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Why the public strongly supports paying college athletes.

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The Sportico/Harris poll shows a majority of people support players like Myan Williams of the Ohio ... [+] State Buckeyes earning money as student-athletes. (Photo by Gaelen Morse/Getty Images)

When student-athletes in 2021 were finally provided the chance to earn money from their name, image and likeness , some feared it would be the end of college sports as we knew it.

Fast forward two years, and the majority of Americans seem ready to let them bank even more bucks.

Nearly 70% of U.S. adults said college athletes should be able to receive direct compensation from their school when asked in a survey conducted this summer by Sportico and The Harris Poll.

“It’s about time,” sports attorney Luke Fedlam , founder of Advance NIL , said. “We have seen over the last 20 years the explosion in the commercialization of college sports. Look at the NCAA [March Madness] tournament. So much money is being made on student-athletes’ abilities. The idea that people are still coming around to is understanding and believing college athletes should receive compensation just makes sense.”

The poll, which surveyed 2,018 people nationally from Aug. 11–13, found 67% agreed college athletes should receive direct compensation from their universities, while 74% of respondents supported athletes’ ability to profit from NIL.

“I think it's good that athletes are getting their share,” Ohio University sports business professor B. David Ridpath said. “People are starting to come to the realization that not only is it inevitable, it's really the right thing to do.”

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NIL became part of the sports landscape in June 2021 when the NCAA Board of Directors lifted NCAA restrictions on athlete payments for everything from sponsorships to personal appearances.

That same month, the Supreme Court voted unanimously that the NCAA can no longer limit education-related benefits that colleges offer athletes beyond tuition, including computers and internships. As part of what’s known as the Alston ruling, schools are now allowed to annually provide athletes with as much as $5,980 in education-related compensation .

Fedlam said the amount of money being poured into and flowing from collegiate sports has made it clear they are no longer purely about amateurism and love of competition. That means the move toward paying college athletes is an inevitability, not a debate.

“If college sports were solely about education and the benefits that could come from that, college sports would look entirely different,” Fedlam said. “Do we ruin college sports when we pay tens of millions to schools for broadcast rights, when March Madness makes $1 billion, when schools on the West Coast are aligning with Midwest and East Coast conferences to earn more compensation? That’s where sports have come.”

The survey also revealed 64% of respondents think college athletes should become university employees, an idea NCAA president Charlie Baker shot down at the April LEAD1 Association’s annual spring meeting, proclaiming, “I think student-athletes want to be student-athletes, and it’s up to us to figure out how to make that work for them in a variety of environments and in circumstances that are different.”

Democrats were much more in favor of direct compensation for college athletes than Republicans (78%-56%), while people who follow college sports favored the change at 78%, compared to 56% for those who do not follow sports closely.

More than 80% of respondents ages 18-41 supported athlete payments, while people over age 58 were just 48% in favor.

Ridpath said it sounds good in theory to allow athletes to be paid while in college, but to older fans more set in their ways, it is clearly far less accepted.

“The younger demographics are much more savvy than we were because they have access to more information,” he said. “This is the reality now.”

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Equity Implications of Paying College Athletes: A Title IX Analysis

Boston College Law Review, 2023

Elon University Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming

63 Pages Posted: 2 Feb 2023

Andrew J. Haile

Elon University School of Law

Date Written: February 2, 2023

After fifty years of Title IX, the gap in participation rates between men and women in college athletics has closed significantly. In 1982, women comprised only 28% of all NCAA college athletes. In 2020, they made up 44%. Despite the progress in participation rates, a substantial gap in resources allocated to men’s and women’s sports continues to exist. On average, NCAA colleges spend more than twice as much on men’s sports as they do on women’s. This gap is even greater at schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the most elite level of college athletics. The median FBS institution spends almost three times more on men’s athletics than on women’s. This situation may get even worse if colleges are allowed to start paying their athletes, which appears a realistic possibility in the not-too-distant future. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in the 2021 Supreme Court decision NCAA v. Alston sent a strong signal that prohibitions on paying college athletes most likely violate federal antitrust law. More recently, some states have introduced legislation that would require colleges to compensate athletes in sports that generate positive net income for their schools. While this could rectify the serious inequity of colleges making tens of millions of dollars from their athletes’ labor without those athletes being allowed to share in the financial benefits they create, it could also widen the gap in resources colleges invest in men’s and women’s sports. With very rare exception, football and men’s basketball are the only college sports that produce more revenue than expenses. Consequently, unless Title IX requires otherwise, the difference in the amount of money colleges invest in men’s and women’s sports could grow significantly if those colleges are allowed to compensate male athletes without compensating female athletes. This Article provides a detailed analysis of whether the current Title IX regulations require equal payments to male and female athletes. It concludes that they do not. Of course, the controlling Title IX regulations were drafted at a time when paying college athletes was not even contemplated, and therefore this result does not comport with the purpose or spirit of Title IX. Consequently, the Article goes on to argue that the regulations should be amended to treat payments to college athletes the same as scholarships. This would require that male and female athletes receive proportionately equal payments for their athletic services. Making this change to ensure equitable treatment of all athletes will advance the purposes of Title IX and will help to combat the “marketplace bias” that hampers the economic growth of women’s sports.

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What we know and what we don't about a historic settlement to pay college athletes

Becky Sullivan

The NCAA and its Power 5 conferences agreed this week to a legal settlement that could allow for schools to pay athletes directly. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images hide caption

A sea change is coming to college athletics.

