On NCAA Rules and Paying Athletes

There has been much talk recently, mostly in response to the meltdown at Ohio State, about whether or not the NCAA should start compensating athletes monetarily for their time playing sports.  You can find some good pieces supporting the initiative here and here,

I am not in the camp which supports paying players.  I give Jim Delaney more support than anyone not in his immediate family, but I will fight him to the death over his idea to increase compensation to players.  There are a few reasons to this:

1) It is not practical
2) It is not moral
3) They do not deserve it


The practical side of this argument is very straight forward.  Title IX means that paying athletes through an athletic department stipend could prove costly, especially for small athletic departments who may not even field a college football team.  These are the programs like Butler who we only hear about around basketball season.  What happens to them when their already minuscule budgets are presented with this choice?

More creative suggestions, such as the one presented at Team Speed Kills which involves allowing players to profit off their image by appearing in advertisements, also present issues with competitive equality.  Businesses are probably going to be less likely to use basketball players from, say, Drake in a Des Moines advertisement since the public would be less familiar with them.  If they picked some players from Iowa or Iowa State, however, they would be instantly recognizable and generate an instant emotional response with the public.  Small schools would have a much more difficult time finding these types of opportunities than larger schools.  The market for football player advertisements in Tuscaloosa is a lot larger than it is in, say Tampa.  You think South Florida players are well known enough in the Bay area to be worth putting in advertisements?

These opportunities only help players at big name schools.  Now if you are a recruit, deciding between playing at Wisconsin or Minnesota, this adds in an advantage for the Badgers.  Wisconsin has a much more locally popular football team, meaning you would be much more likely to earn some money if you chose to go there versus the Gophers where local advertisers can pluck players from more popular teams such as the Twins or Vikings.  The disparity is even bigger between programs like South Florida and Florida or Florida State.  Considering what this would do to competitive equality in major sports such as Div. I basketball, and the wide range of teams which compete in it, this would drastically alter the landscape.  The already privileged schools will benefit from this, but the schools who are already behind will be a big step behind in the recruiting process. 

While this may not bother you if you go to a big school, for the little schools it is a huge problem.  VCU and Richmond compete in the same postseason that Kansas and Duke do, they don't need more help falling behind the big boys.  It is important because the small schools make up the majority of NCAA Div. I and if they don't like the new idea it won't get passed.

So paying players through a stipend isn't realistic, and allowing them to profit off their image isn't realistic since it disrupts competitive equality.  Clearly there needs to be some new ideas before we can declare paying NCAA athletes a practically feasible idea. 

What about ethics? 

Ethically paying athletes seems like the right thing to do.  Their efforts make millions for the University while they are only compensated with the opportunity to earn a degree.

Here's where the definition of amateurism comes into play.  Amateurism is important for college athletes because, in order for them to truly enjoy the benefit of getting n education.  Collegiate athletes cannot be both student and professional simultaneously. 

Imagine you work at a hardware store.  You are terrible at your job and are completely unhelpful.  You would probably be fired.  The reason we don't get the same thing with football players who aren't very good is because they aren't there to play football.  By making them student athletes, the schools justify keeping everyone by saying they are students, not athletes.  They can be kicked out for being bad students, not bad football players. 

Professional athletes are paid but they are also traded, cut, and wavered.  Every pro sport in the country contains  those elements.  Now consider a collegiate athlete.  Being traded back and forth completely ruins the consistency in coaching they need to prepare them for the pros and does not allow them to complete a degree.  If collegiate athletes are professionals they cannot practically be compensated with a college education.

Therefore, in paying student athletes, we are presented with two scenarios:

1) College athletes should be treated as professionals and will be traded, dropped, etc. earning what will inevitably be less than what they are getting now with the value of their time at college and will remove all pretense of athletics being secondary at institutions of higher learning.  (nobody wins)

2) The college athletes are paid like professionals but are given the same protection that amateurs are, a situation which invariably is favorable to the athletes but is clearly not in the best interest of the Universities.

By paying athletes but keeping their amateur status, colleges would be setting up an incredibly unfavorable situation where they do not have the power to manage their employees.

Go back to the hardware store.  Let's say you try real hard but you really just aren't working out. You are too small to lift heavy objects and despite trying just can't retain a thing you learn about hardware.  But the store can't get rid of you and hire someone else.  No company plays by those rules,why are we expecting colleges to?
How do we morally justify giving students who don't start or who don't play the spot on a team that could be given to a new recruit without the excuse of them being a student?  You can fire a student working at the campus store for incompetence, but you can't kick a football off the team (taking away his scholarship) because he is bad at football.  Cutting kids from athletics ruins their chance at continuity in their education, which if they are bad at sports, is all that they have left.
It isn't part of the moral fabric of our country to keep dead weight on staff when there is a possibility that it can be made more efficient.  College athletics operates outside of this mold because they are considered students first.  By making them professionals and paying them, we would be treating them as employees of the university.  This would make them vulnerable to the same types of issues we are trying to address in the debate around oversigning, namely cutting players that are no longer needed.  By taking away a players amateur status you take away the one thing protecting the value of their education. 

In other words, they are losing money in the long term by being paid in the short term.  Morally, encouraging students to give up potential money in the future so they can spend on things they probably don't need now (like cars and tattoos), is wrong.

Finally we get to the reason why they don't deserve it.  This is best explained for me by the fine folks over at House of Sparky and by Penn State assistant coach Jay Paterno.  Student athletes are already given better deals than any other scholarship student on campus by a mile.  What do they need more money for? 

So they can go out and get sleeves of tattoos?  To get fancy cars?  You don't need those things.  This is luxury money, and it is a farce to think that student athletes are entitled to more money than the gratuitous sums they are already receiving. 

This argument is ridiculous in context.  Paying athletes threatens to disrupt competitive balance in college sports, change the entire landscape of athletics at every educational institution in this country and the media still thinks it is ok because players don't have enough money to go clubbing on weekends in the offseason.  Or to see a movie in theaters.  I am in college, I am lucky if I see one new movie a year in Iowa City.
Ask yourself, is it really worth drastically disrupting the balance of the current system, possibly forcing schools out of competition, possible antitrust action (a very distinct possibility), and removing the security blanket that allows every student athlete the security to know that even if they don't pan out their education and their future are secure, just so the star point guard can buy a new playstation?