Keeping Student Athletes as Student Athletes
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Greed is raising it’s ugly head again and this time it’s not the Koch brothers, or Sheldon Aldelson, or even the Republicans. This time it’s the young, sometimes the poor, and those who feel that they who have worked so hard to achieve so much with so little, except their talent.
They may have been used, abused, exploited, and walked on. So who is it? Oh my goodness it’s the endless number of scholarship athletes that have been so mistreated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member colleges. How I mourn their many miseries.
Lately, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has taken up their cause. These beleaguered young people can now unionize, regroup and demand that they be paid for every drop of sweat that rolls from their brow. IT IS TIME!!! THEY MUST BE PAID! Wait, why are they at these colleges? Oh, they get an education? Hmm, they get their tuition paid for and I see the income also pays for other college athletic scholarships as well. Wait! They get their books paid for too? Hmm. They get special study centers, and tutors. Wow! Do the regular students get those. No? Hmmm. Why Not?
OK, I see these athletes, the football and basketball players tend to make money and the others simply don’t. OK, I get it. So they should make money, and the others should not? Well in this world today that makes sense. I mean we do live in a capitalistic world and if you have a marketable skill you exploit it and the hell with everyone else. That’s the way it is, right? OK, I get it.
Well, let’s think about it just a moment. How many major colleges have athletic programs that survive on their own? How many many college athletic programs could survive without any support from the university they play represent? Think about it. How many athletes are we speaking about here?
In my 27 years at an institution that actually had a program that not only supports itself in football, basketball, and probably baseball, but it also supports all the other sports and contributes to the general scholarship fund as well, I feel that I can speak to this issue. Before I retired I had the honor of working closely with a number of young men in the football, baseball, and basketball program. Do we have have a problem with their situation? You bet we do! Do they need to be paid as professionals? Not a chance in hell!
Let’s look at the picture from a realistic view regarding student athletes and where this all fits in with colleges and universities. We will call this University of X. It has a large campus of about 34,000 students and resides in one of the strongest if not the strongest conferences in the country. Every year they produce a top caliber football team that will fill its 100,000 seat stadium easily for 7 home games plus getting television revenues on at least 8 of its 12 games. During this time the school ends the year, after sharing its wealth with its less successful conference members with a “profit” of $25 million. The basketball team will also be successful by making to the NCAA tournament though they do not make it past the round of 32. So they show a net profit of, let us suppose $5 million. In anyone’s book that is one big chunk of change.
Now with the above numbers in mind think to yourself, how many universities are that successful? Well, in the Southeastern Conference, for example, you have twelve teams. Most of them are successful, but not that successful. Maybe Alabama, LSU, Florida, Georgia, and possibly Auburn will be that successful. The middle tier, Texas A&M, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina, will occasionally spend a brief time at the top before receding back. Then there is Mississippi, Vanderbilt and Ole’ Miss who tend to make runs but have not gotten up there in years. Now, all of the schools do make money, but not at the elite level. Other Division I conferences are much the same.
So, each school takes their profit and they use a part of it to support scholarships for all the other sports that do not rake in bunches of dollars. A lot of them are women’s sports such as gymnastics and women’s basketball, and non-revenue producing sports like swimming, soccer, tennis, golf, softball and baseball (although the last two are beginning to grow at some schools). They also cost money and they must be funded equivalent to football by law. But, that’s not the only rub here. Everyone of the revenue sports have stars such as Johnny Manzeil from Texas A&M. Do the colleges get into a bidding war for an eighteen year old high school football player? Then, when the young man gets to campus how does he fit in with the lesser paid, but very much needed, linemen or receivers? Adults even have problems dealing with that so how will these young people?
Now consider the far greater number of schools at the Division II and III that cannot afford to get into these bidding wars with the Division I schools. They must sit back and take the dregs of the recruiting pile. Not even Harvard could compete if it wanted to try. So as, a practical matter, paying college players to play sports in college simply will not work. It will create dissension among the players and the spirit of playing for the school, a long held American tradition, is gone forever. Is there an answer? I think there is.
