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

In other words, the worst excuse for me to use for not compensating you fairly is to say that I’ve already spent your money.  Even worse is for me to say that I need your money to avert a financial crisis that you did not cause and I am not willing to help avert myself.  Again, simplicity is key: OJ Mayo plays for USC.  USC earns an extra $30 million due to the presence of OJ Mayo on their basketball team.  OJ Mayo’s mother has the right to negotiate at least $10 million dollars of her son’s contribution to the campus.  OJ Mayo’s mother is no more responsible for solving the financial problems of cross- campus USC sports than USC is responsible for solving the financial problems of OJ Mayo’s cousins. Additionally, you can give OJ Mayo the grand, super-deluxe, Presidential scholarship, and it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what this young man is bringing to his campus.  Common sense is the weapon to ensure that you are not deceived by the NCAA’s smoke and mirror parlor tricks.

Mr. Collins’ idea that an open market system would create a long list of losers is another tactic used by the NCAA.  In their claims of altruism (which come with a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign), they claim that the losers in a fair market system would be those poor inner city kids who get their only chance to get an education because the NCAA is gracious enough to give it to them.  That would be what I call the “what we give you is better than nothing” argument.  I beg to differ.  Many college athletes in revenue generating sports are multi-million dollar commodities and college sports is a multibillion dollar industry.  The truth of the matter is that there is a ready-made market for these athletes, and they bring as much or more value to the table than the NCAA.  Of course, the NCAA deserves credit for the branding, marketing and promotion of the product, but the athletes are the product. The only problem is that the athlete is pimped to the advertising community, with the universities keeping the revenue in their pockets.   Without players to pimp, there is no revenue.

You cannot, in any conceivable way, justify leaving out the sources of labor from compensation when the billions are being earned from college sports.  A scholarship is nice.  But again, most athletes would settle for a fair payment of $200,000 each year and pay their own tuition.  Sorry Michael, private university tuition is not $200,000 per year, so I think you misinterpreted the numbers I mentioned in my first article. Additionally, paying a student in tuition when their family needs cash is like paying them in candy bars, soap or some other commodity that they may or may not want. 

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