As the perception of the NCAA student-athlete has begun to change in the eyes of sports fans, the number of NCAA violations against them for accepting improper benefits has also changed over the last thirty years — skyrocketed, even. Televising college athletics has bolstered its popularity and, naturally, has yielded a higher degree of competitiveness amongst those who stand to benefit from participating. College programs and boosters have caused the recruitment of prospects to become quite a crazy process. Offers of money, clothing, food, cars and many other luxuries have been offered to young adults coming out of high school, but the NCAA has strict rules and regulations on what a prospect can and cannot accept and has handed down harsh sanctions against those who violate these rules, the most significant coming against the SMU football program in 1982. After a thorough investigation, the NCAA handed down what became known as the “The Death Penalty,” and, true to its name, it marks the complete suspension of all activities for one calendar year. This is the only time the NCAA has handed down such a penalty, and SMU’s football program has not fully recovered to this day.
This ordeal brought the issue of paying student-athletes into national limelight, and, in the past decade, there has been much discussion about allowing student-athletes to be paid. If left up to me, student-athletes under no circumstances would ever be paid for playing a sport for their university.
The most important reason why an NCAA student-athlete should not be paid for playing a sport lies in their title. An individual playing a sport at a university is labeled as a student-athlete, and the order of words in their title should match the order of their priorities at a university. The reason a person goes to college is to get an education. The job of the university is to give the person the best education possible. The NCAA sanctions amateur athletic events. The NCAA is not a professional organization — there are no agents permitted and no contracts given out. Students who attend universities do not get paid to get good grades, so why should athletes be paid to play a sport? Paying athletes creates an environment of unfair treatment towards some students over others.
An argument for paying student-athletes is an argument for the augmentation of their privileges. Student-athletes do get paid: they get scholarships. People often forget that the young men and women they watch on the field are going to school on a discount, especially for sports like baseball, basketball and football, and most of these athletes are going to school for free. The average college four-year tuition in this country is $18,391 per year, and the average out-of-state tuition is $31,701 per year. That can reach over six figures taken in a four-year span. The people who argue that student-athletes should be paid for performance seem to be completely blind to the fact that athletes are taking thousands of dollars over a four-year period to play a sport in addition to getting an education. The athletes at Vanderbilt are a perfect example. Most players on the football team are going to school for free and enjoying one of the finest educations offered in the country (not to mention that the tuition at Vanderbilt is outrageously expensive). These athletes are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and getting a degree, and yet people still argue they should be paid for on-field performance.
People argue that the majority of these athletes come from underprivileged backgrounds and are helpless when they arrive on campus, but these people do not realize the NCAA allows student-athletes to receive a weekly allowance that basically amounts to spending money for the athlete. I do understand the argument that the allowance given to athletes is not sufficient, but paying them for performance is certainly not the answer. Most of the additional money these athletes receive comes from either the NCAA or the athletic conference to which that school resides in. If the allowance money the athletes receive is not enough, the university should chip in a small additional sum of money to give these student-athletes a sufficient allowance. I also understand the complaints of critics about athletes not being allowed to sell autographs and memorabilia. Athletes most definitely should be able to sell their own property without having to answer to the NCAA.
The people who argue for paying for performance should look more in the direction of raising the allowance of an athlete or allowing them to sell memorabilia rather than being paid to play a game.
The term “pay for play” has been a popular term for referring to on-field performance. A lot of advocates for “pay for play” do not understand the other controversies that would cause. If athletes are paid for on-field performance, that would bring up the issue of having an agent. If one turns on SportsCenter during any sport’s offseason and follows contract talks of an athlete, they will see how ugly these arguments can get. There are over 300,000 NCAA student-athletes. Having contract negotiations with that many athletes would be completely disastrous. Paying for performance would also greatly alter the recruiting process. The NCAA recently altered football recruiting rules to set a maximum number of scholarships a program can give out per year. This rule was instituted to imitate professional football and not let the larger schools dominate recruiting. Paying athletes would completely ruin the effect of imitation in college football. One can look to the Southeastern Conference for a small example of this.
Alabama’s success over the last five years has obviously brought in more revenue for their university. If Alabama was allowed to pay athletes to come play there, Alabama would dominate football every year. They would keep bringing in the most revenue and have the most money to spend for new recruits.
On the other end of the spectrum would be a school like Kentucky. Kentucky is a fine institution, but Kentucky has had little success in their football program. If paying athletes was legal, Kentucky would have a hard time being competitive with the athletes they would be able to get. This imbalance would lead to less competitive football, and, ultimately, conference officials would probably look to conference re-alignment to try to fix the lack of competitiveness.
This concept is not solely tied to football. There would be imbalance in every sport in every conference in America. This would also lead to discussion of spending caps and would basically create a professional sports system.
In short, my reservations eventually lead back to the fact that college sports is amateur athletics. Professional sports organizations are the place for athletes to be paid to perform. College is a place where a young person can learn and play athletics to represent the school they are so proud to attend. If an athlete excels in his or her sport, then they can move on to the professional level and reap the benefits of their athletic ability. Paying college athletes would ultimately ruin what people love most about college athletics, which is playing for the pride of their school. A student-athlete’s ultimate goal should be to get a degree and become ready for the outside world.
Brian Scott Rippee is a sophomore business major from Jackson.
