It's time that college athletes get paid.
Not paying college athletes is as antiquated as not letting women into Augusta National, only letting adult white males vote, and only letting couples consisting of a man and a woman marry. That's why none of those three things exist anymore.
CBS and Turner have the chance to make a difference. They can walk away from their multi-billion contract to broadcast March Madness, as they should be uncomfortable with making all this money while the players don't see a dime. They can do this because contracts can be broken if one of the parties involved is behaving in a way that the other party/parties do not like. When all is said and done they will be suing the NCAA for corruption and violating the anti-slavery amendment.
That is WAAAAAY over dramatic. And silly to compare NCAA athletes to slaves.
#1 - The BCS football programs are in a ridiculous arms race to build lavish accommodations for football/basketball players. The media loves mocking the absurdity at that “SPENDING! while giving nothing to the slaves!” but no one really mentions that “Holy crap, they’re showering athletes with sweet, sweet amenities!”
If the average dorm room has a 30-inch TV, a used couch you nabbed as a hand-me-down or garage sale, and anything else YOU PAID FOR… isn’t another way of looking at the Alabama football facility “Alabama just gave 100 kids a multi-mullion dollar clubhouse” ?
And yeah, they’re using it, not keeping it. But that’s the point. You take any Division I athlete who doesn’t go pro and check in ten years later, they’re all going to say “I have to pay for a gym membership and any athletic gear I want, which I now have to wash myself. I MISS being in college.”
#2 - I cannot stress this enough:
NCAA Sports are not JUST the Football and Men's Basketball players you see playing SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-12 and Big East games.
The NCAA has 273 other schools, and 86 other sports.
The NCAA total revenues are about $1.136 billion a year.
A scholarship is worth about $25,000.
BCS football and men’s basketball scholarships would be, on average, $191.1 million total (not counting walk-ons).
BCS Football and BCS men’s basketball make up 6.37 PERCENT of Division I athletes. So a full scholarship for every athlete would cost $3 billion alone.
If you want to argue that EVERY ATHLETE should be full scholarship, I’m on board. Most schools can’t afford that, but making a “We can’t pay athletes because that revenue funds ALL the sports” argument and then not funding ALL your athletes puts a sour taste in my mouth.
It doesn’t matter if you playing football in front of 103,000 at a BCS school, or you’re playing field hockey in front of 23 people at a “non-major.” These athletes put in WORK. The same amount of work.
All of the “players deserve a cut of revenues” arguments for the NCAA amount to ONLY looking at SIX PERCENT of athletes who ESPN covers.
The BCS brings in 85% of the revenue by being a cartel, and gets 99% of the attention from the people giving them the revenue. And then everyone’s mad at the finances when they only look at 85% of the revenue and 22% of the schools.
