Like many across the nation, I have been utterly enthralled by the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament/March Madness that has been going on this week. I love seeing all my favorite college basketball stars compete in exciting games all day.
While watching one of these games, something crossed my mind. These athletes are pouring their heart out on the court at around the same level of the professionals and are not getting payed a single cent for it.
These athletes go to college not only to play their sport, but also to earn an education. Numerous college athletes who have since gone professional have talked about how rough the life of a student athlete is, mostly because of the attempted balancing act of classes and practices and the lack of income.
Let’s look at the arguments against paying student athletes and see how they stack up. The most common argument I hear is that the student-athletes are paid -they are are paid with an education.
There are plenty of reasons why this argument doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll go with the two biggest ones. One, an education is a great thing to have, but it still doesn’t mean that you should skim an athlete on money. My job is far less demanding than a student-athlete’s job and I get paid. No one has ever told me that I should get paid in an education.
Two, the quality of education for student athletes, especially in big time schools, are worse than normal students.
In order for most student-athletes to play, they need to meet a certain grade point average. Big schools like Duke University, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Kentucky make a lot of money from their athletic programs, so they need their top athletes to be eligible to play.
To do this, they often enroll these student-athletes in so-called “paper classes†in order to inflate their GPA. In the University of North Carolina specifically, the university offered over 200 paper classes. In one such class, an African-American studies class, a student-athlete wrote a grammatically-incorrect, 146 word essay on Rosa Parks that got an A- and got him eligible for his sport.
So saying that these athletes are paid with an education is definitely underselling it. The only real argument I can see against paying student athletes is that colleges would not be able to afford it.
I may have a solution to that argument. My idea is that colleges should start selling branded merchandise with the student-athlete’s name/likeness on it.
For example, one of the most popular college basketball stars in the country right now is a point guard from Murray State, a school in rural Kentucky, named Ja Morant. Morant became a nationally-known player this year with his amazing play.
Imagine how much money Murray State could make by selling Morant jerseys and Morant bobbleheads. Then when they get that money, that can pay it to their players, while keeping a portion of it.
For less popular sports like water polo or lacrosse, money from generic brand shirts could be given to those athletes.
There are many other ways to pay these student-athletes, but this is the one I think would work best. Student-athletes are criminally underpaid for their work, so maybe paying them would get them to stay at the university instead of going pro and skipping their education in search for more money.
Chris Leonchik
Sports Editor