Autumn Paige Booton

FYS, Harold Blanco

September 17, 2014

Is All Fair in Money and Sports?

College athletes spend countless hours with not only practices and games, but also

mandatory additional workouts, meetings with tutors, social functions. They are expected to be

student-athletes, meaning they are held to high standards not only in their contribution to their

team during practices and games, but also in the classroom. They are expected to be

ambassadors for their school, and they are compensated with scholarships and room and board at

their university. These athletes make billions of dollars for their university in revenue from

ticket and merchandise sales. People pay to be entertained by their performance. It is being

argued that these athletes deserve to be paid since money is actually being made. However, the

NCAA rebuts that these regulations are put in place to ensure fairness and to ensure the athletes’

education comes before their athletic career. The argument college athletes should be monetarily

compensated and the argument regulations that prevent college athletes from being paid promote

fairness and a quality educational experience are both justifiable.

College athletics are rooted in the concept amateurism. Amateurism rules established by

the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) demand that athletes do not have contracts

with professional teams, play with professionals, or try-out, practice, on professional teams.

The NCAA amateur rules also regulate that athletes cannot receive a salary, agree to be

represented by an agent, receive benefits from an agent or prospective agent, or prize money

actual and necessary expenses. The NCAA states, “The amateurism certification process ensures

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that incoming Division I or II student-athletes meet NCAA amateurism requirements.

Membership established the process to bring about national uniformity and fairness.”

In Katherine Baird’s article “Dominance in College Football and the Role of Scholarship

Restrictions,” she examines the balance between compensation for college football players and

competition in college sports on the field. This article is peer reviewed. Katherine Baird, the

author, is a professor of Economics at the University of Washington in Tacoma, Washington.

She is a credible author because she has been published numerous times in scholarly journals

such as the Journal of Student Finance and the Journal of Sport and Social Issues. Her article

“Dominance in College Football and the Role of Scholarship Restrictions” was published in the

Journal of Sports Management, a research journal that embraces an array of articles about laws,

policies, theories, organization, and other management related topics in the world of sports. The

article comprehensively covers why the NCAA does not allow athletes to me monetarily

compensated in order to maintain a competitive balance, particularly in college football. It is

relevant to examining the justification of paying or not paying student athletes because it gives

reasons of how the NCAA’s regulations promote fairness. The article’s bibliography includes

articles from as early as the 1950’s, but that is okay because those older articles were used to

prove a precedent for the compensation of athletes. Other older articles in the bibliography are

used to provide older statistics to support the article. Baird’s article proves to be a credible

source to use to justify why the NCAA makes regulations that prevent athletes from being paid

to compete in order to promote fairness and academic success.

Intercollegiate football provides steep revenue for many American universities. In

Katherine Baird’s article she exposes the revenue from college football at two universities by

saying, “In 2002, for example football provided the University of Washington with a net of

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$15.8 million and Ohio State University with a net of $20.3 million.” These large profits depend

primarily on the limitations on player compensation set by the NCAA. If players were

compensated, they would choose the school that offered the highest amount of monetary

compensation. This, in turn, would cause colleges to offer more and more money to athletes in

competition for the best athletes which would drive up the cost of sports, thus greatly decreasing

the profit the university makes off of its sports teams (Baird).

Athletes’ compensation is limited to nonmonetary benefits such as tuition, books, and

housing. Universities fiercely compete for prospective players who have the best statistics and

the most potential. Every university wants the athlete who offers most to their program because

they want to win more. Universities would, of course, use financial incentives to lure the best

players if the NCAA would allow it (Baird).

However this regulation was made to protect smaller schools that have less money.

Without that policy, large schools who have more money would buy out the best players, leaving

the poorer programs with less talent, eliminating a competitive balance between programs.

Teams would basically be able to buy their way to victory. Player pay restrictions promote a

competitive balance, allowing every school to be competitive within their conference regardless

of their finances. In theory, this also benefits the players involved. Since universities cannot pay

athletes, they can attract them by paying for better coaches, facilities, and trainers. If an athlete

goes to a school that pays for a higher quality program, they can have a higher chance of going

professional (Baird).

In the article “Paying College Athletes Is a Terrible Idea,” Mark Emmert also explains

why he is opposed to paying college athletes. He explains that would only increase the incentive

to bribe athletes and encourage cheating, and not promote the educational purposes of college.

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This article is peer reviewed and was published in the Wall Street Journal making it reliable

because that is a well reviewed, scholarly publication. The author of this article, Mark Emmert

is the president of the NCAA. This adds to the validity of the article because he is familiar on

paying college athletes because he is directly involved in making and enforcing regulations on

this matter. However, it must also be considered that this article is mainly opinion. None of it is

proven with actual statistics, and the author is biased because he wants to protect the NCAA and

give that association his absolute support because he is the president of the NCAA.

“Paying College Athletes Is a Terrible Idea” argues that paying college athletes only

promotes schools allowing students to cheat and diminishes the fact that colleges are first and

foremost for education, not sports. Emmert explains, “There are fundamental flaws in the pay-

for-play mantra. Proponents naively think that paying players will solve all the problems

involving agents, team boosters and others who are willing to break rules. They are wrong. The

stakes will simply be raised to bribe athletes to attend a school, support them financially for the

agent's future gain, or help them cheat in school. Not, paying players a salary would make the

situation worse.”

Additionally, this article argues that women’s sports and sports that are less

mainstreamed than football and men’s basketball would suffer and could possibly be wiped out if

athletes were paid to play. Since these sports bring in significantly lower revenues, it would not

pay schools to pour money into paying athletes to play these sports. Therefore, schools would be

sacrificing one of their sports programs for the sake of another (Emmert).

In a Newsday editorial, Michael Dobie presents a very different argument. His article, “A

Rim Rattling Ruling in College Sports” addresses the flaws in the NCAA’s regulations regarding

amateurism. Although this is a scholarly, peer reviewed source, it is less dependable because it

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is an editorial and is all opinion, the author is credible and has published many other article. This

article is relevant because it exposes a new view in the NCAA’s regulations.

Dobie starts out by claiming that athletes are “employees of the school,” and explaining

that student-athletes are being expected to put being an athlete ahead of being a student. Then

states that college sports are a business that depends on enterprising athletes. While the NCAA

makes billions, but capping off athlete’s compensation at a scholarship. Also, it stands to be

mentioned that players are not paid when their name is used on NCAA merchandise such as

video games (Dobie).

The article does note that the NCAA instates the amateurism rule in support of sports that

bring in less revenue. However, Dobie closes by stating, “Athletes could have let athletes earn

money from marketing ventures. It could have paid them a much discussed $2,000 annual

stipend for expenses not covered by a scholarship. Colleges could have guaranteed scholarships

for four years.”

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Works Cited Baird, Katherine. "Dominance In College Football And The Role Of Scholarship Restrictions."

Journal Of Sport Management 18.3 (2004): 217-235. Business Source Elite. Web. 16

Sept. 2014.

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Emmert, Mark. "Paying College Athletes is a Terrible Idea." Wall Street Journal - Eastern

Edition 11 Jan. 2012: A11. Business Source Elite. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.

Worsnop, R. L. (1994, August 26). College sports. CQ Researcher, 4, 745-768. Web. 16 Sept.

2014.

Works Cited

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