On Thursday, the NCAA and the so-called "power five" athletic conferences reached a groundbreaking agreement that seeks to end the century-old tradition of amateurism in college sports by allowing athletes to receive pay directly from the colleges and universities they play for.

The agreement, part of a class-action lawsuit known as House v. NCAA , must be approved by a federal judge overseeing the case, a decision that could be months away.

NCAA, leagues back $2.8B settlement, setting stage for major change in college sports

The proposed settlement has two parts. First, it would distribute some $2.75 billion to athletes who competed before July 2021, when the NCAA first allowed athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness rights. Second, it would create a future revenue-sharing model in which schools could each distribute around $20 million per year directly to athletes.

But far from closing the door on the years of debates and litigation over the question of payments to student athletes, the proposed settlement raises a slate of even more questions: Which athletes will be compensated? How much will they make? Will women be paid equally to men? Will schools that are unable to pay athletes be able to keep up with bigger, richer schools?

"Those are going to be very important details we're going to have to work out," said Matt Mitten, a professor of sports law at Marquette University. "The settlement is just the start."

Here's what we know and what big issues remain unresolved.

What would the proposed settlement cover?

In short, the future-looking part of the proposed agreement creates a system in which schools that are part of Power 5 conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern Conference, all of which voted to approve the proposed settlement — can pay athletes.

Each school will be allowed to distribute up to around $20 million to its athletes, an amount based on a percentage of the average revenue earned annually by the power conference programs. That percentage begins at 22 percent and could go up over time. It's expected that other schools, those outside the Power 5 conferences, will be able to opt in.

College football is back and players still aren't getting paid

"This landmark settlement will bring college sports into the 21st century, with college athletes finally able to receive a fair share of the billions of dollars of revenue that they generate for their schools," plaintiffs' attorney Steve Berman said in a statement.

Will all college athletes get paid?

No. Football players and men's basketball players at large programs are the most likely to receive payments. That's because most of the revenue earned by college athletics departments has historically come from TV contracts to broadcast those two sports. Women's basketball also earns some revenue, and those players too could receive payments.

"It's going to be up to each school to decide how they're going to distribute that $20 million. And that's going to probably vary a lot from school to school," said Mit Winter, an attorney who has represented conferences, schools and athletes in a variety of college sports legal issues.

A New Era Dawns In College Sports, As The NCAA Scrambles To Keep Up

Schools will also have the option to pay players in sports that generally don't generate revenue — like rowing, soccer, tennis, track and field and more — but it's unclear how institutions will choose to proceed.

And many schools that aren't part of the major conferences may choose not to pay anything to any players at all, which could eventually open a competitive gulf between the haves and the have nots.

As an example, Mitten pointed to his employer, Marquette, whose men's basketball teams have reached three Final Fours despite the school's lack of a football team and accompanying revenue that could more easily fund payments to players.

March Madness is an NCAA gold mine. This year, players can finally cash in too

"How do we maintain the parity and competitive balance among the 350-plus Division 1 basketball schools when not all of them play football and are getting, individually, millions and millions of dollars from these big TV contracts?" he said.

Will women be paid equally with men?

The proposed settlement marks a new frontier for Title IX, the cornerstone civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at educational institutions that receive funding from the federal government.

Title IX's legacy in college sports has been massive, as schools are required to pay out scholarships in equal proportion to women as they do for men.

Women's NCAA championship TV ratings crush the men's competition

Now, schools will have to determine whether and how the law applies to revenue payments to athletes. It will likely be up to litigation to resolve the question, he said.

"There's really no set final answer on how Title IX is going to apply," said Winter. "I think some schools will assume that Title IX is going to make them give 50 percent of that $20 million to female athletes and 50 percent to male athletes. Other schools won't make that assumption."

Are the NCAA's antitrust woes over?

As much as the NCAA may hope this settlement puts the years of antitrust lawsuits behind them, on this one, experts agree: The answer is no.

Of particular concern is the cap that the settlement places on payout, which is set for now at 22 percent of the average revenue earned annually by Power 5 schools. That figure is much lower than the portion of revenue paid out in professional sports like the NFL and NBA, where players take home about half of revenue.

Dartmouth men's basketball team votes to unionize, shaking up college sports

In those leagues, players have agreed to receive that share of the revenue by way of collective bargaining agreements. Those labor agreements provide legal protection from individual lawsuits over compensation, said Mitten. But in college sports, where athletes aren't considered employees, no such bargaining agreements exist — meaning the NCAA is still exposed to antitrust litigation.

The NCAA and schools are already lobbying Congress to pass a federal antitrust exemption for college sports that would protect them from future lawsuits over pay.

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College Athletes Can Now Be Paid. But Not All of Them Are Seeing Money. Is That Fair?

A Supreme Court ruling allows student athletes to be compensated. Should those who are raking in the money have to share it with their teammates?

By Shannon Doyne and Jeremy Engle

Do you follow college sports? Did you know that college athletes can now make money? They are not paid by their colleges or universities, but they can receive gifts from boosters; make deals with companies to use their names, images and likenesses; and endorse products.

What do you think about that? If you play a sport, would you like to play in college someday? Do you think you could make money doing it?

