I never understood it. Someone with worse grades than me can get admitted to college and get a free ride and I can’t? Just because he can catch a ball? In theory they get a free education and some people also want to pay them??? Colleges should first and foremost be places of learning.
Let’s just eliminate any pretense that these athletes are actually students. Pay them some nominal fee to cover their living expenses and use the money saved on educating them to give some other deserving student a free ride.
So pay them a decent sort of salary for minor league ballplayers, eliminate the requirement that they stay out of the pros for a specified amount of time, and then require them to actually qualify for the school they choose to attend. In other words, either treat them as professionals, in which case they have no connection to the college and no claim on it, or treat them as students. There’s no reason to do it both ways. If they get the name and reputation of the school to support their own recognition, then they ought to be part of that school. If all they want is the money they should be paid from a minor league team, then that’s what they get.
I have a great deal of respect for student athletes. I have a niece who swam for a D1 school (actually 2, she transfered after her freshman year), and my daughter plays volleyball for an NAIA program. My question is, where are you going to draw the line? Does my niece not get paid, even though she spent as much time in practice, and missed family Christmas parties to make the required practice schedule with her team? She didn’t risk much in the way of bruising, I suppose, but she was still subject to the same rules and regulations as any other NCAA athlete. Or are the only athletes who count, and who qualify for this kind of sympathy and outrage on their behalf, the ones whose programs bring in money?
Basically you’re talking about a minor league football team owned by a college. Skipping the cost of tuition would be about the same as paying them minor league wages.
I don’t have an average number for the ticket price for OSU, but it would only have to be 43.50 garner more ticket revenue than the Browns, assuming both teams sell out. As you can see that is both less than the general public and faculty ticket prices.
I forgot to add: I would be a bit more willing to buy the NCAA’s tune of student athletes if they didn’t charge other students 30 freaking bucks to go to the game.
I have never understood why people think it doesn’t matter that they bring so much money into the school.
Of course they deserve a cut… even if they just get paid as much as a TA or a student who works in the library. It seems like some kind of irrational hatred and jealousy of athletes who make boatloads of money for the school clouds peoples’ judgment.
In practice, they don’t get educated and they don’t get money. They spend four years risking their health earning money for someone else, and at the end of it they’ve got nothing.
That’s not universally true, of course, but it definitely can be true for a lot of these kids. Some of them do get a college education. Some of them do go pro. Some of them leave college with the same skill set they entered college, only four years later.
Does a TA make $20k a year like the atheletes do with their tuition costs? Then add in tutors, entertainment and whatever freebee’s the school can sneek in.