Should student athletes receive compensation?

I hate to bring this up, but some students just need some walking around money. Lots of students get their scholarships to allow for educational expenses like their education, books, food, housing, bus passes, but that's pretty much it. Students from well off families do okay but some people get scholarships from families that have nothing to contribute to their children in college. They can't afford new cloths, or their scholarship doesn't cover anything outside housing and food and education expenses. Now, I'm not saying that college scholarships should include walking around money, but students can't very well be committed athletes and students and still work a job. So instead they should loosen certain restrictions on booster gift giving.

I think they should def be payed for their likeness being used for merchandise. The NCAA rakes in tons of cash using the players likeness. Giving the players a salary? Prob not. Letting them see revenue for jerseys using their name/number or in the case of videogames? They should.

I went to a mid size state school which paid the D1 Basketball coach more than the University president. College sports are a joke and out of control imo, and if state schools and smaller universities can't afford to pay athletes then all the more reason to implement a salary system. Maybe these schools will wise up and drop their D1 programs and stop wasting tuition money on bullshit.

If you're going to be treating athletes essentially as full-time employees, then it makes sense to open up salary negotiations. That some already receive compensation in the form of scholarships etc. is beside the point.

All the more reason to unionize then, no? You said it yourself, collegiate athletic programs have less of an incentive to look after the well being of their athletes than the major professional leagues do.

And it would be not only ludicrous but callous for universities to strip away the few material benefits they provide their athletes in exchange for a wage. Universities provide benefits to all of their full-time employees, from the custodian staff to the tenured professors, alongside a wage.

@ttualumni13: Whatever school has the best chance of them going pro is where they're going (currently). This really wouldn't change if you introduced some kind of payment system. Out of all the teams in the NCAA, it's not a coincidence only a handful dominate.

And please, stop with this "student athlete" bullshit. An overwhelming majority of them could not care less about their education. They have specialized classes that are designed for athletes and all this other crap so they can basically just be set up to pass and they don't get academically disqualified.

Well considering 96% of D1 college football players don't make it pro, they should probably care more about their education.

You might be talking about at the DI level with no "student athlete" business. But Remember the majority of college athletes are at the DII, DIII, NAIA, or junior college level. These athletes ARE student athletes, as they pretty much have no future in their sport after college.

On topic. I think paying non-full-ride scholarship athletes is a good idea, and I could warm up to full-ride athletes as well depending on the situation (though from what I am aware of, DI full-ride athletes get a monthly stipend plus everything else). I am worried about how things will work though.

Will it become an hourly wage where a school may have a limited amount of money to hand out to students so they will favor certain students at practices to reduce the cashout?

Are all students equally paid? Will DI football players make as much as DI bowling athletes? Will students be paid based on their achievements? Do we care if there was a payment discrepancy between DI swimmers an DI basketball players, even if they both put in the same number of hours and make it as far in the post-season?

I think to provide payment to athletes we need to answer most of these questions and more first. Though I could just be a former college athlete and be jealous of missing out on being paid to do the athletics I love.

I agree. It's absolutely outrageous for student athletes who generate hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in value to ask for salaries, because some of them get benefits that are worth tens of thousands of dollars. I mean, what kind of entitled brat asks for employee rights and money when they already get compensated in non-monetary benefits for far less than they produce?

LMAO, being a walk-on in a revenue negative sport doesn't count. You chose to participate in a sport. You didn't have access to coaching? You didn't have access to trainers? You didn't have access to facilities? You're a liar.

You didn't go to a large D1 University, did you? If you think the benefits the Football and Basketball (the only sports that are revenue positive) players receive are few, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you.

I went to UCONN, I had basketball players that could barely read or write in my classes. They are already compensated via academic degrees they didnt deserve or earn, and professors that give them passing grades solely because they play sports.

These dimwits would otherwise never be admitted to colleges, and certainly would never graduate. They should be happy universities are willing to compromise their academic integrity to admit them in the first place.

