Pay for Play or Educate?

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.