The athletes attending college should not have to take a vow of poverty to be a student athlete. These young people put in enough hours during the season and off season keeping their bodies in shape and honing their skills for their season. I remember calculating the hours that Alabama football players were putting in during the season just for football. 7.5 hours a day and that does not count their hours in classes nor their required study time. That is the equivalent to going to school full time and working full time for tuition, books, room and board, and (wink, wink) laundry money amounting to about $2000 per year.That is not reasonable and one has to remember that there are a lot of student athletes that never see the playing field. They are the scout teams.
Here are my proposed changes:
A scholarship athlete receives a guarantee, upon signing the opportunity to complete his/her degree in 5 years even if injured and unable to play.
The scholarship Athlete receives tuition, lab fees, books, and other fees for up to the five years he or she is in attendance with a break allowed for injury recovery.Each Scholarship receives room and board for the duration of said scholarship including during breaks in the school year such as spring break, breaks between terms, holiday breaks.
Each scholarship athlete receives $3000 per term enrolled for incidental expenses. No athlete may receive more or less regardless of value to the team.During any period of time while a student athlete is in school can any entity, including the school, the NCAA, or any outside entity attempt to capitalize on the student athlete’s popularity in any shape form or faction.
Thus, taking, for all practical purposes the profit motive out of the exploitation of student athletes. The prospects of students joining a union is ridiculous and should be declared null and void.
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We don’t have that problem over here in Blighty. Students are students and professional sports people are just that. Never the twain and so forth.
Besides, many (not all of course) of our top sports people are barely above amoeba’s common sense wise. I doubt they’d be capable of studying anything.
I will be the first to admit that I’m not a sports fan so I don’t think that we need any of this highly competive big money college games. Students are there to study not wear jock straps.
I must admit that there is a lot about this that could be left behind Cheryl. That being said, it has allowed a lot of young people to attend college that otherwise never would have had the opportunity. It has also been built into a huge economic issue for the cities where the schools are located. For example, when the University of Alabama plays a home game the population of Tuscaloosa, Alabama literally doubles in size. It is a mainstay of the local economy here.
Bill I must admit you make a good point. I didn’t think of anything like that.
In my experience about half of student athletes, can barely read and write by the time they finish “college.” That’s just plain wrong.
You make a good point. When I lived in Tucson, a friend, who taught a class in remedial English at U of A told me this. Many, OK – most, of his students were athletes. He had one whose first name was Solomon.
They were all working on computer terminals and their log on was their first name. After about 30 minutes he noticed Sol was not doing anything but sitting there.
“What’s the problem Sol?”
“This thing won’t let me on.”
“Really? I’ll watch while you log on. Maybe I can see what its problem is.”
So the scholarship athlete started typing, S-l-o-m-a-n. He admitted he’d tried to log on about 5 or 6 times. Every time, same result. Student athletes, my eyes.
That doesn’t surprise me one bit James.
James, in the vein of a cross state rival joke, he must have been from Auburn. In reality, we can only shake our heads at the high schools that let that happen. The stereotype of the dumb athlete needs to be put to rest. The kid is capable to the extent someone has engaged him academically throughout his life. Contrast that to the young man that was a starting offensive lineman for Alabama for three years in a row. He was nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship, finished with a 3.8 in Business and was in the MBA program during his last year of eligibility. He was also a concert violinist and pianist. Barrett Jones will likely be drafted by one of the pro teams in the draft this year. Not bad for a 6’3″. 300 lb dumb jock, huh.
Actually, I went to Alabama for one summer session right after high school (Sylacauga ’60)
The school was University of Arizona. Tucson.
I do agree about the cow college called Auburn, though.
I also have known brilliant athletes. Not least among them was Roger Staubach. I met him a couple of times when his mother was playing bridge with my mom.
There are exceptions indeed Bill, and I think the young man you describe is one of those exceptions.
