Taking Advantage of Student Athletes
The NCAA is not compensating the athletes for their hard work. It is beyond unacceptable.
I must admit, I am no superfan of basketball. But, when March Madness rolled around this year, even I excitedly sat on my sofa with my eyes peeled to the screen while I watched the Ohio Bobcats and Virginia Cavaliers’ run up and down the court. My brother, Reid, also stood there in shock, eyes permanently open as if one blink would change the outcome of the game. I watched the seconds tick away, and I said, “Wow, Reid, the Ohio players must be making bank from this one.” Not daring to look away from the screen, he replied with, “Nah, they get nothing. You think they’re getting paid for this?!”
Now I sat there, even more in shock than before. I watched as the basketball players were throwing themselves, sprinting back and forth, trying as hard as they possibly could to get this win for their team. How could they not be compensated for all of the clear hard work and definite arduous preparation being put into this sport?
No, college student athletes must surely be getting paid, I thought. And the fact that they’re not is blatantly unjust.
Beginning with the economic aspect of it all, it is important to consider the massive amounts of money that many schools make from these athletic events. In fact, in 2019, the Division I schools alone made $18.9 billion in revenue according to the NCAA. This concept is not even just touching upon the direct revenue, but also dealing with the sports as sources of entertainment, meaning more school spirit, therefore leading to more revenue.
In my opinion, the revenue that these colleges and universities receive due to the effort of these players should lead to some form of compensation for those student athletes, who are putting in all of the hard work. Critics might claim that these schools are technically giving this compensation by giving scholarships. However, there is rarely ever such a thing as a full scholarship. The students, usually those who are in need of financial assistance, are almost always left with the bills for something, whether it be with their rooms, food, books, or more.
In addition, this idea of a “free education” is a complete facade because of the fact that athletes are unable to fully take advantage of the academic opportunities that the schools offer. They spend so much of their time occupied with their sport that they get funnelled into an inescapable system where they cannot take a cluster of classes because of scheduling and level difficulties. Jahmia Phillips, a former college basketball player at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus who uses the pronouns “they/them”, really said it best when they recently told me during a Zoom interview that, “I was money to them.”
That impactful interview led me to consider something I really had never before — the health, both mentally and physically, of the athletes themselves. The NCAAhas long argued that attempts to pay these athletes is a direct “attempt to turn student-athletes into employees.” But in the words of New York Times sports columnist Kurt Streeter, student athletes “are already university employees.” By not paying the players who work tirelessly day after day and constantly push themselves to their physical and mental limits, it is essentially becoming a system where the universities can take advantage of free labor. This is something that even the U.S. Supreme Court Justices are on the verge of deciding upon in the case of the NCAA vs. Alston. Moving away from the legal aspects of it all, injuries are a serious reality that should also come into play. These athletes put so much effort into the sports on the college level that they might have permanent injuries that the school does not provide aid for long term, which then impacts the ability of some of the athletes to actually go professional.
While I firmly believe that these student-athletes deserve payment, I am also reasonable in recognizing the sheer difficulty of doing so. There is an aspect of inequality that might result from any payment structure, especially among individual athletes. The best safeguards to prevent gender and racial equality should definitely be put into place. Still, my immediate thought is that these players should be paid. Once again, if they are being asked to perform like professionals, why not pay them as such?
