Pay for Play or Educate?
The View from the
Middle
When asked if college athletes
should be paid for their efforts, most people instinctively say, “Of Course”. They think these athletes are being
exploited, and who is in favor of that.
But when you scratch below the surface of this issue, you might come up
with a very different answer. Before we go
deep, however, let’s dispense with some distracting side issues.
You may have heard the starting
guard for the University of Connecticut’s basketball team say that he sometimes
went to bed hungry. I played ball in
college and never had that problem, but I now understand that rules and customs
have changed. Today’s demands on athletes might cause a young man or woman to
miss a provided meal or deny them the opportunity to get a summer job to earn
extra spending money.
This needs to be fixed, and the fix
has already started. The NCAA has
recently approved a plan for “unlimited meals” for athletes, which should
help. Also, if program requirements
prohibit an athlete from getting a summer job, they should be compensated for
that. This, however, It is small potatoes.
The real issues run much deeper.
The first big reality we must face
is purely financial. It is true that
colleges bring in millions in revenues from their sports programs each year.
The University of Arkansas, for example, will make close to $100 million this
year, but will spend it all. 95% of its
revenues will go to things like scholarships, equipment, game and travel
expenses (for all sports), facilities and salaries. The remaining funds go to the university’s
general fund and to a “rainy day fund” for lean years and extraordinary
expenses. There is little to no funds to
pay athletes. And remember, the U of A
is one of only 23 programs in the country that is self-sufficient.
Finally, Football and Basketball
are the only sports that actually make money for colleges today. So, unless you plan to eliminate all other
sports, real pay for play is not possible.
The second big issue is a cultural one that combines unrealistic
expectations and a flawed education system.
In the US we have over a million
young men playing high school football, and 60% of them believe that they will
play in college while only about 3% actually will. If half of that 60% believe they will make it
to the pros, we have 300,000 players expecting to get into an NFL that only
drafts 250 players per year. The numbers
truly don’t add up. We must help these
young men understand the realities of this situation and prepare them for multiple
career choices.
But, our educational system has
dropped the ball for these young people, especially young black males. The high school graduation rate for black
males is just over 50% vs. almost 80% for white males, and it doesn’t get any
better in college. Only about 50% of
black male athletes graduate from college, which is the lowest rate for all
students and compares to an 82% graduation rate for whites. So, fewer young black males get into college
and much fewer graduate.
There are also horror stories of
athletes who get to college and can’t read.
What’s worse is that many of these young men leave college no better
off. But, I can’t blame colleges for
players who can’t read. This represents
a failure of primary and secondary schools to hold these kids accountable for
even minimal grade level requirements.
Parents, of course, also have to take responsibility for this problem. But, I do have a solution!
The NCAA could start a 20-year
program to help us segue from where we are today to where we would like to be. In year one, each college could accept 20% of
their athletes under a “hardship” program.
These students could take remedial classes that will improve their
situation. Maybe they graduate from
college with high school level academic skills, but I think most people would
be OK with that.
In year two they could accept only
19% and in year three only 18% and so on.
This would send an immediate message to primary and secondary schools as
well as parents and students that in 20 years there would be no “hardship”
exceptions. Eventually, all athletes
would have to handle basic college courses.
Will there be pain with this program? Yes, but there is pain right now for millions
of young men who have put all of their eggs in the pro sports basket but came
up short. Even if we paid college
athletes $50,000 or $100,000 per year (which won’t happen) this will only
support them until they are in their early 20’s. What are they going to do for the rest of
their lives?
Rather than continuing this charade
that maroons hundreds of thousands of young men each year, we need to make
college about education again. The few that hit the professional athletics
lottery won’t suffer from the increased knowledge forced upon them.