In “ Student. Athlete. Mogul? ” Bruce Schoenfeld wrote about changes made in July 2021 to the rules that govern collegiate athletics that allow student athletes to earn money from corporate sponsorships and to accept money from supporters. But few players, he writes, are seeing any of it:

For more than a century, or as long as the N.C.A.A. has presided over college sports, athletes had no legal way to earn anything more tangible from their achievements than plaques and trophies. The rules were as clear as they were strict: Players couldn’t receive any benefits linked to their participation in a sport. Over the years, football and men’s basketball have come to generate billions of dollars for television networks, corporate sponsors and universities. Seven-figure salaries for coaches have become common. The players, however, could get nothing beyond a free — often perfunctory — education. That changed on July 1, 2021. Following a Supreme Court decision against the N.C.A.A. , the organization ended nearly all its restrictions on what athletes could earn from the use of their names, images and likenesses, an amorphous category that has become known as N.I.L. Overnight, those athletes could make deals with companies and endorse their products. They could even accept money from boosters — usually longtime donors, or local businessmen with ties to a university — in transactions that previously would have led to severe sanctions against their teams. Around the country, administrators were astonished by the abrupt reversal. “It’s not a hole in the dike,” is how Vince Ille, a senior associate athletic director, describes the N.C.A.A.’s change of course. “It’s the obliteration of the entire dam.”

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Boston College Law Review

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Equity Implications of Paying College Athletes: A Title IX Analysis

• Andrew Haile

After fifty years of Title IX, the gap in participation rates between men and women in college athletics has closed significantly. In 1982, women comprised only twenty-eight percent of all National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) college athletes. In 2020, they made up forty-four percent. Despite the progress in participation rates, a substantial gap in resources allocated to men’s and women’s sports continues to exist. On average, NCAA colleges spend more than twice as much on men’s sports as they do on women’s. This gap is even greater at schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the most elite level of college athletics. The median FBS institution spends almost three times more on men’s athletics than on women’s.

This situation may get even worse if colleges are allowed to start paying their athletes, which appears a realistic possibility in the not-too-distant future. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in the 2021 Supreme Court decision NCAA v. Alston sent a strong signal that prohibitions on paying college athletes most likely violate federal antitrust law. More recently, some states have introduced legislation that would require colleges to compensate athletes in sports generating positive net income for their schools. Although this requirement could rectify the serious inequity of colleges making tens of millions of dollars from their athletes’ labor without those athletes sharing in the financial benefits they create, it could also widen the gap in resources colleges invest in men’s and women’s sports. With very rare exceptions, football and men’s basketball are the only college sports that produce more revenue than expenses. Consequently, unless Title IX requires otherwise, the difference in the amount of money that colleges invest in men’s and women’s sports could grow significantly if those colleges are allowed to compensate male athletes without compensating female athletes.

This Article provides a detailed analysis of whether the current Title IX regulations require equal payments to male and female athletes. It concludes that they do not. Of course, the controlling Title IX regulations were drafted at a time when paying college athletes was not even contemplated, and therefore this result does not comport with the purpose or spirit of Title IX. This Article goes on to argue that the Department of Education should amend the Title IX regulations to treat payments to college athletes the same as scholarships. This amendment would require male and female athletes to receive proportionately equal payments for their athletic services. Making this change to ensure equitable treatment of all athletes will advance the purpose of Title IX and help to combat the marketplace bias that hampers the economic growth of women’s sports.

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Journal of Economic Perspectives

• Winter 2015

The Case for Paying College Athletes

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

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Paying College Athletes – Top 3 Pros and Cons

ARCHIVED WEBSITE

This topic was archived on Mar. 22, 2024, in light of recent developments. A reconsideration of the topic is possible in the future. 

The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) is a nonprofit organization formed in 1906 that regulates college athletics, including game rules, athlete eligibility, and college tournaments. [ 1 ] As of Mar. 2021, the NCAA was composed of “[n]early half a million college athletes [who] make up the 19,886 teams that send more than 57,661 participants to compete each year in the NCAA’s 90 championships in 24 sports across 3 divisions.” [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

The NCAA is seemingly the final authority to decide whether college athletes should be paid to play college sports. However, in 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Play Act that allows college athletes to hire agents, sign endorsement deals, and be paid for the use of their likeness. [ 3 ]

California was the first state to pass a NIL (name, image, and likeness) law, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2023. But California was quickly followed by more states. As of June 10, 2021, 18 states have passed NIL laws; five more states have passed bills that were awaiting the governor’s signature to become law; 14 states have introduced NIL bills; and one state has a bill passed by the Senate and awaiting a House vote, according to the Business of College Sports. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 9 ] [ 42 ]

The NCAA was scheduled to vote on new NIL rules in Jan. 2021, but it then postponed the vote, citing “external factors.” [ 10 ] Days before the scheduled vote Makan Delrahim, JD, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration, questioned the proposed rules’ compliance with antitrust laws. [ 11 ]

Additionally, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case (National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Shawne Alston, et al.) about whether the NCAA is violating antitrust laws by restricting college athletes’ compensation. [ 12 ] The Supreme Court heard arguments on Mar. 31, 2021 as the NCAA March Madness tournament heads into Final Four games just days later on Apr. 3. Respondents were split 50/50 in a June 1, 2021 New York Times survey about whether the NCAA strictly limiting paid compensation is constitutional. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 41 ]

Gabe Feldman, JD, Professor of Sports Law, Director of the Sports Law Program and Associate Provost for NCAA compliance at Tulane University, noted that the last time the NCAA was at the Supreme Court was in 1984 (NCAA vs. the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma). The ruling changed the broadcast regulations for college football. Feldman explained, “That was a shape-shifting decision that in many ways fundamentally changed economics of college football and college football television. And ever since that 1984 decision, courts have been relying on that language to try to interpret antitrust law applies to all NCAA restrictions, including player compensation.” [ 15 ]

