College Football 2011: Why Paying College Athletes Even $1 Is a Terrible Mistake

Steve Spurrier Suggests Paying Student Athletes as Solution

Steve Spurrier has been on both sides of the college football landscape: he was a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and one of the most successful head coaches in the history of the sport.

So he certainly has great perspective and experience. Still, I think his most recent suggestion for the game is a disaster in the making.

Spurrier recently unfolded a plan that would pay college athletes—through the coaches—as stipend.

According to the USA Today, Spurrier said:

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"I presented a proposal that we give our football players $300 a game for game expense that they could give it to their parents for travel, lodging, meals. Maybe they could take their girlfriend out Sunday night or Saturday night and so forth. A bunch of us coaches felt so strongly about it that we would be willing to pay it—70 guys, 300 bucks a game...That's only $21,000 a game. I doubt it will get passed, but as coaches in the SEC, we make all the money, as do universities, television, and we need to get more to our players. That was just something that we need to get out there. Seven of the coaches said they would be willing to pay it.''

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I can appreciate that Spurrier is trying to do something; the college game is just rampant with money-related problems.

But if this situation isn't the very definition of "slippery slope" I don't know what is.

If the NCAA opens the flood gates and allows this type of arrangement where will it end? Does the ACC have to pay more than the SEC in order to compete with recruits? Does the Pac-12 try to one-up both? And even if there is a streamlined stipend for all of college football, how would they decide what basketball players get?

Should the sports that don't make millions of dollars for the school—college lacrosse, college swimming, college wrestling, etc.—get a stipend as well? Is their time "worth less" than college football players? Their parents want to see them play too.

But even if they did manage to arrange some kind of system that most people could agree is fair, it's not going to solve the problems of players receiving money, perks and other benefits. In fact, it will make it worse.

I have to imagine that there are a lot of college stars in today's game and in decades past out there who don't take money because they want to follow the rules and be stand-up, honorable men of integrity. If players do start to get benefits (other than a scholarship) like cash, that fragile deterrent is no longer in place.

Countless players will think "Well, if I'm allowed $300 from the school, why not take $5,000 from an agent or a booster?"

Give Spurrier and the SEC coaches who supported his proposal credit for trying something, anything. But if  this does become law in college sports, it shouldn't be known as "Spurrier's Rule," it should be known as "Pandora's Rule."