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6/11 Roundtable - Should Players Be Paid?
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Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford
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CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Jun 11, 2009
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Should college football players be paid? It's the Thursday topic in the CFN Daily Roundtable Discussion.
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CFN Daily Roundtables
 June
11
Should College Football Players Be Paid?
Over the next several weeks, as part of the CFN 2009 Preview, we'll
examine some of the key questions going into the year with a
daily discussion of the big topics.
Pete
Fiutak,
CFN
Yes, I'm part of
the problem. You can check me out at
twitter.com/CFN_Fiu and find
out future roundtable topics and other random musings.
Q:
Should college football players be paid?
A:
Do the coaches get paid? How about the announcers? The team doctors? The
guy who sells hotdogs? The guy who sells the No. 15 jerseys? And please
don't start writing your e-mail with the childish scholarship/stipend argument.
The scholarships don't
scratch the surface when it comes to what the marquee players are worth
or the revenue the players generate for the schools.
There's a certain practical aspect to
this question which is that they can't be paid. I'm all for equality,
women's rights, blah, blah, blah, but Title IX sort of screws up the
economics of college athletics. The reality is that universities don't
need a women's golf team or a men's crew team, but if you start paying
football players, who do serve a relatively useful function as a public
relations arm of a school, you have to pay everyone and there's not
enough money to make that happen. Making the situation even tougher to
put a practical handle on is how you'd pay the football players.
Should Tebow get paid the same as a backup punter who might get to
make one kick on Senior Day? How much would Sam Bradford be worth
compared to the starting quarterback at Utah State? Fortunately, there's
a very easy way to make it all work out where everyone wins.
As
I've written many times before, let the players have agents, be able to
do endorsement deals, and be able to get cars, gifts, money, or whatever
boosters want to give them. If you think this is wrong in any way, then
ask yourself why it's fine for a coach to get all those things and for
players not to.
How would this affect the college football
world? It would give everyone a reasonable shot to be good,
because a school with a rich alumni base could find a way to make their
team a power. Imagine what the Oklahoma State Cowboys, presented by T.
Boone Pickens, or the Oregon Ducks, presented by Phil Knight, would be
able to do if the players were getting dough from some goofy booster.
And as I've also written many times before, there's nothing wrong with
that other than what the NCAA thinks is right or wrong.
If you
want college football to be an amateur sport, then let's make it one.
Tickets for games are free, the coaches don't get paid, and bake sales
are held to afford equipment and bus trips to go on road trips. But, of
course, college football is a multi-billion dollar industry that
obviously isn't
going away any time soon so something has to be done.
No, the schools and universities
shouldn't pay players, unless they want to. If some school wants to
build up the national profile of the university and designates $1
million to go out and bring in the best players they can afford, then
what's wrong with that? If Colt McCoy can do a Gatorade ad, what's wrong
with that? If a player wants to get royalties for having his likeness
being used to sell video games (which is finally, finally being
challenged in court thanks to former Nebraska QB Sam Keller), then
what's wrong with that?
For those of you who want to go on
thinking the players
get properly compensated by getting a full ride scholarship, one, you're
wrong, it's not comparable relative to the money they generate, two, you
don't know the dollars involved, and three,
I'm for getting rid of them. Dump the athletic scholarships for all
sports because they're not necessary if the players are able to use the
free market system, you know, the American way, to make what they're
worth. A player like Tebow would be able to make 20 times what a
scholarship would be worth, while the third team offensive guard would
be a real, live student-athlete. Of course, that would make too much sense
and the NCAA certainly wouldn't want that.
Richard
Cirminiello,
CFN
Q:
Should college football players be paid?
A:
Absolutely, positively not.
I’ve never bought the argument that
college athletes should be paid in the form of a salary or stipend, and
I doubt I ever will. First off, student-athletes are amateurs, which, by
its very definition, clashes with the concept of pay-for-play. It’s a
model that’s worked for both sides for over a century, and will continue
to work long after we’re gone.
To the proponents of paying
student-athletes, don’t you believe they’re being compensated handsomely
already? Have you checked the cost of a four-year education at a major
institution lately? Compensation comes in many different forms, and
getting free access to that diploma is the most valuable thing you can
present to an 18-year-old. How about the meals that are paid? The trips?
