Paying College Athletes

I'm just one a few million or so voices with an opinion, and considering only two people read this blog, very unlikely to be heard or stir any significant pots.  College athletes are attempting to unionize.  Most interesting is that this group of athletes is not asking for money, but for support beyond graduation in terms of medical coverage.  More importantly, these athletes are asking for protection of their scholarships against injuries, coaching changes, etc.  I firmly believe that these are legitimate concerns.  However, stipulations must be in place.  I will get to the concept of straight out paying players later.

Concern 1:  Athletes want medical coverage for injuries sustained playing sports at the University.  If one were to think about the scope of this request, it would make all Universities and Colleges go broke pretty quickly.  Athletes suffer a lot of injuries with effects that last a lifetime.  Academic institutions can't just be on the hook for a lifetime of medical bills.  However, if a student graduates, the University could perhaps offer coverage for maintenance of injury-related medical coverage until the former student is able to find gainful employment that provides health insurance.  Once health insurance is obtained via employment, the University is no longer responsible for continuation of medical coverage of that particular injury.  Bear in mind that this is likely very generous, as the students choose to play their sport of choice (and yes, for some the choice is due entirely to making money playing professionally).  They also have the choice to make the most of their education in order to support the medical consequences of choosing to be a college athlete.

Concern 2:  Protection of scholarships.  Universities should not continue to make scholarships one year contracts.  If a student is offered a scholarship coming out of high school and remains in good academic and legal standing within the University, that student should remain on scholarship.  This is pretty simple in my mind.  If the student suffers an injury that prevents contributing as an athlete, redistribute the duties of this student to provide service in other ways.  An example would be as a student assistant to an athletic team. This change would prevent students who do not have the means to pay for an education and rely on scholarship money to continue to get the educational opportunity they were promised when they entered the University.

Now on to the hot-button issue of paying players.  Recently, Shabazz Napier of UCONN stated that it is unfair that the Universities make money while he doesn't have enough to eat.  I'm going to go out on a pretty sturdy limb here and state that there is no way that Napier doesn't have enough to eat.  I went to a large public University (UC Berkeley).  Athletes (at least those on scholarship) were provided with three meals a day in the dorms.  The food sucked, but it was food, and there was no limit on how much a student could eat.  There's a reason students gain the Freshman 15, and it isn't typically because of beer.  It is mostly due to easy access to three meals a day of buffet-style food.

The second issue is the exploitation of the athlete for the financial benefit of the institution.  Athletic departments have a huge revenue stream, coupled to huge costs.  For example, Alabama pays nearly $9 million per year in tuition.  This is ~1/12 of their total revenue.  The rest of the money is distributed to recruiting and other necessary functions.  The final component, however, is coach salary.  We could debate the issue of coaches at public Universities being the highest paid public state employee IN THE ENTIRE STATE.  I feel this money should be redistributed to the University for educational purposes a little bit more. The point is:  who is really getting exploited and for the benefit of whom?  From my perspective, it appears that maybe the coach is exploiting the students for that huge salary.  Otherwise, the revenue generating sports are supporting the non-revenue generating.  Should we really get rid of college baseball because Johnny Manziel's jersey is being sold and he isn't make a liquid monetary profit?  I don't think so, although coherent arguments can be made to the contrary.

The final point, then the rant stops.  Athletes are getting paid.  They are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, room, board, food, etc.  It is up to the individual athlete to choose to whether this is important, however, the concept that they are not getting paid anything is ridiculous.  I'm going to use a Cal alum as an example.  Joe Igber was a running back at Cal for all 4 years that I was a student.  He was a very good running back.  He was also an engineering student, and rumor had it that he had a near 4.0 GPA. Clearly he was a special dude with regards to his ability to handle a lot of work and time commitments. Once done with college, he was offered an NFL tryout and turned it down to pursue graduate school.  I'm pretty certain he is glad to not have potentially 6 figures in student loan debt.  In my mind, this is an acceptable form of payment.