Should College Athletes Be Compensated. We have the craziness of college football on Saturdays in the fall, the madness of college

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1 Nobles 1 Kaleb Nobles Audience: Leaders of the NCAA Kim Sale ENGL 1102 BB 17 February 2012 Should College Athletes Be Compensated From January to December, college athletics is a dominating force across the country. We have the craziness of college football on Saturdays in the fall, the madness of college basketball in March and April, and the Baseball College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska during the heat of the summer. All of these sports are made up of student-athletes that have to train year-round to be at their best shape for their sports. Athletes like this give their all each and every time they go out in order to achieve their ultimate goal of winning the championship in their respective sport. College athletics is also an industry that generates billions of dollars each year, and the billions of dollars generated annually are made off of the names of these athletes. These athletes receive almost nothing more than their scholarship, only receiving a few extra things than a normal student. According to South Carolina head football coach Steve Spurrier, Twenty years ago, 50 years ago, athletes got full scholarships. Television income was what, maybe $50,000? he said. "Now everybody's getting $14, $15 million bucks and they're still getting a scholarship (Cohen 1). Many believe that this is not fair at all. College athletes should at least be paid a share of what is made off of their performances. Imagine being a big-time college athlete at a major university during one of their sporting events. For example, let s use the University of Alabama since they recently won the football national championship in January. Let s imagine being Trent Richardson, the best running back on the team and wore jersey number three. He has a stellar game, rushing for over two-hundred

2 Nobles 2 yards, which comes at a major price: Richardson walks to the locker room with a couple bruised ribs and only has a week to get ready for next Saturday s big game. Bryant-Denny Stadium, where Alabama plays their football games, holds over ninetythousand people. Let s say of those ninety-thousand people, seventy-five thousand are die-hard Alabama fans. Of those seventy-five thousand, we ll say at least one-third s favorite player is Trent Richardson and are all wearing a replica number three jersey that they bought. Buying a football jersey like that will cost a person, at minimum, fifty dollars. So that means that at least $1.25 million dollars have been spent on jerseys that replicate Richardson. The University of Alabama makes a profit off of some of that money because they have trademarking rights to merchandise being sold that represents their university. Let s say Alabama pockets five-hundred thousand of that money. All of this money is used for things like needs on campus, paying salaries of employees, and building projects. Not a single dollar is given to Richardson. How is it fair that people can daily wear the same jersey that he has made famous, but all he gets is enough money to cover his scholarship? Even other than just jersey sales like this, college football is a booming million dollar business. During this past December and January, seventy football teams played in a college football bowl game. The games played in December are not as big of games as the ones in January, but they still generate revenue from the fans and these bowls make a lot of money. Each team gets paid an amount of money depending on what bowl they are playing in. In this past bowl season alone, the seventy schools amassed $258,652,000. The most was made by six different schools at $22,300,000 and the least was $320,000 with the overall average being $3,695, This does not include how much schools make throughout the entire calendar year through ticket sales, concessions at games, merchandise with their logo on it, and the

3 Nobles 3 biggest one: television contracts. So with so much money being generated in just five short weeks, it is very possible to imagine that there is enough money generated during the whole year for universities to be able to pay athletes. A lot, but not all, of the players that are being recruited by schools across the country come from rough backgrounds and home lives. These players are lucky and very fortunate to have a full scholarship because without it, they most likely wouldn t have had a chance to go to college at all. A very high number of college athletes qualify for the Pell Grant depending on the income of their parents. These kids that qualify for a full Pell Grant loan get a check worth $5,500 annually. Since these kids come from a rough past and parents that don t have a large income, most of them choose to send this check to their loved ones to help them meet ends back at home. It is situations like this that the NCAA should look at and decide that the right thing to do is make it legal for players to get paid by their respective schools. In 2010, despite the faltering economy, a single college athletic league, the footballcrazed Southeastern Conference (SEC), became the first to crack the billion-dollar barrier in athletic receipts. The Big Ten pursued closely at $905 million (Branch 2). There are twelve teams in the SEC. If the SEC made one-billion dollars exactly and all of the one-billion dollars was split up perfectly among all twelve, each school would make $83,333, In some way, it has to be possible for the NCAA to make it legal for players to be paid a certain amount of money annually. How much money, though, is the right amount for players to be paid? Many believe that the right thing to do is pay the players but everyone in favor of it isn t able to come up with a number set in stone of how much to pay them. There are many different numbers that are often thrown around, but according to South Carolina head football coach players ought to be paid

4 Nobles 4 $3,000 to $4,000 a season. On average there are about one-hundred and twenty-five players on a college football team. So if a school pays a whole football team $3,000 a year, it adds up to $375,000. Since schools are going to have to pay all athletes and not just football players though. So let s say that a school has around 400 athletes on campus. If all of these athletes are paid $3,000, that means a school would dish out $1,200,000 a year on athletes. Obviously a Division I school has more money than a smaller school like Valdosta State. Small schools like this still make a lot of money and could pay athletes the same way, just not as much every year. With schools making so much annually, it seems possible that they could cut a few dollars the athletes way. It only seems fair that schools would give the athletes that make their schools so famous some of the money that the players are actually making. With schools making in the millions annually, there definitely is enough money that they could spend a few more dollars on athletes. Imagine being that athlete that no matter what he does, he has to settle for the sub-par dining hall food. Or that athlete that wants to buy his mom a nice Christmas present or himself some new clothes. Every college is very fortunate to be in his or her situation because they know that not all students have the scholarships that they have. Although, considering how much work student-athletes put in for the sake of their schools, wouldn t it be nice to have a few extra dollars in your pocket to spend on yourself or other family members?

5 Nobles 5 Works Cited Branch, Taylor. The Shame of College Sports. Atlantic Monthly (2011): ProQuest Research Library. Web. 22 February Cohen, Ben. The Case for Paying College Athletes. Wall Street Journal. 16 Sept. 2011: D.10. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 22 Feb Greenberg, Chris, Chris Spurlock. Bowl Game Payouts Map: Money Earned in BCS And Other Football Bowls (INFOGRAPHIC). The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 29 Dec Web. 22 February 2012.