Weeeellll it is a billion dollar industry, and most players put in 30-40 hours a week in practice time. Kinda makes it hard to argue they shouldn't be compensated.

I did actually, but what does that have to do with anything? And yes, the material benefits they receive from their universities are meager, especially when compared to what other full-time university employees receive, how many hours they put in a year, and how much money they bring in from their work.

You've somehow failed to address all of the points made in my post.

Am I underestimating or overestimating the matter? I think the former holds as opposed to the latter.

Again, you weren't a scholarship athlete playing a sport that produced any revenue for the university. I would wager that your team, assuming you're not full of crap, probably cost your school money to maintain. Why should you have received any compensation?

Your post failed to make any points worth addressing. The fact still remains that 90% of college athletes play a sport that produces no revenue for their school. They aren't employees of the university. They're students that choose to participate in an extracurricular activity. If they want to work and earn money while going to school, they'll quit the activity they've chosen to participate in and get a job. Golly gee, I suppose High School and Junior High athletes are next in line to get paid.

The bottom line is that the athletes that actually produce money for the university DO receive economically valuable goods and services. Your failure to address that fact renders moot everything you've said from that point on.

I don't even think that a black hole is this dense.

Pointing out that collegiate athletes already do receive some amount of material compensation is not the matter at hand when talking about whether or not collegiate athletes are fairly compensated for their (full-time) work. What if your employer told you that since they provide you with health care, a gym membership, and a lunch stipend that they're going to stop paying you a wage? I doubt you'd be too happy with that. College football is a multi-billion dollar industry. Every year there are 39 bowl games, all with their own corporate sponsors. Just look at the name of some these bowl games; the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, the Capital One Bowl, the GoDaddy Bowl, the Outback Steakhouse Bowl, and the list goes on and on.

People can talk up the guise of amateurism in college athletics all they want, but the fact of the matter is the emperor has no clothes - these kids are being shamelessly exploited (and in the case of football, are being exposed to extremely hazardous workplace conditions). This doesn't even have to be about colleges paying their athletes outright - the NCAA not only doesn't let them touch any of the money that they, the NCAA, is making off of their likeness through jersey sales, video game portrayals, advertising, ect, but if the players even try to make a dime off of their own public image in the same way the institutions they work for do, the NCAA does anything and everything they can to destroy their collegiate career. Hilariously, they even suspended Johnny Manziel for half a game without finding any evidence of "wrongdoing" on his part, while at the same time prominently showcasing his jersey on their website. Moreover just look at all the coaches making millions of dollars per year (much more than the salaries of their more academically inclined colleagues). These are professional coaches coaching professional sports where the athletes simply aren't getting paid.

And to restate a point I made previously - you yourself acknowledged that collegiate athletic programs have less of an incentive to look after the well being of their athletes than the major professional leagues do. All the more reason for these athletes to at the very least unionize to make sure they have at least some amount of institutional influence to look after their own interests.

But yeah, they absolutely should

As long as the nba and nfl have age/college requirements, yes, college athletes need to be compensated. At the very least disability insurance, guaranteed scholarships, rights to their own name, and 50% of the tv revenue.

I tend to think that the whole "student-athletes are unfairly compensated" thing is kind of BS. Furthermore, I think there's certain reasons why implementing compensation for student athletes might be difficult. For one thing the obvious fact that not many are acknowledging is that so few college players are actually big money generators. There are only a few collegiate sports basketball, football...that make any serious cash, and then on those teams there's typically only a few players that are actually generating that publicity and income. For every Jameis Winston, Reggie Bush, Marcus Mariota, Tim Tebow, Jabari Parker etc. there's hundreds of other players that are important parts of the team, but don't put people in the stands.

Do we only pay the players on the high revenue generating sports? Do we only pay the high revenue generating players on those high revenue generating sports? If players start getting paid according to their publicity they will start holding out just like professional players when they feel they deserve more. The whole thing is a quick ticket to ruining college sports, exorbitant salaries for a few (the ones who will be able to collect wealth later on in professional leagues anyway), and next to no compensation for the majority of the team.

