College Athletes: Should They Be Paid

Florida is now considering a proposal to pay college athletes whose name and likeness are being used for marketing. Not sure how everyone here feels about that but these athletes are risking injury to feed a $14 billion dollar industry. Yes they are playing on scholarships, but that still doesn't seem like just compensation for the large amounts of revenue they are bringing in to the schools.

not a sports fan so I'm coming at this from an outsider's view and I may be misinformed, but that said:
only a tiny fraction of college athletes go on to a pro/high paying career. Thus any extra money they can make and save while they are in college would help them. Granted at that age their money may be spent and not saved, but the option would be there for them.

I simply do not understand the hijaaking of the education system by sport. Why have schools and colleges got anything to do with it, to the point that they often see their teams performance as more important than anything else they do?

because sports is a huge thing in the US and since sports is mainly "a young man's game" high school and college aged people are going to be likely participants (they are the recruiting pool) for professional sports. It makes sense that they will be front-and-center in the sports world.

But I totally agree that the education system should never have gotten hijacked by sports, but it's been this way for decades - pretty much since professional sports became big business as a source of entertainment. But be that as it may the genie is not going back in the bottle. A lot of Americans are obsessed with sports and spend countless hours and dollars involved in watching and following multiple sports. I think many (not all) of these folks need to get off their asses and do some physical activity of their own, but that's another subject.

side note FANTASY FOOTBALL? Jesus H. Christ even Jesus himself is giving a holy to that bullshit.

Athletics is an integral part of education and very important to the success of the student.

And before you say it, yes it's talking about high school sports, but the lessons learned can carry over into college athletics. Yale and Harvard seem to be doing quite well despite not having any nationally recognized football programs. They still offer athletic programs where the focus is more on development of the person instead of competition for booster dollars.

"They still offer athletic programs where the focus is more on development of the person" - T.R.

and that's how it should be across the board, but of course that's not the reality of the current situation.

Yes. They work, so they should be paid.

If a school is making money off the likeness of a student, pay the kid. If one kid on the team is being paid, you gotta pay them all, or you loose unit cohesion. You aren't going to get rid of school sports. In most places in America there isn't anything better or more exciting to do, plus it gives people a sense of community, and feeds into tribalism. "Fuck you, McMaynerberry, Arlen rules" and all that. I'd like to see how student athletes are treated change, as most are literal drooling morons given a pass through the system because they run good, but that seems to be our education system in a nutshell anymore, minus the running part. They need to make kids exercise more.

I know several guys who have played for SEC and National Championship winning teams. Yes, they absolutely should get paid with a few exceptions. If the University wants to use their likeness in marketing materials, well, that's part of the scholarship. But, if a third party (e.g. EA) wants to use their likeness in marketing materials, the players should absolutely get paid. But, I'd go beyond that. Players should receive a stipend from the booster organizations. These guys have extremely limited free time and thus can't hold down an outside job even if it were just flipping burgers. I've known guys that couldn't even afford to take their girlfriends out for a burger and a movie because they simply didn't have the money. The scholarship covers their academic and athletic costs including room and board, but it doesn't allow for anything else. Any personal items are extra and the players have to hope their parents can afford to send them a few dollars every now and then.

Huh. Didn't think there were many things that united WF, but this is one of those.

I agree.

They should get paid for their likeness and any type of marketing. The sports aspect of it is a contract between them and the school. They are being paid through their scholarship. They aren’t slaves, they can exit the contract at any time.

To be honest I'm of the belief that a college or university is an academic institution and should focus their attention and resources there, not on athletics.

But that's just me.

As long as the emphasis is on the word "focus", I am 100% with you.

Unfortunately, especially at Division I and II schools, football players are barely allowed to be students.

Look up Tyrone Prothro. Dude made one of the best plays of all time ‘The Catch’ and won all sorts of honors and awards. The University of Alabama made millions on that play alone (look it up and see all the paintings and what they go for). Next season he suffered a career ending injury and now works as a teller for Regions Bank.

The University of Alabama made him pay for the rights to his photographs to use in his book.

First, this whole bullshit about playing a game as part of your education needs to end. It is one thing for the kids to have a club where they can play a game while they are going to school, but this bullshit that they are treated better than every tuition paying person who is there for a degree has got to go.

Thinking about that changes my mind completely. The pro-sports auditions at the college level need to end. If you want to audition for the pros you stay out of school and do it in a lower skill league. Don't pay them, stop paying the school, and let the talent go into the commercial field.

Let us just kick them out of college because they certainly are not there to learn and participate in a career.

I'd not kick people out of college, but certainly I do agree that going forward there should be a lot less emphasis on sports as being an integral part of the academic process and a lot more on universities being, well, universities.

Sports as part of uni life is something I heartily endorse, they are a good way to keep an often sedentary population healthy, the are good for mental health, socialising, developing new skills and self esteem.

They are, however, hobbies.

You should not be getting academic credits or passes for playing football, you should not be getting education that is denied to more academically gifted but less athletic students.

Academia is a place for the academically gifted.

They are not there for a purpose but to play a game. They waste class time, take up seats, and push real students out all so they can play a fucking game. This is why I like the colleges that are popping up for learning your occupation over some university who's biggest concern is winning sports games. This should go right back to high school. If you are there to play a game then get the fuck out and go play a game. We don't need to waste seats in class and learning resources on worrying about BDFs. If your purpose in life is to ram into things then we don't need to worry about your future with your brain. It is jello anyway.

You remove this athletic trash from schools and you end a ton of problems. Less pointless dipshits in the seats so more time for the teachers to deal with students. More suplies for students there to learn. less money stripped out for lawsuits and injury liability. Less bullying. Less Date rape. Less hazing. Less waste of time. Less drugs.

