The Wall Street Journal advocates paying athletes

I'm up for some kind of compensation for the players. Just a few observations.

• I think you need to figure out how this is going to work for the whole system . . . for all the sports, for all the schools. I don't know the answer to that, but it has to be considered. I do think that if the schools with financial resources (OSU, Alabama, USC, Michigan, etc.) can pay more than other schools, it will affect things, and not in a good way.
• I also am intrigued by letting athletes benefit off their own likeness, name, etc. That's the way that you allow for the best known, best athletes to benefit more financially.
• That being said, I don't think they should be paid full market value by the school. That is to say, I like the idea of covering the cost of not only school, but living expenses, and some kind of stipend to pay for gas, insurance, pizza, cell phone, etc. But I think it might skew things if guys who would go in the first round of the draft were paid accordingly.

I too think this is a good idea.  However, we should think through the issues of who gets paid and how much.  Obviously, Title IX is one of the issues, and frequently the advocates of compensating players fail to address it.

So, one option is simply paying all scholarship athletes in a varsity sports the same stipend.  The strictest reading of Title IX would seem to require that.  A few schools could afford that, many couldn't.  Also, in "non-revenue" sports it is common for one scholarship to be shared by two or more students.  If these folks are included in the pay pool, how would that work?  This question will come up again in the other courses of action.

If not everybody, how do we decide which sports are "revenue" sports with athletes that deserve to be paid?  Before you answer, bear in mind that in some schools men's football and or basketball run deficits, some of them quite large in schools trying to make the leap to Div 1 FBS.  Do you decide who is a revenue sport school by school (in which case, women's basketball might qualify at schools like Tennessee or U Conn, and men's football might not), or NCAA Div 1 wide?

Is the threshold for revenue sports a hard list of objective criteria, such that hockey or lacross might be on the threshold, or a subjective test?  If the former, do we need rules to keep accounting schenanigans from making some sports look cheaper or more expensive than they actually are?

If athletes getting partial scholarships is something that happens in some revenue sports, how do they participate?

What is the place of non-scholarship walk-ons in a revenue sport?  What about equipment managers?  (Since we are fund raising to get them scholarships.)

Finally, will paying athletes be simply allowed, or will it be required to compete at the top level of the NCAA?  Will we allow schools to be Div 1-revenue in some sports, and Div 2 in all the others?  Note, if this causes a lot of schools to drop out of Div 1 - FBS, I think that would be a GOOD thing.  Many schools lose money hand over fist in a vain (in every sense of the word) attempt to join the big boys.  They think the money trough is just around the corner, but the truth is that they're not Boise or FAU; they are never going to see the big bucks.  Quit kidding yourselves and your alumni; focus on exotic things like, oh say...teaching and research.

Some of the answers might require legislative changes to Title IX to be legal, but I'm assuming a reasonable proposal can get a sympathetic hearing in Congress.

Again, I think this is worth pursuing.  But, I also think alot of the proposals are shallow and simply assume the NCAA could allow the stars of men's basketball and football to get paid tomorrow without thinking through why them alone, and what other issues might have to be resolved.

Yeah!! Now let’s tell all those fancy CEO’s they can’t get paid big bucks anymore while the people who assemble the cars and aircrafts and all that, ya know, the people who create the value, get paid what amounts to a free year of college (or less)! Boo!!!

People are so clueless when it comes to this. They don't realize there are 29 other sports here.

You don't think the Field Hockey team is gonna take issue with M Basketball getting a paycheck?

Who are these advocates and isn't paying players currently illegal?

So does a water Polo player get the same money as a football player? Do D2 and D3 colleges also pay their student athletes? Because if this is the case then what we will have is smaller schools dropping certain sports that don't produce money and second tier D1 schools doing the same, so this means fewer student athletes or fewer kids getting the opportunity to attend a university. 

 People tend to believe that football and basketball players have so little free time between school and practice and games. Ask a baseball, softball player about 5 am practice and weight training in the fall and winter,  games during the week and your first half of a season being on the road,  so doing school work in your hotel rooms. Do they not deserve to be compensated the Same?

People need to take a step back and realize the kids are being paid with a quality education, and insane amount of clothing, food especially on the road, notoriety that will help them in the future when they go into a job interview and say I played football at Michigan and no student loans

https://twitter.com/BryanDFischer/status/865689879866257408

 

So total P5 revenue for FY2016 is $2,296,000,000.  There are 64 P5 schools and 100 athletes(85 football, 13 men's basketball, and 2 because I like round numbers) per school to give us a total of 6,400 athletes in the P5 that generate the vast majority of the revenue.  By NFL guidelines the players are entitled to ~48% of the revenue the league generates.  So $1,102,080,000 is to be divided amongst the 6,400 athletes giving each athlete an expected salary value of $172,200.    So are P5 football and basketball players getting $172,200 worth of tuition, room and board, tutoring, academic support, etc?  Probably not. 

 

But if you had to share all that revenue, not just the 48% nfl guideline with all ~650 student athletes per P5 school, or 41,600 total you end up with $55,192 per student athlete.  $55,192 per student athlete isn't as much money as you'd think. This is why half of P5 athletic departments aren't even profitable when you factor in the tuition they have to pay and then the facility costs, not to mention the coaching salaries, travel, etc.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The mental gymnastics required to justify college athletics are considerable. How do you preserve the system? It's a pretty good system if you enjoy being a fan of one of the universities that can put together a competitive program at the national level. We can argue how many universities can do it - whether it's the majors plus ND or some subset of that total - but it's a tiny subset of college athletics in terms of participation. Do the players deserve to get paid? I don't know. They're being asked to buy into a system. College degrees they may or may not ever earn or benefit from. Loyalty to a university concept that may have no meaning to them. The top players essentially prop this up by providing legitimacy for the end product. There is no other football league for 18-21s. No elite player is going to skip college and the one-and-done concept doesn't exist. If the NFL were to change its draft and scout the high schools (or younger, why not go full-Eurosoccer and get younger players), that would probably be the end of the money train for college football. So we perform these mental gymnastics and all the athletes in all the sports at Division I universities provide a key service: legitimacy. Amateurism in a somewhat pure form. We can praise the field hockey midfielder for her dedication and determination, but, really, what is the market value of her pursuit of excellence in field hockey? Probably a lot less than the value of her scholarship. In other words, it has a negative value to her university. Should we expect a Rashan Gary, for example, whose market value even now would be in the millions annually, to ignore that market potential and have it spread out to thousands of athletes who generate negative revenue? Seems rather Utopian. Or does Gary accept that by playing college football, he's buying into the sports system? Gary "pays" more (in opportunity cost) to enter this system, because he's going to obtain more financial benefit on the other side. I can be on board with these gymnastics, though I am troubled a little by the money going to coaches and these new forms of booster programs (shoes, apparel). I fear if the NCAA allows exceptions for likenesses, whatever, the potential for abuse grows considerably and the Rick Pitino model becomes the norm. Thus the mental gymnastics of justification gets a little harder to perform.

All I know is as a parent of a student athlete lm not in debt because of it and neither is she. Practicing 20 hours a week, traveling to away games, a concussion and other injuries and she wouldn't have changed a thing and now as a grad asst.coach she is getting her masters paid for. Out of state tuition is 50,000.00 a year and she will be leaving this spring debt free. I consider that paid.