I hate to agree with vfib, but he's right. College athletes are getting scholarships, which for a full ride can be in the neighborhood of twenty grand a year on the low end of the scale. There are students who have to foot the cost of that and pay for food and they still end up eating, why can't Napier find some way to pay for meals if they can? His comments are worthy of exactly zero respect. I also heard someone on ESPN complaining that athletes can't count on the dining halls for meals because they close at eleven PM. Honestly, we're really going down this road? It's not that hard to eat dinner sometime before eleven PM, I can't believe this is what passes for mistreatment nowadays. This morning someone on ESPN was complaining that student athletes only get three meals a day. ONLY three meals? Last time I checked that was the standard amount of meals for most people. Besides, aren't they all you can eat meals? Are we talking about basketball players or sumo wrestlers here?

You've obviously never had a student job. I think I made something like eighty dollars for about six weeks of tutoring last semester, I know someone in computer science working for the school who's making something like a quarter of what he could be making doing the same job in the actual field. No one makes money in college.

And yes, the NCAA does make money off them, which is part of why I think college sports in general should just go away. Universities don't see a whole lot of direct benefits from sports other than enrollment (the money usually just goes right back to the sporting program), and really the focus of college should be academics and not which college has the best sports team. The one downside to this is that a lot of underprivileged kids who use sports as a way to go to college won't have that avenue, but really that just speaks to how broken our education system in this country is. Instead of just going with an imperfect solution we should be trying to make a college education an achievable goal for everyone regardless of whether or not they can play sports.

You're not an economist, are you? The market sets an equilibrium price, in the case a "labor" market. Colleges offer scholarships; tuition, meals, housing, books, coaching, travel expenses, facilities, etc as compensation. The Athletes agree to these terms by accepting said scholarship and participating in their athletic competitions. If the athletes do not feel fairly compensated, they're free to take their talents to another "employer". They aren't forced to participate in NCAA sanctioned sporting events. They're free to go play their sport professionally in another league. They can also do what the rest of the student body does; simply go to class and pay their way through school themselves.

Your example; "What if your employer told you that since they provide you with health care, a gym membership, and a lunch stipend that they're going to stop paying you a wage? I doubt you'd be too happy with that." is patently absurd. It's a (relatively) free market! If I don't agree with my employer's compensation, I have two choices; accept their compensation or refuse, leave my employment, and find employment elsewhere.

You talk of exploitation, but they're not being forced into anything. They have choices and they're informed of what those choices entail. If they really want to stick it to the universities, they'll just refuse to participate. They need the university more than the university needs them, and that's how markets work. McDonald's makes billions but they pay their fry cooks minimum wage. Is the fry cook being exploited?

I'm done discussing this with you. You aren't arguing this based on any measure of market economics. The bottom line is that 90% of college athletes generate Zero revenue for their schools. Those that do are compensated handsomely, and if they do not feel they are compensated fairly are free to ply their trade elsewhere.

Who is this other employer you speak of? Basketball players have to wait a year before they're even allowed to play in the NBA. The only other employer they have is a professional team overseas, something many 17 and 18 year olds are unwilling and most likely unprepared to do (some have done this though, Brandon Jennings signed a 2 million dollar contract with underarmor alongside a multi-million dollar contract with an Italian team. Why shouldn't Brandon Jennings been able to sign that 2 million dollar dear with underarmor if he was on a college team?) Football players have it even worse - not only do they have to wait 2 years but they don't have comparable oversea options. You say "if they don't like it they can play professionally somewhere else" when there are institutional barriers in place that make that option at best inconvenient to the point where it's not a practical option, and at worst it's an option that simply doesn't exist.

You say I'm not arguing based on any measure of market economics, nothing could be further from the case. Andrew Wiggins, if he was eligible, would've been the first overall pick last year in the draft. He would've made 5 million dollars this past year plus endorsements. Instead Kansas employed his talents for a fraction of the cost to them and without any money going into the pocket of Wiggins himself. If there actually was some semblance of a market economy for these players many of them would be making millions of dollars already.