On June 21, 2021, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA cannot ban certain payments to student athletes under the premise of maintaining amateurism. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, stated, “traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.” [ 43 ] [ 44 ]

On June 28, 2021, the NCAA Division I Council recommended to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors that student athletes be allowed to profit from their name, image, and likeness. Schools would not be allowed to pay students and no one could offer compensation for students to attend a particular school. If adopted, the rule would only apply to Division I schools and would be temporary until the NCAA or Congress acts. [ 45 ]

On June 30, 2021, fewer than 12 hours before some states’ NIL laws went into effect, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors issued an interim ruling stating that Bylaw 12 (the rules that say athletes cannot receive payment) will not be enforced. Divisions II and III of the NCAA followed suit and the changes went into effect for all three divisions on July 1, 2021. [ 46 ]

The University of North Carolina became the first school to organize group licensing deals for student athletes in July 2021. UNC athletes will be able to earn money for NIL marketing including UNC trademarks and logos in groups of three or more athletes. For example, a student athlete will be compensated for the sale of a jersey featuring their name, or for a sponsorship deal in which they appear wearing a UNC jersey. Group licensing deals in theory can allow lesser-known players to reap the benefits of appearing alongside a well-known player. [ 47 ]

By Jan. 2022, without a clear NIL structure from the NCAA, some schools were questioning how to navigate deals for players or whole teams without violating NCAA policy. [ 48 ]

NCAA president Charlie Baker sent a letter on Dec. 5, 2023, to the 362 Division I member schools calling for reformations including creating a separate division for the top-earning schools that would mimic professional sports and updating NIL regulations so female athletes could better benefit. The rule changes will have to be considered by the NCAA governing boards, a process which could take up to a year. [ 50 ]

A 2019 Seton Hall Sports Poll found that 60% of those surveyed agreed that college athletes should be allowed compensation for their name, image, and/or likeness, while 32% disagreed, and 8% were unsure. This was quite a change from polling conducted in 2017, when 60% believed college scholarships were enough compensation for college athletes. [ 16 ]

Should Colleges and Universities Pay College Athletes?

Pro 1 The NCAA, colleges, and universities profit unfairly from the work and likenesses of college athletes. The NCAA reported over $1.06 billion in revenue in 2017 (the most recent available numbers). In 2018, NCAA president Mark Emmert was paid more than $2.7 million. Nine other NCAA executives were paid more than $500,000 in 2018, with one paid more than $1.3 million. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] Michael Sokolove, author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino (2018), explained, “If you look at a program like [University of] Louisville, …they generate about $45 million a year in revenue. They give out 13 scholarships. That adds up to about $400,000 a year. The rest of it gets spread out to the coach, who makes $8 million a year, to the assistant coaches, who make as much as a half-million dollars a year. All throughout the athletic department, people are making six-figure salaries. It does not go to the players, what I call the unpaid workforce.” [ 3 ] As of Nov. 17, 2020, the University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban was the highest paid NCAA college football coach, making $9.3 million per year. 81 other head football coaches made more than $1 million annually and another 29 more than $500,000. [ 20 ] The highest paid men’s basketball coach was the University of Kentucky head coach, John Calipari, who was paid $8.2 million per year. 69 other head men’s basketball coaches were paid more than $1 million annually, and another three more than $500,000. [ 20 ] Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh, who was forecast to earn about $11 million in 2023, says, “I would take less money for the players to have a share. I hope other coaches would use their voice to express the same thing.” [ 50 ] College athletes, arguably the stars of the show who earn millions year after year for the well-paid NCAA executives, coaches, and staff, were forbidden by the NCAA from not only being paid for their work-, but from seeking other related compensation such as endorsement deals. And, as John I. Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick, President and Athletics Director of Notre Dame University argue, “We have been vocal in our conviction that student-athletes should be allowed to… profit from their celebrity — for one simple reason: Other students are allowed to. If a college student is a talented artist or musician no one begrudges him the chance to make money from his skills. And athletes should as far as possible have the opportunities other students enjoy.” [ 49 ] Read More

Pro 2 College athletes are risking their bodies as well as their future careers and earning potential to play for colleges and universities while often receiving a sub-par education. Governor of California Gavin Newsom, stated, “Collegiate student athletes put everything on the line — their physical health, future career prospects and years of their lives to compete. Colleges reap billions from these student athletes’ sacrifices and success but, in the same breath, block them from earning a single dollar. That’s a bankrupt model.” [ 3 ] Zachary Kerr, PhD, Researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of Retired Athletes, stated, “I definitely think research indicates strong evidence that injuries during one’s sports career can potentially be associated with adverse health outcomes later in life.” [ 21 ] In 2017, 67% of former Division I athletes had sustained a major injury and 50% had chronic injuries, 2.5% higher than non-athletes. [ 21 ] Azmatullah Hussaini, MD, President of the New York/New Jersey chapter of the American Muslim Health Professionals, and Jules Lipoff, MD, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, offered additional context: especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, “[g]iven that athletes are disproportionately Black in the biggest revenue-generating sports — football and basketball — this dynamic also evokes America’s horrific history of unpaid slave labor. It’s hard to ignore the racist undertones when the financial benefit to these institutions is based on the unpaid work of young Black men.” [ 22 ] The NCAA requires players to have health insurance but does not pay for that insurance and can refuse to pay medical expenses for sports injuries, some of which can have life-long consequences for the players’ bodies and career opportunities. The NCAA also does not prohibit schools from canceling injured athletes’ scholarships, leaving athletes without a sport or education. [ 23 ] Adding insult to sometimes literal injury, college athletes are also frequently denied the NCAA’s other form of “compensation”: a quality education. As Jon Solomon, Editorial Director for the Sports and Society Program at the Aspen Institute explained, “The most glaring example occurred when the University of North Carolina was found by outside parties to have organized fake classes that enabled dozens of athletes to gain and maintain their eligibility… of the 3,100 students who took the fake classes over 18 years, 47.4 percent were athletes… North Carolina avoided NCAA penalties by essentially arguing that the NCAA should stay out of irregularities in college courses.” [ 24 ] The NCAA polices athletes’ finances but does not ensure a quality education. Read More

