paid for their likeness. Every division one school had a football and basketball team in the game. They used the name, colors, and symbol. All the schools were compensated for using their likeness. The second thing is that not only were the players not paid, they never consented to using their likeness. The creators of these games made sure all the players looked and played like they did in real life, but never asked if the players wanted to be in the video game. A third thing of note is that these games were NCAA sanctioned games. The NCAA gave the ok to use not only their likeness, but likeness of all its student athletes. A final thing to note is that eventually the players sued the NCAA and won. The court system agreed that it was wrong to use their likeness, make lots of money from it, and not pay them.

NCAA athlete’s likeness being used without compensation (courtesy of EA sports)

This type of stuff still happens. The NCAA uses commercials, promotions, and old highlights of players who are not paid for their participation. They waive their rights in a contract with the NCAA that they must sign in order to play. The NCAA controls your eligibility. It’s not like you can barter or bargain with them over if you can get paid for your likeness. As soon as you have an agent to speak on your behalf, you’re ruled ineligible. Not only are you playing without pay, you’re playing without a voice.

Inherently, there is nothing wrong with amateurism. The idea behind amateurism is to ensure that student athletes use the student in their name. That’s a good thing! Colleges are not institutions you go to just play sports. That’s not their purpose. They are made to educate and put out people who can contribute to society in a better way. Amateurism rules have also helped put athletes into schools they normally wouldn’t have gotten into; another good thing. For example, Zion Williamson attended Duke university. Duke is known for admitted academically excellent students. It’s ranked just as high as the likes of MIT and Ivy League schools. As good of a student I imagine Williamson is, I’m sure he wasn’t a valedictorian. There are tangible good things about amateurism, and we shouldn’t do away with it all together.

However, one of the big tent poles of amateurism is “shielding student athletes away from the pressures of professional sports.” I would argue that’s no longer possible. The college football playoff is one of the 5 most watched sports events of the year. It’s the biggest stage you can reach in collegiate football. There is an insane amount of pressure. You’re playing in a packed arena with millions of people watching around the world. Every move, and especially every mistake, you make will be dissected and replayed for years to come. That’s more pressure than most professional sports events. You can’t shield anyone from that, especially with the NCAA raking in the ad revenue from the game.

The gap between revenue and a scholarship (courtesy of Business Insider)

There is no reason to not to tie amateurism and fair payment of the players together. They work well together. The fair payment acts as a motivator for student athletes to accomplish what they need to. You could write up a contract stating the importance of balance school and sport, as well as the financial implications of not following through. Being a student athlete acts as a job anyway. As Maslow points out, it’s harder for people to accomplish their tasks when they’re worried about finances and food. I will even concede that in a different time, the amateurism rules were appropriate. Before the millions of dollars came in, school was the ultimate priority. However, times change. And with all the money comes pressure.

There are a couple ways for this to practically work. One is a flat fee for all student athletes. The money is distributed equally regardless of size or standing. This is the compromise that would make the bottom half happy. I’m sure bowling teams, which don’t make very much money, would be thrilled for the extra few thousand dollars. The problem with that is the money is not distributed equitably. The athletes pulling in the most money, the Zion Williamsons of the world, could feel like the fruits are their labor are being reaped by other student athletes.

Another solution is to pay everyone on par with their “worth.” Now there’s a lot of grey area in this, but basically worth would be decided on how much money they make. Views, merchandise, even concessions would all play a huge role here. This would be a good solution because of the objective fairness. In a sense, athletes are getting back what they put in. However, the downside is that there isn’t as much potential in some sports to make as much. Track and field will never make more than football. Potentially you could end up in a situation you’re now where you still have athletes putting in immense amounts of time and effort and not being paid very much for it. It would be a better option than now because no athletes are being paid at all.

A final option is to not pay some of the athletic programs. It’s no surprise that football and basketball make the most money. There have been arguments on why that should be shared with other programs. This is probably the most controversial option, especially in terms of fairness. Some argue that it’s only fair to get out what you put in. Others argue that the money could be used to help bolster other programs. Regardless, this is an important option when you are considering paying the players.

No matter what happens, someone is going to be unhappy. The players, faculty, NCAA, fans, journalists, parents, or some combination are going to feel like they got the short end of the stick. And that’s the reality when we face a convoluted issue. There are many courses of action you could take and they’re all going to rub someone the wrong way. The important thing here is we need to remember the players. The same kids we’re fighting so hard to protect are the ones starving. We pay all this money to watch college kids hit each other for what? Because we enjoy it. We all love sports.

In a few months, Zion Williamson is going to become the first pick of the NBA draft. He’s going to sign one of the most lucrative shoe deals in the history of professional sports. He will have more money than he ever imagined having. If his injury had been serious, he would have had no safety net. Duke could have pulled his scholarship; he wouldn’t be able to do the thing he was invited to. We want to pretend that student athletes are here to get an education and play sports on the side, but they’re not. They are making millions of dollars for their respective schools. They are employees. Let’s pay them as such.

References

Berkowitz, S. (2018, July 27). Alabama football coach Nick Saban set to make $8.3 million this season under new contract. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2018/07/27/nick-saban-alabama-coach-new-contract-highest-paid/852534002/

Ganim, S. (2014, April 08). UConn guard Shabazz Napier on unions: I go to bed ‘starving’. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2014/04/07/us/ncaa-basketball-finals-shabazz-napier-hungry/index.html

Garcia, A. (2018, March 7). NCAA surpasses $1 billion in revenue for first time. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/07/news/companies/ncaa-revenue-billion/index.html

Hextrum, K. (2018). Amateurism revisited: How U.S. college athletic recruitment favors middle-class athletes. Sport, Education and Society, 1-13. doi:10.1080/13573322.2018.1547962

Hruby, P. (2018, September 20). The NCAA says paying athletes hurts their education. That’s laughable. Retrieved from https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-paying-college-athletes-ncaa-commentary-20180920-story.html

Kahn, L. M. (2007). Markets: Cartel Behavior and Amateurism in College Sports. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(1), 209-226. doi:10.1257/jep.21.1.209

Koster, K. (2019, March 14). ESPN’s College Basketball Ratings Soared With the Help of Zion Williamson and Duke. Retrieved from https://thebiglead.com/2019/03/14/espn-ratings-zion-williamson-duke/

Pelzman, J. (2019, March 29). Zion Williamson Helps Explain Why NCAA Tournament’s Viewership And Streaming Numbers Are Up. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jppelzman/2019/03/28/why-viewership-and-streaming-numbers-are-up-so-far-in-the-ncaa-tournament/#24bde7f65b32

Amateurism [Def. 2]. (2016). In The Free Dictionary. Huntingdon Valley, PA: Farlex.