Photo by Ben Hershey
By: Chris Sibilia
In the world of sports, collegiate athletics is one of the most popular genres of sports in the United States. Even the National Collegiate Athletic Association, commonly called the NCAA, is benefiting from the popularity of college sports. In 2017, the NCAA broke $1 billion in revenue for the first time in its history. But who generated this revenue? That would be the student-athletes who compete and attract viewership for the NCAA and their member universities.
With all this money that the NCAA is making annually, the debate of whether or not the student-athletes should be treated like employees and be paid as such has escalated to a point of no return. While some say they should be paid and others say they shouldn’t, one thing is certain, a decision will be coming soon.
Jamal Paxton believes student-athletes should be paid. Paxton is a senior, and the starting center for the Georgia State University football team. He says they should be paid because, “of everything the athletes have to do and put up with that normal students don’t go through.”
According to Paxton, “Playing a sport in college is like having a full-time job. During the season, athletes are at sport-related activities for 50+ hours a week. My athletic schedule alone consists of practice every day during the week for 6 hours, as well as at football for 40+ hours on the weekend due to having games, traveling, etc.”
Outside of athletics, Paxton says, “Student-athletes take anywhere from 14-18 credit hours of classes a semester, then have study hall everyday after classes. When I wake up for practice at 5:30 in the morning, I usually won’t get back to room till after 7 or 8 in the evening due to having so many classes and study hall.”
Paxton says that all these hours of school and athletics leaves him no time to find a job and make the money needed to pay bills. “Even though I am on full scholarship and have school and my dorm payed for, I still have bills that need to be paid that are not covered by the scholarship.”
Paxton says that the student-athletes deserve a monthly payment of at least $1,500 to help pay for the bills needed as well as have some money to go out to eat with friends and with his girlfriend.
He says, “It’s a struggle right now to go out. Most of the free time that I get, I can’t go out because I have no way to pay for anything if I do go out.”
So maybe the life of a student-athlete isn’t as glorious as it may seem. Maybe they do struggle more than normal students who are not involved in athletics. On the other hand, maybe they do get enough. At least that is what Jesse Rappole thinks. Rappole is currently an academic coordinator in the athletics department at Georgia State, and was once a college athlete himself at Villanova University and the University of North Carolina.
Rappole believes student-athletes shouldn’t be paid due to the fact that allowing student-athletes to get paychecks would allow the NCAA to “become a very separate structure.”
According to Rappole, “The power five conferences would shrink further and become maybe a power four with about twelve schools per conference. Because realistically, they would be the only ones who could afford to pay their student-athletes any sort of actual salary.”
Rappole is saying is that by allowing student-athletes to be paid, it will diminish all aspects of amateurism in colleges sports. An open bidding war between universities would begin to get the best athletes, which would turn collegiate athletics professional.
To insure this doesn’t happen, he says that we should instead, “redouble the effort to inform student-athletes about the fact that no manageable salary, no salary that would be sustainable in college athletics is going to last them beyond their four years at the school.”
Rappole continues by saying, “Right now, they are already being offered a free education that can then sustain them for the rest of their lives. I just saw statistics the other day about Georgia State, the average change in social mobility is something like $40,000 or more in the changes in their families current combined salary versus what their family’s salary will be when they are the ones providing an education to Georgia State. That $40,000 a year for the rest of your life is a heck of a lot more than anyone could be afford to pay any student-athlete over a four-year career.”
This debate of whether student-athletes should be paid just doesn’t go on between everyday people, it is also occurring inside courtrooms across the nation as former collegiate athletes are filing suit against the NCAA.
A recent court case in 2008 between Jason White and the NCAA determined that athletic scholarships don’t cover the full cost of attendance. The court ruled that the NCAA must allow universities to pay student-athletes a cost of attendance stipend to try and help with these expenses.
This stipend has proved not to be enough though, so once again former athletes are taking the NCAA to court. One case that currently is ongoing is Alston v. NCAA. The former athletes are trying to prove the NCAA violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by putting a cap on athletic scholarships, which prevents schools from competing.
Will student-athletes ever be considered employees? Or will they remain forgotten? Whatever the case is, and whatever is determined by the courts in the Alston v. NCAA case, one thing is for certain; that the debate of whether or not student-athletes should be paid will rage on as long as collegiate athletics exist.