The only professional league in the US that's even close to having it right is the MLB (and even the MLB still has its problems), where players out of high school are given the option to go pro, or they can go to school where they have to wait until their junior year to get drafted. The MLB has a robust professional developmental league in place. The NFL and NBA don't, and instead are using colleges as their developmental leagues, at the detriment of the players themselves.

What good reason is there for them not to even be able to sign endorsement deals? They're already endorsing products under the status quo, they just aren't getting paid for it.

I don't get what sports have to do with education in the first place.
Then again, I don't get why people get so worked up about other people winning or losing in some game on a field.

Sure they can, but it's also possible to learn those things in other ways then sports.

Q. Who is this other employer you speak of? Basketball players have to wait a year before they're even allowed to play in the NBA.

A. They can work overseas or they can work in any other profession. The fact that they can't play in the NBA until a year removed has nothing to do with the NCAA. That's an NBA rule. Take it up with the courts. I had to have a 4-year degree to enter my profession of choice, so I had to wait even longer than a year before I was qualified for my job. Basketball players, according to the NBA, are not qualified until they've had at lease a year out of High School.

Q. Why shouldn't Brandon Jennings been able to sign that 2 million dollar dear with underarmor if he was on a college team?

A. Because there are rules against that under the NCAA. If Brandon Jennings doesn't like it, he doesn't have to play in the NCAA. He didn't like it and played in Italy as a result. He exercised a choice that exists for these other athletes. If their skills aren't marketable enough to play overseas, they can play under the NCAA rules for lesser (non-monetary) compensation.

Q. Andrew Wiggins, if he was eligible, would've been the first overall pick last year in the draft. He would've made 5 million dollars this past year plus endorsements. Instead Kansas employed his talents for a fraction of the cost to them and without any money going into the pocket of Wiggins himself.

A. Andrew Wiggins didn't have to go to Kansas. He could have gone to Italy and accepted endorsements. He went to play college basketball, because like OTHER college students, he knew that going to college was the best avenue into his profession of choice; basketball. If I want to be a chemist, my best avenue is to go to college. Andrew Wiggins received coaching, athletic training, food, housing, etc for his services at Kansas. If he felt he was worth more, he could have gone to Italy.

Your argument boils down to this: The NFL and NBA keeps these kids from coming straight out of HS and earning a living. Somehow, because the NBA and NFL have rules that even I think are unfair and un-American, you make the illogical leap and think the NCAA is somehow responsible for paying the price for the NBA and NFL rules.

Collegiate athletes shouldn't be able to sign endorsements because its against the rules? LOL dude c'mon that's a shameless cop-out. Yes I'm aware it's against the rules, what I'm asking is for one good reason for it being against the rules.

And look, if you think the NCAA has no say in the NFL and NBA's eligibility requirements then you're a bit naive as to how the world works. Why do you think these eligibility requirements are in place? Why wouldn't the NBA want a player of the caliber of Andrew Wiggins in their league as soon as possible? Because the NCAA doesn't want to see their labor pool being decimated by athletes bypassing college all together to go pro. They're all part of the same sports cartel - they coordinate their actions at the benefit of one another. That's why the NFL doesn't play games on Saturday and the NCAA doesn't play football games on Sunday, hell the NFL even suspended Tyrell Prior after he left college to go pro to avoid being reprimanded by the NCAA. And exactly what price is the NCAA paying by simply letting their athletes go out into the marketplace and profit off of their own public persona, other than not being able to steal as much money from the labor of their employees?

You seem to be arguing for the status quo simply because it's the status quo. What I'm saying is that there doesn't need to be a system in place where 17 and 18 year old athletes have to choose between playing in college while forgoing substantial dollar figures and leaving everyone they know and moving across the globe to play professionally for a year or two. There's a reason why these athletes have started to unionize, because they're tired of being given draconian false choices by their employers.

No, because their compensation is the free education.

Why should that preclude them from additional compensation?