All these things get cut when you no longer have some entitled dumb fuck who the administration cheats for because Absolute fucking morons with the intelligence of Dayton want to win some game. I am not saying stop playing games, but let us put these people where they belong which is in the commercial world training for their games, and if they want an education then they use their money to go to a school on their time. Then when they are pissing away the time of the class and teacher because they are dumb shits the school can boot them because the school does not give more of a fuck about winning a game than education.

I don't know how things work across the pond, but here in america if you play a sport in a college you get to chose your classes before the graduating class and all the other paying students because you play a game.

damn that is chickenshit and pathetic. I thought sports were all about character building and teamwork and so forth. Guess that only applies to the students, not the adults running the show.

Not mentioned is the hidden costs to the university of the athletic scholarships. Quite often, you'll have someone who gets an athletic scholarship who doesn't meet the academic requirements for attending that university. To compensate for this, they'll be enrolled in remedial courses to make up for their short-comings, or be assigned tutors (if not both) in order that they might be able to attend and play sports (and quite often the tutors are the ones doing the athlete's assignments). The costs for those courses and tutors are paid for by the university, not the athletic program.

And I can't find the story now, but there was a middle school kid (I think his name was Michael Jordan, having been named after the famous basketball player) who was so good at basketball that not only did he have NBA scouts coming to watch him play, but his school had to add on to their gym to accommodate all the people coming to the games to watch him play. When he got into high school, he ran into some kind of trouble because he accepted endorsement money from someone. (Can't really blame the kid, he was living in a poor neighborhood and they dangled something like a couple hundred thousand in front of him, so he could buy his mom a nice car, etc.) That ran afoul of certain laws and the kid wound up dropping out of school because he could make a lot of money in the short-term, which his family needed. Not sure what happened to him after that, but it wasn't good as I recall.

Kind of strengthens my argument that it’s a contract between the players and the universities.

it depends on the level of the sport as far as I can see. Once you start making sponsorships and prize money that shit goes out the window and the drama starts. If you have sponsorship a weak member of the team needs to be cut because they can effect how much you make. This is not just for the sports in college. It also does not mean big sponsorships either. I dealt with it in paintball and bowling. When I got recruited to play in the amateurs in paintball I was placed on the B team as captain because the B team was basically auditioning for the A squad and I am good at encouraging, but I did not want to deal with the expectations because the A squad had to make things happen. I really enjoyed encouraging the underdogs and being a little outgunned made me play a hell of a lot better. You really have to worry about team performance, and that means you need to get rid of the anchors because they can bring down the rest of the team i they are not ready.

I say go play to those who can make the money on it. The whole involvement in school becomes a huge problem on both sides. If you are making money and bringing in fans then hire personal teachers who will work on your time and your schedule. Don't drag things down for the rest of the people who are there to do other things.

If the schools and various companies that make money off them, they should get a cut. Especially since they're putting their bodies and lives at risk in the case of football.

Athletes are paid in terms of books, tuition and in some cases, room and board. It should be made clear, if it's not already, that we're not talking in the case of the Florida bill about the institutions paying salaries. Consider that if you're a talented musician on scholarship there's nothing to stop you from playing in a band for money while you're going to school. Ditto for an art student who could sell paintings, sculptures, pottery, etc. There's also the reality of a real imbalance between the athletes in high revenue sports and their coaches. As it stands now, if an athlete signs with a school and the coach leaves (by being fired or moving on for more money) they can either play for a new coach who didn't recruit them or transfer and have to sit out a year. The question of whether colleges should be involved with big money athletics to begin with is a valid philosophical question, but I'd rather leave that for a different question. Dealing with the reality, I would say there's a basic question of fairness: coaches are able to make millions however they like, whether through their contracts or outside endorsement deals, whilst the players aren't allowed to make money off their abilities outside of their scholarship allowances on the pain of losing everything. "Exploitation" is an overused term IMHO, but when a small minority of people are either making a comfortable living, or in some cases, getting fabulously wealthy, while a far great number of athletes are making a (comparitive) pittance and have no options for making more and are severely restricted when it comes to finding a better situation if where they are at isn't working for them.
As usual, boiling down a complex situation into a concept that will fit on a bumper sticker, doesn't really give it any context or perspective.

Just to point something out, that may or may not be relevant: more and more schools are asking boosters to endow athletic scholarships. For instance, at USC every football scholarship has an endowment. I'm not sure how much of a burden that takes off any given school, since it stands to reason that a rich, private school like USC (AKA "The University for Spoiled Children) will be able to get a lot more scholarships endowed than a smaller, younger, public school like Boise State, but I think it's a consideration that makes it a more complex picture.

Right, but those scholarships cover the basic costs. They don’t cover the fact that an athlete needs support that an average student wouldn’t get. At the college I went to the typical student meal plan didn’t cover anything after noon on Friday, but the athletes got a meal plan which enabled them not only access to different meals, but let them eat on days in which regular students didn’t have access to school cafeterias.

I completely agree, I just think it would be a bad idea to remove current scholarship students.

Simply stop providing new places and let universities be what they are supposed to be.

Over here sports in universities is indeed a big deal and clubs do compete (I boxed for mine), but it's extra curricular and organised by the student union, not the university itself. It doesn't affect selection, grades, funding or academic credits, it's just fun.

No they shouldn't. High school and college athletes get all sorts of help when it comes to their academics. To me, it makes a mockery of the whole point of college which should be to pursue higher education. The University of Kentucky has "one and done" players. They play for one year and then try to go pro. I can't imagine them going to classes and writing papers. Plus these athletes get paid in all sorts of unofficial ways.