Pro 3 College athletes are often valued at more than $1 million, but they (and their families) frequently live below the poverty line. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the top two college football positions–the quarterback and wide receiver–were worth $2.4 million and $1.3 million per year respectively, while starting men’s basketball players in the Power Five schools were worth between $800,000 and $1.2 million per year. [ 25 ] [ 26 ] If college players earned about 50% of their teams’ revenues like the NFL and NBA players do, the average football player’s yearly salary would be $360,000 and the average basketball player’s yearly salary would be $500,000. [ 25 ] [ 26 ] The study found that “[t]he player-level analysis reveals that the existing limits on player compensation effectively transfers resources away from students who are more likely to be black and more likely to come from poor neighborhoods towards students who are more likely to be white and come from higher-income neighborhoods.” [ 25 ] College athletes are required to make up the difference between NCAA scholarships and the actual cost of living. Tuition shortfalls amount to thousands of dollars per year and leave about 85% of players to live below the poverty line. For example, fair market value for a University of Texas football player was $513,922. However, players lived $778 below the federal poverty line and owed $3,624 in tuition. [ 27 ] About 25% of Division I athletes reported food poverty in the past year and almost 14% reported being homeless in the past year. Erin McGeoy, a former water polo athlete at George Washington University, explained, “a common occurrence was that we would run out of meal money halfway through the semester and that’s when I started to run into troubles of food insecurity.” She turned to boarding dogs in her no-dogs-allowed apartment in order to pay rent because housing costs increased each year but her housing allowance remained static. [ 28 ] The NCAA keeps players in poverty and denied them ways to earn money, while making millions on their performance. Read More

Con 1 Scholarships are fair financial compensation for college athletes, especially considering the precarious finances of athletic departments. According to the NCAA, the organization provides “more than $3.6 billion in athletic scholarships annually to more than 180,000 student-athletes.” Divided equitably, each student would receive about $20,000 per year. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average total cost of public college (tuition, fees, room, and board) for the 2017–18 academic year was $17,797. Considering other scholarships and aid are widely available and not all college athletes require financial aid, the NCAA scholarships are generous. [ 29 ] [ 30 ] Further, most college programs do not generate the income needed to run their athletic programs, much less pay athletes. In fiscal year 2019, the collective expenses of the 65 Power Five schools–the largest and richest Division I schools in the NCAA–exceeded revenue by $7 million. Other Division I schools had an almost $23 million collective difference between revenue and expenses. No Division II or III schools’ revenue exceeded expenses. [ 31 ] If students were paid, the NCAA argues, many colleges and universities would have to offer fewer scholarships and the remaining scholarships would be distributed unfairly to top football and men’s basketball players because those two sports bring in the most revenue. Schools would also have to cut unprofitable sports including gymnastics, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and wrestling. [ 32 ] Discrepancies between men’s and women’s sports such as the weight room during the 2021 NCAA basketball tournament would only worsen. [ 40 ] Paying players would also limit the literal and figurative playing fields to elite universities with large budgets. As John Thelin, PhD, Research Professor of History of Higher Education & Public Policy at the University of Kentucky, explained, “paying salaries to players will increase [athletic] program expenditures without necessarily increasing revenues… [and] a handful of powerful programs will stand to gain in competition for athletic talent simply because they can afford to pay salaries. Others will mimic as they try to keep up but eventually will fall short in trying to outbid Auburn University, Florida State, the University of Southern California or the University of Texas in the college player arms race.” [ 33 ] Read More

Con 2 Very few college athletes will go pro, so athletes should take advantage of the education being offered in exchange for playing a college sport. The reality is that the vast majority of college athletes will never play professionally. Of the 36,011 college baseball players, only 8,002 are eligible to play professionally each year. 1,217 will be draft picks, but only 791 will be drafted yearly, meaning about 9.9% of college baseball players will go pro, which is the largest likelihood in NCAA sports. [ 34 ] The major money-makers, football and men’s basketball, have very low odds. Of the 73,712 NCAA football players, about 16,380 are draft-eligible and 254 will be drafted, meaning about 1.2% of college football players will go pro. Of the 18,816 male basketball players, 4,181 are draft-eligible and 60 will be drafted, but only 52 will go pro, or a 1.2% chance a college basketball player will play professionally. The odds are even lower for women’s basketball at 0.6%. [ 34 ] The NCAA noted, “[p]rofessional opportunities are extremely limited and the likelihood of a high school or even college athlete becoming a professional athlete is very low. In contrast, the likelihood of an NCAA athlete earning a college degree is significantly greater; graduation success rates are 86% in Division I, 71% in Division II and 87% in Division III.” [ 34 ] In other words, it would be more prudent and more profitable for college athletes to focus on education as their compensation. Data analyzed from the Department of Labor showed nine out of 10 new jobs were going to employees with college degrees in June 2018. [ 35 ] Further, a Gallup poll of “74,385 U.S. adults with a bachelor’s degree, finds that college graduates who participated in NCAA athletics experience a host of positive long-term life outcomes at greater rates than non-athletes.” [ 36 ] Those positive outcomes include: 70% of NCAA athletes graduated in four years or fewer, 50% agree that college was worth the cost, 39% earned an advanced degree, 33% have “good” jobs after graduation, and 24% “are thriving at the highest levels,” all higher percentages than their non-athlete peers. [ 36 ] Amy Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said of the Gallup findings, “It’s a positive report for the educational benefits for college sports, and it reinforces the point that we’ve tried to make over the years. There’s an important role for college sports in higher education, and that role needs to be placed in the proper perspective as part of the educational mission, not apart from it.” [ 37 ] Read More

