In 2010, the NCAA(National Collegiate Athletic Association) and Turner/CBS Sports agreed to a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal for the broadcast rights to March Madness, the Division I men’s basketball tournament. Today, the NCAA makes nearly a billion dollars per year from the TV agreement, ticket sales, and other sources like donations. According to NCAA’s official website, more than 90% of this money is distributed to “support NCAA schools, conferences and nearly half a million student-athletes.” The word ‘support’ is used very vaguely here, because really, a lot of that 90% is used for staff salaries. And what about the other 10%? Shouldn’t the remaining $90,000,000 go to the student-athletes who make the industry possible?
It’s about time college student-athletes get paid. They spend countless hours working out and striving to perfect their game, all while keeping up with their classes and social life. Paying them would also teach them how to manage money and prepare them for when they get a job. Their coaches get paid millions. The colleges that they play for earn tons and tons of revenue from ticket sales, selling merchandise, vending at games, and sponsors. The athletes are the heart of the NCAA and the NCAA would be nothing without them. But what do they get out of the billion dollars the NCAA makes a year? Nothing. It’s about time they get paid.
Playing a sport while juggling classes is exhausting. The typical day of a student-athlete goes a little something like this; You wake up at 5:30, only getting about 5 hours of sleep, feeling a bit tired. Then you rush off to an early morning practice at 6:30. After that, it’s time for classes. You can barely keep yourself from falling asleep in class. Now, after 4 hours of classes, it’s time for an afternoon workout. After that workout, you’re exhausted. Now you have to get cracking on your pile of homework. Now you’re absolutely whupped and fall asleep right when you hit your pillow at around midnight. Playing a sport takes up so much time of a student-athlete’s day, it’s like they are working a full-time job. A job of 40 hours a week is considered a full-time job. College football players can spend 70-80 hours a week practicing in August, and about 50 hours a week when the season and classes start up. Some people would say that the college athletes chose to play a sport and they knew the commitments that come with it. But those commitments take effort and that effort deserves to be paid. College athletes are spending more time for their sport than adults at a full-time job, yet college athletes get paid nothing compared to their thousands/millions.
In the future, you have to be able to manage your money. Paying college athletes would give them experience in having a substantial amount of money, and that experience would help them immensely when they get a job or a spot on a professional team after college. Take Johnny Manziel for example; he won the Heisman Award in 2012, the annual award given to the most outstanding player in college football. His future was looking very bright and was drafted 22nd overall by the Cleveland Browns in the 2014 NFL Draft. Soon after he was drafted, Manziel started doing drugs and partying a lot. He got in a lot of trouble and was later indicted for hitting his girlfriend in the ear, rupturing her eardrum. The Cleveland Browns released him from the team, and his agent even dropped him as a client. If he was paid in college, he would have been more prepared for life after college. Sure, some would say that if Manziel was paid in college he would just do the same and get in trouble in college. Maybe that’s true and he would have gotten in trouble in college, but he would have learned from his mistakes, and he wouldn’t make those mistakes during his professional career. Now, his career is basically over, but I feel that he could have perhaps learned his lesson in college and been more prepared and mentally ready for his life after college.
College coaches have one of the highest-paying jobs. According to Business Insider, Jim Harbaugh, the head coach of the University of Michigan Division I men’s football team, makes $9,000,000 a year. In fact, the highest paid public employee in 40 of the 50 U.S. states is the state university’s head football or basketball coach. Colleges pay coaches like professional teams pay athletes; the better they are, the more they are paid. But the coaches’ skill level depends a lot on how the players perform. The coach and the players work together to become as good as they can. The coaches even get bonuses according to how well the team does. But the players are also a large factor in how well the team does, it’s not just the coach. Yet, the players get paid nothing for playing an arguably larger role than the coach does in how well their team performs, while the coaches get paid millions for merely directing players on the sidelines. Yeah, some people would say that coaches are super important and could turn a whole team around by his/herself, but that has rarely happened.
March Madness. The name is very fitting. Every March, the NCAA holds the Division I men’s basketball championship, or, more commonly known as the March Madness tournament. The NCAA recently agreed to a $10.8 billion, 14 year deal with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting for TV rights to the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. 10.8 BILLION dollars. Colleges also make around $120 million a year from ticket sales, vending at games, and selling merchandise. The players are the ones playing in the games that make all of this money. They make the NCAA work, and without the athletes, they wouldn’t make any money. The student-athletes are the heart of the industry, and debatably the most important people in it. They definitely deserve to get paid at least some of that money. According to the NCAA, some of the money actually goes to athlete scholarships and school improvements, but a lot of the money still goes to paying staff and employees.
At the end of the day, college athletes just want to play sports for their love of the game. They don’t think too much about getting paid, they’re just trying to do the best they can in school and doing what they love to do. But should they care about getting paid? The colleges that these student-athletes play for and represent make millions off of them. Nearly all of the people involved in the team are paid except for the athletes themselves. This isn’t right. Let’s change this and finally reward the student-athletes that are the heart of the NCAA and the ones that make it all possible.