Hello UI. Again we find ourselves on another heated topic of discussion. In recent years we have seen a certain bias towards athletes. Years ago athletes could do no wrong and were forgiven no matter what the offense. However, the trend now is to expose them for all their dirty secrets and to put them on display for the world to see their faults. It’s very understandable for this to be the case when the Pros are being paid what people consider to be ridiculous amounts of money what many consider to be simply a game.
However it is more than merely a sport… It is a business. It is a high stakes billion dollar industry that is governed by only a few associations. The biggest of which being the NCAA makes more money than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. Everything from bowl games, the final four, the college world series, and college apparel makes the NCAA collectively profit 1 billion dollars per year. Let me repeat myself 1 billion dollars in PROFIT. That means the organization makes far more than this amount but after all money has been distributed to schools, for athletic operations the profit margin is a billion. Knowing this is important for later in this blog. Before you judge college athletes and call them spoiled, open you mind to this.
The general rule is that college athletes are not supposed to be paid based on the fact that they are not professionals and are receiving a college education for free. This cannot be further from the truth. First of all there is nothing FREE about the education. There is a demand for hard physical labor and attention away from studies to meet the requirements of the scholarships. There has not been a person throughout the NCAA’s history that has received an athletic scholarship based solely on merit. You earn your scholarship based upon athletic performance nothing more, nothing less. So now that we all know the situation for many student athletes let’s take a look at the facts of it all.
You are now a scholarship athlete. You must go to team meetings, practices, and games on time and preform your duties as a member of said team accordingly. Meetings can last up to 3 hours give or take, practices can go for 3-4 hours, workouts take about 2 hours or more and at 2 different times a day, and the games are all day 12 hour events. On an average week you have spent 63 hours per week (longer than the average work week) earning your scholarship. Now imagine taking a 12 hour case load and maintaining a GPA of higher than 2.5… 3.0 if your school is more academic. Oh by the way… Did I mention that you have to pay your own way the entire time? Any expense that doesn’t fall in line with your scholarship is on you solely. You cannot take any money from anyone other than your parents (who may be struggling) nor can you get a job because it violates NCAA rules. All the while the NCAA is PROFITING a billion dollars off your back and the backs of the thousands of student athletes nationwide. Are you beginning to get the picture? This isn’t a fair trade at all.
You may only pay anywhere from 5k-12k per semester if you paid for school out of pocket. The amount of money that a student athlete compensates the university for this so-called education can be anywhere from 200k-37 million depending on the athlete, which is a disproportionate amount to the tuition and room and board that is being paid for that individual to attend the university. It is highly reminiscent of the post slavery era in America when blacks were asked to “work” on plantations and only made a few shiny nickels for their back breaking labor. The NCAA has used the guise of morality, fair play, and humbleness, to keep their current system in place. That however, has changed drastically in the last few months.
A group of true student athletes at the university of Northwestern have banned together to form the first ever union of student athletes. This is not a simple student government group that has ice cream socials and makes flyers for frat parties. These young men have actually unionized. On March 27th, 2014 a federal court gave the Northwestern Football team the right to form CAPA which is Collegiate Athletes Players Association. The unionization has many people in an uproar especially those who have financial interests in the NCAA. Because of this the NCAA will be forced to hear complaints about safety, ethical treatment, and wait for it… FINANCIAL COMPENSATION. The NCAA’s business partners will also have to account for the revenue it makes from these athletes. This means that not only will the NCAA be responsible for paying players in the future, but will be responsible for “work place injuries” as well. College athletes will be able to apply for workman’s comp and other services given through a workers union.
The common practice of exploitation will finally be curbed because there are finally laws in place that protect those who have put their health and well-being on the line to attend college. Just recently UConn’s superstar guard was quoted saying that “All the free gear and coaching sessions don’t mean anything when you have to go to bed hungry.” He was attacked for being spoiled and petulant, yet he was only speaking from his own truth.
He was vilified for speaking his mind and following the rules set for him. Unfortunately we treat people who have never run a lap a day in their lives have everything in the world to say about this topic, without actually having been in the shoes of these highly exploited young men.
How did they do it? Many people have tried to make this argument before the athletes at Northwestern and have failed at every turn, so why was this group successful where others have failed? The answer is this. A union is generally formed by workers, for workers to protect the rights of said workers. An outside force cannot speak for a group of people and call it a union. This means that any attempts by attorneys, former students, or fans were not going to be heard or even taken seriously. In order to have this come together it had to be an effort organized by the “workers” or players in this case. Knowing that you have to have a certain level of intelligence and resolve to see something like this through till the end. The bad part about that is schools like Texas, USC, Alabama, Florida, LSU etc.… breed a culture of athletes… Not student athletes.
That means that the average person who plays sports for one of these powerhouse schools is more than likely there to play the sport they were recruited for as opposed to playing a part in student life and culture. Sorry… But that’s not a good mix when taking on a giant like the NCAA. What happened is that the culture changed. In the late 90’s Northwestern surprised everyone by making a strong bid for the national championship. A player by the name of Darnell Autry was one of the first true student athletes to emerge at that time and made Northwestern, a school normally known for academics a ranked contender.
In the years following schools like Stanford and Rutgers became more athletic all the while still maintaining their academic excellence. That formula would then breed a more intelligent more aware football player who had visions of life beyond football. It was only a matter of time thereafter for the smart kids to figure out how to defeat the monster. They were able to calculate that the amount of money given to attend college and the amount of money that was earned though athletic play were not the same, and actually grossly disproportionate becoming a form of wage theft. They were also able to prove that playing college football was a job and not a gift based on the fact that athletic scholarships are performance based and not based on merit.
So what does this mean? It means that there will be a real discussion on whether college athletes will be paid for their play, compensated for injury, and possible profit sharing from the NCAA. These brilliant young men have proven that college athletics are not a privilege but a job where you are compensated and compensation is based on performance.
If you were working at a job and one day they told you that they were only going to pay you less than minimum wage to risk your life on a daily basis you would call for the head of the company and protest that your civil rights have been violated.
The civil rights of these men have been violated for far too long and are finally getting the respect and dignity they deserve. I have been through this being a former scholarship athlete myself and am very proud of what this group from Northwestern did for all college athletes. I used to be very resentful of the students who would say things like “You have it easy” and “You get to go here for free” when that is most definitely not the case. It has taught me to forgive people purely because of ignorance to what is really going on. Funny how everyone who is in the know spoke of college athletics as modern-day slavery ye did not have the resolve to actually do anything about it. Well… Someone finally has and a new age is beginning. Or you could still agree with the NCAA and believe that this is wrong, and that the exploitation is justified in some way. I personally welcome it and tip my hat to these pioneers of making the playing field just a little more even.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2007673-if-college-football-players-are-going-to-get-paid-heres-how-it-should-be-done
Dunno if you seen this, makes the most sense to me, at least as a starting point