Con 3 Paying college athletes would not solve the real problem: the American amateur sports system is broken. Football and basketball players cannot play professionally immediately after high school. The NBA requires players to be at least 19 and a year out of high school, while the NFL requires players to be three years out of high school. [ 38 ] These rules can effectively limit players’ options to playing in college or choosing another profession altogether. Most players have no real “amateur” sport option and those who would rather not go to college have no other established feeder system to make it to a professional team. Further confusing the issue, the NCAA does not have a consistent or fair definition of “amateurism” and allows some significant forms of financial compensation. College athletes are allowed to compete in the Olympic Games and be financially compensated, such as Joseph Schooling, a University of Texas swimmer, who earned a $740,000 bonus for winning Singapore’s first gold medal ever at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games for the 100m butterfly. College athletes may also play a second sport professionally and be compensated, such as Clemson quarterback Kyle Parker who earned a $1.4 million baseball signing bonus from the Colorado Rockies in 2010 while still playing football for the Tigers. Tennis players may earn up to $10,000 in prize money yearly while playing college tennis and college football players may earn up to $550 in bowl gifts. [ 24 ] B. David Ridpath, EdD, Associate Professor of Sports Administration at Ohio University, noted, “The only amateur quality about college athletics is that colleges refuse to pay their players.” Ridpath explained, “The United States is the only country in the world that has a significant portion of elite athletic development and commercialized sport embedded within its education systems. Consider that ten of the biggest outdoor sports stadiums in the world (excluding auto racing venues) are American college football stadiums. None of the largest ones are NFL stadiums.” [ 39 ] To fix the problem, and separate athletes who are getting an education just because they want to play a sport from those who actually want to go to college, the United States needs a true amateur or minor league that feeds into professional sports. Read More

Discussion Questions

1. Should college athletes be paid? Why or why not?

2. Should the college athletics system be revised in another way to compensate amateur athletes? Explain your answer.

3. How should the NCAA (or another governing body) balance college athletes’ sport, educational, and financial interests? Explain your answer(s).

4. Do you think well-established minor-league systems would be attractive to high-school graduates and college athletes less interested in (or ill-prepared for) higher education? Explain your answer(s).

Take Action

1. Consider the pro position of the National College Players Association that paying college athletes is a civil rights issue.

2. Explore the NCAA site and think critically about the organization as the governing body of college athletics.

3. Analyze the argument that paying athletes would “ruin college sports” from Cody J. McDavis , former college basketball player.

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives .

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The Case for Paying College Athletes

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St. Peter’s University’s run of upsets wasn’t the only storyline from this year’s March Madness tournament. The other is that the Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team is in  trouble  for allegedly paying its players, in violation of NCAA rules. It is time for the NCAA to do the right thing and allow players to be paid, for three main reasons.

The first is fairness. College players are unpaid laborers who generate millions of dollars for others.

The second is that big-time college sports are, in fact, a business. There is nothing amateur about the NCAA’s  $1.15 billion  in revenue, its marketing deals, college coaches’ and athletic directors’ salaries, or the amount of time many athletes put in to compete at a high level.

The third reason is practical: Black markets exist. Some star college players will always be paid, no matter what the NCAA says. It should be above the table so schools and the NCAA can keep a better eye on it.

The party has already started, even if the NCAA is arriving late. As of last year, some college athletes may now make money from their name, image and likeness (NIL), which were previously the NCAA’s property. The new interim NIL policy means that some players can now make money from endorsements, sell T-shirts and other branded merchandise, and make paid public appearances.

The NIL rule also applies to teams. Georgia Tech, for example, made a deal to promote TiVo on its sports teams’ social media accounts. Some players received a prepaid debit card for $404 to match Atlanta’s 404 area code, plus some merchandise.

The NIL policy specifics vary from state to state, and federal legislation may be on the way. And schools are still, for the most part, not allowed to directly pay student-athletes for their work. And the new NIL policy mainly benefits the more recognizable athletes.

This new system has room for improvement, and the next few years will uncover its flaws. But it is a step in a fairer direction. It should be refined, not scrapped. College sports are big business, amateur or not. College athletes receive almost none of the revenue they generate, beyond scholarships. By contrast, the major professional leagues pay players between 50 percent and 60 percent of revenue.

That is no problem for the few college athletes who go on to NBA or NFL careers, but for most athletes, whose sporting careers end when college does, it is unfair. Just like athletes who go pro, they deserve to have their playing days boost their future earning power.