The transportation and lodging to special events, like media days? The
access to first-class training and facilities? The apparel? It all adds
up to a major windfall for the athlete that could reach $40-50,000 a
year if mom and dad were dipping into their savings accounts. I
certainly don’t begrudge the kids any of that, but now we want to tack a
salary on top of that?
I’m all for capitalism and getting yours,
but the current system benefits everyone, from the fans and the coaches
to the players and their parents. And who picks up the tab for that
additional university expense when 85 scholarship athletes begin getting
paid each month? You bet, it’s the rest of us, with our mediocre
children, who’ll be facing even more obscene tuition hikes.
Matthew
Zemek, CFN
Q:
Should college football players be paid?
A:
Yes.
Of course, the howls of protest will emerge from certain well-meaning
and understandably agitated corners: "What about female athletes? What
about all student-athletes in smaller (non-revenue-producing) sports?"
Those questions can't and shouldn't be repressed or shouted down;
they're simply not the most salient queries that can be made.
In an ideal world, a truly just world, college sports would not be
encased in a multi-billion-dollar "athletic industrial complex," with
nuclear arms races for cash, facilities and recruits. Far too much money
is devoted to collegiate sports at a time when large dollars--either
spent on tickets or donated to programs (two processes/directions that
are increasingly being blurred, as athletic programs employ ever more
creative ways to generate fresh revenue streams)--could go to African
poverty relief and enable skin-and-bones two-year-olds to actually have
a chance at a half-decent life, instead of dying before their third
birthday in the barrenness of a Sudan, a Liberia, or a Sierra Leone.
However, the sad but sobering fact of the matter is that college sports
are a business, and won't cease to be anytime soon. Therefore, this
being a "business" and not some innocent pursuit of leisurely
extracurricular pleasure or "wholesome Saturday fun for the whole
family," there is an urgent issue of socioeconomic justice that has to
be tended to. Simply stated, that issue concerns the need to avoid
building this billion-dollar sports empire on the backs of highly-sought
football (and, while we're at it, basketball) players who
disproportionately represent a low-to-moderate income African-American
demographic.
Jon Miller,
Publisher, HawkeyeNation.com
Q:
Should college football players be paid?
A:
This is a question on par with ‘should Pete Rose be in the Hall of
Fame?’ or ‘Should there be a college football playoff?’; you are
guaranteed to get a wide variety of opinions and it’s always a guarantee
to be a hot topic.
I recently interviewed 10 year NFL veteran
receiver and return man Tim Dwight, and I asked him this question in the
face of Sam Keller’s lawsuit against EA Sports and the NCAA. The gist
of Dwight’s answer was that no, they receive a full ride scholarship to
play football and there are other benefits that go along with that. I
have always felt the same way. I am 38 and only just recently finished
paying off my college loans. If I didn’t have those loans to pay off, I
would have certainly begun my professional years of working with zero
debt. The compounding interest on my life savings would have started to
tick a long time ago and I would be able to retire years, perhaps even a
decade earlier, if my college had been paid for.
Plus, many of
the kids that play big time college football will have advantages in the
work force once their careers are over. Former athletes have a long
shelf life at football and basketball crazy schools. Tyler Hansbrough
might never make it big in the NBA, but the guy will be a millionaire if
he just works professionally in the state of North Carolina, at whatever
it is he wants to do. So while I have issues with some of the ways the
players are marketed where the NCAA profits greatly, I don’t think the
players should be paid.
Hunter Ansley,
Publisher,
DraftZoo.com
Q:
Should college football players be paid?
A: Paid is a tricky word.
Should the players be compensated in some way for all that they
do for their universities?
Yes. Should there be some
sort of stipend system designed to make up for the fact that they have
no time for a personal job despite earning billions for their school?
Yes.
But an actual salary system?
No way.
College football is the greatest sport in the world
because the athletes aren’t paid, at least not officially.
I don’t buy that paying them would cut down on under-the-table
green handshakes. It would
probably just make it worse.
Think about it, if the kids are getting paid already then what booster
wouldn’t feel a little more comfortable paying a Christmas bonus to the
star QB?
Then there’s the fact that bigger schools with bigger endowments would
end up buying better players at a greater rate than they are now.
If paying these kids suddenly became kosher an insane number of
honest alums would step forward wielding their platinum cards with their
wallets open. College football is
at least pure on the surface for now.
Paying the athletes a salary would do nothing more than ruin the
game and create 18 year old free agents.
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