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Professional Exploitation In NCCA’s Amateur Rules

Renzo Rey de Castro

Strayer University

Professor Michael Hunter

ENG-215

November 23, 2016

The need to change Rules on Paying College Athletes

College athletics in the US has developed to a form of slavery, or to be softer on it, indentured servitude of some kind. The fact that the president of NCCA earns $1.8 million annually, and some coaches especially of football and basketball in colleges earn amounts in the tune of hundreds of thousands may make someone to be tempted to believe that the individuals who make them have those jobs, the college athletes, earn similarly good money; but they earn absolutely nothing in literary terms. This is because NCCA rules bar college athletes from being paid (Baca, & Stein 2010). The reason here is that college athletes are students, not school employees. Their role thus is that of students and the games they are involved are only a part of co-curricular activities.

The case of not paying college athletes has not always existed. When it was brought on at first, it was to help the running of college athletics and enable a better way of uniform administration. Initially, college athletes used to be given some stipend. As a result, non-students would only enroll when there would be a game, get their stipend and move on. This was an indicator of some form of lack of control of the games. To discourage this, students would not earn anything. Notably still, it was not until the forties and fifties that Television contracts started coming on board and thus the system started having money that could be trickled down to the athletes (Hyatt, 2015). With advancement in the interest in college sports and especially football and basketball, major media houses have partnered with NCCA and mostly purchased broadcasting rights with contracts spanning several years and with a lot of money involved. Currently for example, there is a contract spanning 14 years with broadcasters which is ensuring that at least billion dollars in revenue. This doesn’t even consider the merchandise and ticket sales. The very thought that with all this amount of money involved in college sports the athletes who are the cash cows of the system get nothing is in itself very unethical, leave alone the fact that is a reality. Therefore, college students need to be paid not just for their hard work but also because the colossal revenue realized is as a result of their effort and without them nothing would be realized in the first place.

There are of course arguments for not paying college athletes. Mostly the argument centers on the fact that a good number, if not the majority, of college athletes are under a sports scholarship and thus ‘get paid’ through them not paying tuition and upkeep fee among other payments that are made by regular students (Schoem, & Kovacs 2011). This however is far much less than what they deserve. Besides, not all of them get the scholarship and it isn’t even guarantee to last the full time that the student is likely to be at school since mostly these scholarships are renewable. Instead of hypocritically masking behind the scholarship argument, it would be easier to pay the athletes and then from the amount that they are paid, they pay their college fee. The athletes need to be signing contracts which would be based on their performance.

On top of paying the athletes, the rules need to be redrafted to allow for sponsorship deals with any entity, whether company or individual provided it is a legal contract under federal laws. This may give the excellent athletes a chance to earn even more and exploit their real market value. The one rule which should be in place to prevent the academic side being affected is that the athletes should meet a certain minimum grade for them to continue being in the team. This way, they would work hard both on the field and in class. After all, failure in class would as well ensure their exit from the very team that helps them to earn. This would ensure that there is no exploitation, they exploit their real market value and that their student status isn’t jeopardized. There are several problems with the current situation with regards to not paying college athletes.

College athletes are heavily denied the opportunity to exploit their real market value. Comparisons between the athletes who joined college and studied while still plying – and of course earning nothing – with those who opted to skip college and be drafted directly, shows a very significant difference. Irrespective of whom it is, all college athletes don’t earn anything meaningful. By comparison, a good number of those who decide to be drafted when eligible into say, the NBA or NFL directly immediately sign multimillion contracts either for their on-field performance or even if lucky, sign endorsement deals with companies (Baca, & Stein 2010). In addition, the number of years that they participate in college athletics is wasted opportunity. This can be considered to be opportunity cost whereby they would be earning some amount if they were under a professional contract. Instead, the best they get is just a scholarship which is probably tenfold less than what they would get under a professional contract. Indeed, if given the opportunity to be paid, they would pay their college fee and have a lot more on top that remains which they can utilize in other constructive ways.

This can be solved first of all by changing the rules to allow for not just payment by the NCCA but also to accommodate third parties interested in utilizing the athlete’s ability for the benefit of all the parties involved. First, paying the athletes would offer them an economic benefit to cater of their needs as well as those of their likely dependents. There is a probability that some of them can uplift the standards of the families that they come from. Besides, the failure to allow such athletes to have individual endorsement deals locks out the athletes from benefiting as well as potential parties such as adverting companies. The most talented of them can be utilized like the rest of the stars in the games to help advertise products and even raise awareness for a significant cause that can benefit the society in general.