I would have to say, “That depends..” on where you looking. In your major collegiate programs that are watched closely I would not be true. I taught at Alabama for 27 years and no student that I taught could not read. Some of the student athletes were among my top students, others about average, others did not make through the classes I taught. I do not doubt that there probably still are students, athlete and non athlete, that get out of high school without reading and writing skills. Some of them get into junior college and into college with out improving and I agree that this must be stopped. But I think that the major programs will by pass recruits these days who have no chance of making it academically rather than wasting a scholarship on them.
That would be nice to know Bill, but it would also be a surprise especially in some of these big football schools.
Mike consider this, the NCAA now keeps up with school’s record of graduating student athletes. It is called their GSR Graduation Success Record. It is a little complex to track but the way it works is that if every student who entered school on a athletic scholarship graduated their overall score would be 100. Alabama has a score of 83. They seven sports that scored 100 ( women’s golf, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball as well as men’s golf and men’s swimming and diving). The football team’s score was in the top half of the SEC at 73. Most notable of these scores is the number of these young people that actually finish early enough to go into graduate school while on scholarship. This accounts for students who enter from other institutions including junior colleges. Students who leave school early (such as going professional in their junior year or leave to go to another school are not counted against them if they are in good academic standing when they leave the school.) So, in theory, a little more than 7 out of every ten football players who enter Alabama on a football scholarship graduate.
Alabama’s overall GSR for all sports is 86, which is not too bad when you consider that the overall University graduation rate is about 68%.
Thanks Bill. Interesting indeed.
It’s an industry, impure and complicated, just like most industries. Exploitation, as you mention, is the thrust of the sword when it comes to college athletes. The world of academia and its trappings is not what one would expect. Its minions engage in blood sport in one form or another on a regular basis, and no student athletes do not need to be paid anymore than they are already “paid.”
Well, essentially, their scholarships are on par with the top scholarships in the academic world at most top level universities. In fact, some of the top academic scholarships are better than the athletic scholarships because they are limited only by what the benefactor chooses. While these are rare they actually do pay some students to attend school and make good grades and assist in its research projects. One must keep in mind that in the larger programs, like Alabama, or a Notre Dame, the football program allows them to contribute monies to their general scholarship programs which help a lot of non athletic kids go to school.
I didn’t know about the contributions Bill. You might change my mind yet man 🙂
Bill I agree with you man, but even with your solution I think they get way too much as it is. You might be able to guess I’m no sports fan.
Timmy, I don’t disagree with you. This is especially true at the big schools. Alabama has some of the finest facilities in the country and they make no bones about it helping in their effort to recruit the athletes they want. Their academic assistance program is one to be envied by any student, athlete or not. But, with the pressure from the NCAA to graduate more athletes it is something they need and it has been around since the days of Coach Bear Bryant.
I believe that sports have a place in institutions of higher learning, but not to the bizarre extent they are today, all of which you pretty much covered Bill. I think it obscene that student athletes get what they get already, so more would just be nuts.
Mike I would agree with except that many of these kids come from poor families and do not have any other source of income for incident expenses. The so called laundry money has always been a part of the package but it has always been a paltry sum. It does encourage cheating on the part of fans and some of the athletes. Back 25 or 30 years ago I would see hundred dollar bills being shoved into the kids pockets after games as the fans shook their hands or hugged them. They do not have an opportunity to have a part time job like other students because their time is so regimented. At Alabama under Coach Saban this is even more true. His expectations are so high that even during the summers the athletes are often going to special camps instead of being able to work. It is much like a 365 24/7 job. But I think that the kids do not necessarily want it to turn into a pay for play situation. The rewards come after completing college.
Let’s be realistic. University and even high school sports are essentially farm clubs for the pros. Here are where the elite are formed and the lessor talents culled. This is a huge plus for the profitable pro teams as all of this costs them nothing.
Schools are for education, not entertainment. If someone wants a sports team, let them pay for it. But they have no place in institutions of higher learning.
James, many sports do have semi pro teams but the movement toward paying players in college will, in my opinion, destroy the essence of the concept. This has been started by a handful of players in one school with the NLRB. In another instance the NCAA was receiving royalties from an electronic football game for using a college players likeness in the game. At the same time the student athlete was prohibited from receiving such monies. That has been stopped by a court case.