At the start of this year’s college football season, reigning Heisman Trophy winner and Texas A&M University quarterback Johnny Manziel was suspended amidst reports that he was paid to sign autographs for the first half of his team’s opening game.
Some would argue these reports suggest that rather than rendering one of college football’s biggest stars ineligible to play, the college athletics system should reward stars by paying them. Paying college athletes, the argument goes, would eliminate the need to suspend players for receiving improper benefits while leveling the playing field for athletes who currently get away with receiving benefits.
I don’t see why college athletes should be banned from selling their autographs. If fans can get autographs and then sell them, athletes should be able to profit from their own penmanship. Really, anyone can sell his or her autograph — it’s just likely there won’t be a market for them.
But autographs should be the only time athletes can profit off their talent. Playing a sport prevents players from getting a part-time job, so autographs are a compromise.
Athletes shouldn’t get endorsement deals — that would take necessary funds away from schools. And one of the beauties of college sports is that every four years, it’s an entirely new team. Fans come to support the team name on the front of the jersey, not the player’s name on the back — if there even is one.
Paying players is simply impractical. College athletics departments do not have enough money to pay athletes, and sports programs have to share revenue among their entire athletics departments. Teams that bring in more revenue don’t keep all of their revenue or have higher budgets. They have to share the money with lower revenue sports.
Paying athletes from only high revenue teams would destroy any semblance of equality between high and low revenue sports. Schools would prioritize the sports that would pay athletes, and in doing so, would increase the divide between male and female athletes. Only 21 women’s basketball teams were able to outearn their male equivalent, and of those, only three were profitable. There is no way schools would be able to pay athletes playing unprofitable sports, and paying only one gender of athletes would violate Title IX. The only way paying college athletes and creating this imbalance between sports would be possible is through altering Title IX, which could severely set back gender equality.
Only certain schools with large boosters could pay athletes. While some might equate this with a survival of the fittest mindset, it would make college sports much less competitive. If only certain schools have the ability to recruit athletes by paying them, elite sports schools will be able to enlarge the gap between them and other schools. Imagine March Madness going from a college basketball tournament of 64 teams with upsets in every round to a tournament where the first half of games would be more like a preseason for top schools.
One of the biggest questions to address is why college athletes should be paid. College athletes put in countless hours of work each week in their respective sports and, in top programs, oftentimes treat those sports as their major. Proponents of paying athletes also contend athletes don’t even get the benefit of a diploma because they leave school early to attempt to make it in the professional field.
But this isn’t entirely true. Not as many college athletes leave college without obtaining a degree as stereotypes suggest. Of players who were freshmen in 2005-06, 74 percent of men’s basketball and 70 percent of men’s football players graduated. That percentage is actually higher than the general graduation rate of students, which in 2009 was 56 percent.
The most important concept is that college athletes are already paid. If an athlete earns a full athletic scholarship to a private university, that involves earning an annual salary of over $50,000 a year. That is a lot more money than people without a college education or people playing as semi-pro athletes.
Scholarships provide students who might not be able to afford college a way to graduate completely free of debt. This gives students from impoverished backgrounds the chance to get world-class educations while being set up for future success. Let’s not forget that they also get the opportunity to compete at a high level in the sport they love. There are countless students who would love that opportunity.
As Jim Boeheim, Syracuse University’s men’s head basketball coach, said when asked if he thought college athletes should be paid, “That’s really the most idiotic question of all time.”
Andrew Feldman ’15 is currently working out a Nike endorsement contract to play ultimate Frisbee, and can be reached at Andrew_Feldman@brown.edu.
ADVERTISEMENT