Other athletes would also benefit. Most college sports, from baseball to field hockey, lose money. Those sports are subsidized by profitable men’s basketball and football programs. If schools and the NCAA see more dollar signs from the big-revenue sports, they will chase after them, same as any other business. That would mean more money for other sports, as well as academic programs. It might even mean some compensation for players, who deserve to be paid for their labor. It could also encourage money-losing sports to find ways to be self-supporting, which would bring stability to many threatened programs.

Paying athletes would also finally acknowledge an open secret: Some college athletes will always get paid, no matter the rules. Boosters have long paid star athletes under the table. Off-the-books compensation is a routine part of the recruiting process, though not all of it is paid in money. Once a recruit is on campus, athletic directors sometimes arrange no-show jobs. College athletes aren’t allowed to have agents, but that happens anyway. Colleges might as well acknowledge the inevitable and bring these activities above ground to help prevent abuses.

College sports can be thrilling to watch, whether it is this year’s Cinderella busting everyone’s bracket, seeing new stars shine for the first time, or cheering for your alma mater. But off the playing field, things are a lot less thrilling for the players.

The NCAA is a cartel, and acts like one. The new NIL rules are the start of something fairer and more honest. But it isn’t enough. Players should be paid for the value they create, same as everyone else.

Reprinted from Inside Sources

Ryan Young is a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). His research focuses on regulatory reform, trade policy, antitrust regulation, and other issues.

He holds an M.A. in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a B.A. in history from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

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Point/Counterpoint: Paying College Athletes

The notion of paying college football players has been an ongoing debate since the early 1900’s. With current television revenue resulting from NCAA football bowl games and March Madness in basketball, there is now a clamoring for compensating both football and basketball players beyond that of an athletic scholarship. This article takes a point/counterpoint approach to the topic of paying athletes and may have potential implications/consequences for college administrators, athletes, and coaches. Dr. John Acquaviva defends the current system in which colleges provide an athletic scholarship that provides a “free college education” in return for playing on the university team. Dr. Dennis Johnson follows with a counterpoint making the case that athletes in these sports should receive compensation beyond that of a college scholarship and forwards five proposals to pay the athletes.

Key words: pay for play, athletic scholarships

Introduction: History of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

The idea of paying college athletes to compete dates back to what is considered to be the first intercollegiate competition. In a regatta between Harvard and Yale Universities, Harvard used a coxswain who was not even a student enrolled at the Ivy League school (5). Much like today’s universities whose appetites for appearances in corporate-sponsored “big money” football bowl events; Harvard may have used the non-student to please regatta sponsor Elkins Railroad (23).

In the late 1800’s, football played by college teams was a brutal sport but enjoyed by many fans. However, from 1900 to 1905, there were 45 players who died playing the sport (22). This prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to summon the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and threaten them with a ban unless the sport was modified. As a result of that meeting, a group of 62 university presidents convened to form the Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1906. This group evolved into the NCAA in 1910, but as a group it only possessed supervisory power (22).

College football became even more popular in the period of 1920-1940. This was a time when commercialism in the educational system was being questioned on a variety of levels. One such fundamental question was posed in 1929 by Howard Savage, a staff member of the Carnegie Foundation. He raised a question in an article entitled Athletics in American College (originally published in 1930 but reprinted in 1999) “whether an institution in the social order whose primary purpose is the development of the intellectual life can at the same time serve an agency to promote business, industry, journalism, and organized athletics on an extensive commercial basis? More importantly, the report asked “can it (the university) concentrate its attention on securing teams that win, without impairing the sincerity and vigor of its intellectual purpose” (9, p.495)? Savage also states that “alumni devices for recruiting winning teams constitutes the most disgraceful phase of recent intercollegiate athletics” (9, p. 495). In sum, the original 1929 report claimed that “big time” college sports were not educational, but were entirely financial and commercial.

Athletes during the early and mid-1900’s were routinely recruited and paid to play; and there were several instances where individuals representing the schools were not enrolled as students. For example, there is one report of a Midwestern university using seven members of its team that included the town blacksmith, a lawyer, a livery man, and four railroad employees (5). Other athletes at colleges were given high paying jobs for which they did little or no work. In 1948, the NCAA adopted a “Sanity Code” that limited financial aid for athletes to tuition and fees, and required that aid otherwise be given based on need (5). In the early 1950’s, with the threat of several southern schools bolting from the NCAA, the code was revised to allow athletic scholarships to cover tuition, fees, and a living stipend.

However, by the mid-1950’s many schools were still struggling with the issue of offering athletic scholarships. Some university presidents ultimately decided to maintain the principles of amateurism and further serve the mission of higher education. Those were presidents of universities that today make up the Ivy League. They concluded that it was not in the best interest of their universities to award athletic scholarships, and have remained steadfast even today.

After passing Title IX in the mid 1970’s, the NCAA absorbed the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and began to govern women’s sport at the collegiate level. Over the past 50 years, the NCAA has also expanded into three divisions with a multitude of championship events on a yearly basis (20). There are more than 1,300 member institutions that represent an estimated 400,000 student athletes who participate in sport (21). The result of this growth and development are enormous increases in revenue. NCAA President Mark Emmert reports the NCAA revenues for the 2010-11 fiscal year is projected at $757 million, of which $452.2 million will go to Division I members (14).

While seemingly operating in a purely capitalistic/professional atmosphere, the NCAA continues to endorse an amateurism concept in college athletics. These competing, and often contradictory, values lead some college athletes in big time football and basketball programs to question the status quo of the present system through their words and actions. For example, many athletes are still attempting to get their “piece of the pie,” albeit under the table. And so it leads to our point-counterpoint.