The current format exploits the college student through a level of inequality only experienced during the years of slavery in the south. If NCCA president earns $1.8 million dollars, then most coaches earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and the students earn zero, then this is both inequality and exploitation. It is like a farm owner (the president), his farm overseers (the coaches) benefitting from the hard labor of the slaves (the college athletes). This has very many sides to look at it from. It is utter unethical. It is similar to the situation where the Aboriginal inhabitants of Hispaniola were under when the Spanish arrived (Karaim 2014). They were forced to go and mine gold all day and be punished if they didn’t collect any. This gold wouldn’t be theirs and they wouldn’t be paid a dime for their hard work. This exploitation is just slavery in another name. Inequality is further manifested in when compared to other talented individuals. For instance, actors and musicians attending college are never put under the same rules as NCCA put the college students. They can comfortably exploit their talents without any restrictions.

Offering college athletes performance based contracts would help reduce this inequality. Based on the performance of institutions, they should be given prize money and other forms of distribution of the revenue involved. From this, NCCA and the institutions can help come up with negotiation rules to offer college athletes contracts based on the way they perform. Under such a mechanism, institutions would be offered revenue on a ratio based on the performance. College athletes on the other hand would be paid using their performance. This method would ensure that each athlete tries to perform the best they can in a bid to be offered a better contract. They would as well have a better team performance if the overall performance at the end of the day is what determines the amount to be subdivided through the contracts they have. Notably, these contracts would have prize money as a top up to them so that this can be a motivator to the students. It would increase the competitiveness of the game and may be offer competition to mainstream sports channels like the NBA and NFL and this would ultimately lift the market value of the games whether is at the professional level or the college level to the benefit of all the persons involved in these sports (Young et al 2016).

College athletes are not valued as students with regards to academia and thus are never given a real studying opportunity. When they are joining college and of course with their scholarships, they sign contracts. Comper & Hutchison (2015) note that these contracts are renewed mostly, annually. It thus means that there is a probability left whereby they can be ‘released’. This termination of their contract means that they are no longer able to study since their academia was insured against by their ability to perform as athletes. Most students who stop performing or get injuries that ruin their college athletic careers never complete their degrees. This is selfishness and hypocrisy of the highest order. If the very rules of NCCA stipulate that these athletes are students first, then why does their studentship end when they no longer can perform on the field? If anything, that is betrayal to the student athlete. If they were paid, they would may be manage to pay for their remaining time at school even if their contracts are terminated.

Renegotiation scholarships so that they are unconditional with regards to being renewed or not is the only solution to this situation. When an athlete is assured of a full scholarship and relevant payment as compensation of which some of it may be deducted to cater for some school related payments, they would be guaranteed of graduating. It is both moral and an indicator of equality. Commitment to the well-being of athletes and dedication to ensuring completion of the university education would be paramount to ranking of the institutions as well as attracting would be college athletes.

In conclusion, there are several problems associated with failure to pay college athletes. The fact that coaches and officials are paid is a sign of inequality. The money involved goes to the tune of more than a billion every year and the college athletes earn nothing from it. This is not morally correct since it amounts to exploitation. Failure to pay them as well means that in case their scholarships are terminated, they can’t pay the required college fee to complete their studies. Changing the rules on payment is necessary to allow the athletes to exploit their real market value. The payment would need to be done based on performance thus performance based contracts are the solution to the amount that each athlete should be paid. Such contracts need to be negotiable to include not just payments but also terms of scholarships where applicable and how such scholarships are related with the performance of the athlete. The solution would ensure that college athletes get to get a share of the revenue that comes from broadcasting contracts, enhances their performance as individuals and as teams and brings about fairness and equality where necessary.

References

Baca, M. C., & Stein, R. H. (2010). Ethical Principles, Practices, and Problems in Higher Education.

Comper, P., & Hutchison, M. (2015). Concussion and the College Athlete. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199896585.013.18

Hyatt, R. W. (2015). Intramural Sports: Organization and Administration.

Karaim, R. (2014). Paying college athletes: Are players school employees? Washington DC: CQ Press.

Schoem, D., & Kovacs, S. (2011). College Knowledge for the Student Athlete. doi:10.3998/mpub.2284265

Young, D. A., Arechiga, C. M., & Lawton, A. D. (2016). Are they really that different? Beliefs about college athletes from the eyes of college athletes and non-athletes. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e545662013-100