A Scholarship Is Nice, but College Athletes Should Still Be Paid

as cross-campus subsidization and title IX requirements are real and relevant.  Ultimately, fundamental questions must be asked:

“Why is it the job of the guys on the football and basketball team to fund all the sports across campus, when coaches, administrators and wealthy commentators are not forced to share their salaries?  Do we feel it is OK to fund this subsidy with money from the athletes and not anyone else?  Is there a Title IX for coaches so that the female basketball coach earns the same as the men’s coach? ”

Part of the reason that I am in favor of holding congressional hearings to challenge the tax-exempt, non-profit status of the NCAA is because they’ve created a system in which one group is forced to bear the brunt of administrative burdens, while the other group can switch jobs when they want, negotiate the salary that they want, and get all the perks that they want.  Coaches get rich by forcing athletes to wear a certain brand of sneaker.  Athletic departments pay six and seven figure salaries with money earned from the jerseys of their athletes.  Commentators and even the NCAA president earn millions from holding games in which they don’t even participate.  The truth of the matter is that the system is a carefully-designed web of laws and rules that constrain one group and force them to serve another group’s financial interests – not unlike a Chinese sweatshop.  When you put laws in place that penalize athletes for accepting a bag of groceries, you’ve got a corrupt system on your hands. There should be nothing illegal about accepting a candy bar, a ride to the gym or free lunch. But all of these things suddenly become criminalized in the deceptive bastion of exploitation known as the NCAA. 

  The only universities with the moral authority to say that they truly cannot afford to compensate athletes are the ones who are not paying their coaches more than $200,000 per year.  Most campuses with big time athletics programs cannot make this claim, for they always find a way to pay coaches, administrators and everyone else. If there truly is a financial crisis in many athletics departments across the nation (as Mr. Collins asserts), then the NCAA and college coaches should be the first soldiers in line to fight the battle toward financial stability.  When I see coaches giving up their million dollar salaries for the sake of preserving the financial solvency of the NCAA, I will be convinced that the financial crisis is real. Since he and others assert that free tuition is just as valuable as real compensation, we can even allow the coaches to trade in their salaries for a big fat scholarship.

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