Point: College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

The intensity of the argument to pay college athletes has escalated in the past few years. Perhaps it’s because of the current economic climate and everyone, including amateur athletes is looking for ways to make money? Or maybe it’s because many higher learning institutions have given the public access to their annual budget and readers focus on the profit of select athletic programs? Or maybe it is due to the absurd coaches’ salaries and the money that colleges make from football bowl games and basketball tournaments? Regardless, this has magnified the fact that the athletes see none of these profits and thus begs the simple question: “Where’s my share?” Perhaps a fair question, but to understand this argument better, a healthy debate is needed. So, here are some points to consider.

Point #1: Education is Money

Colleges and universities provide an invaluable and vital service to our communities: education. A now-famous bumper sticker once read: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” To address that very slogan, the U.S. census bureau, as reported by Cheesman-Day and Newberger (7), expressed this best when they reported that the lifetime earnings for those with a college degree are over $1 million dollars more than non-graduates. Despite such a statistic, essays and op-ed columns continue to pour in from those who favor paying student-athletes while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge or accept the value of a college education. Is a college education priceless or not?

A sports-journalist in a recent national radio interview proposed that any argument against paying college athletes based on the sole reason that education is the prize is “antiquated”. But what seems antiquated and even shortsighted is the belief that paying a college athlete some (or even a lot of) money will solve all or even some of student’s long-term issues. The fear of the NCAA, as it should be, is that the mere notion of paying college athletes undermines the university’s primary purpose – education, something far more valuable than a modest annual stipend proposed by many. If it currently appears that the universities “don’t really care” about the athlete, paying them would intensify that belief, not dissolve it.

The irony in this dispute is that student-athletes do cost the university a substantial amount of money each year. For example, a full scholarship over four years can range between $30,000 and $200,000 depending if the institution is public or private (29). But let’s address this main point head on: There is an obvious lack of appreciation of a college degree from those in favor of paying athletes, and until a genuine gratitude for this concept develops, this argument will probably continue to linger.

Point #2: There Are Problems with Payment

Despite the well-documented scandals and corruption in college athletics (30), many would probably agree that paying athletes would exponentially increase the need for intense NCAA oversight – an enormous task by all accounts. Plus, there are the practical issues to consider. For example, how much should the athletes get paid and will payments be based on performance? What if the athlete gets hurt? What if the athlete is a bust and despite remaining on the team, doesn’t start or even play at all? – Issues that seem to raise far more questions than answers. But perhaps most important – What will happen to the non-revenue sports at the colleges who lose money from all of their sports programs – including football and basketball? It has been shown that only a fraction of Division I football and men’s basketball programs turn a profit (24, 20). The other Division I football and basketball programs as well as sports such as baseball, softball, golf, hockey, women’s basketball (minus a couple of notable programs), and just about all Division II sports not only fail to make money, but actually drain their athletic budgets. The outcome here would be inevitable: Forcing athletic departments to pay its football and basketball players would result in the eventual elimination of most, if not all, of the non-revenue sports. Is that what we want?

We cannot afford to be myopic on this issue. That is, there are only a limited number of programs that make big money, but yet there are hundreds of schools who absorb big losses at the cost of providing athletes a place to compete and earn a degree. The purpose of the NCAA, along with Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), Little League, and dozens of other organized forms of amateur sport is to provide a venue to play these sports – something we should not take for granted. The problem is that some have shifted in thinking that playing an organized sport is a right, whereas it still stands as a privilege.

Point #3: The University Offers More Than an Education

Concerts, lecture series by prominent people, on-stage productions, movies, intramural sports, fitness facilities, and a variety of clubs are all part of the typical university experience. Most students agree that colleges are self-contained acres of learning and socializing, all which takes place in a safe environment. It’s common for schools to subsidize the above-mentioned on-campus activities by adding fees to the tuition – which means that it’s free to a full-scholarship athlete. Other benefits to the athlete include the regular use of pristine gyms, well-manicured fields, athlete-only (and often team-only) workout facilities, sports medicine care, the opportunity to travel via away games, specialized meal plans and free foot gear and athletic attire. In addition, athletes are improving their trade from the best coaching minds in the sport; not to mention having access to some of the best nutrition and strength/conditioning personnel. And perhaps the most overlooked benefits are that the school provides the player with high-profile name recognition, a dedicated fan base, media exposure, and a competitive atmosphere with proven rivals, all of which took decades, effort and money for each institution to establish.

Point #4: The Athletic Department Has Its Role

Keep in mind that student-athletes are not employees of the university, rather they are students first and athletes second. The university can indeed make money from the sports programs; however, for those that do, the money simply goes back into the athletic program to fund the non-revenue sports (24). In fact, every year the NCAA sponsors over 80 national championships in three divisions, demonstrating the range and depth of their organization (20). While it is true that the champion in football and men’s basketball (and most other sports for that matter) seem to come from a relatively small pool of universities, it might be safe to assume that paying athletes would create an even bigger disparity since so few universities actually make money. Let’s face it, we are an underdog-loving country, and paying athletes would all but ensure that teams like Butler University, who made it to the Final Four in consecutive tournaments (2010 and 2011), will never do it again.

Point #5: Athletes Know the Deal

From the moment the full-scholarship papers are signed, each participant’s role is very clear: Schools accept the responsibility of the student’s tuition, meal plan, and boarding, while the athlete is provided with the opportunity to earn a degree, engage in college life and play their favorite sport in a well-organized, and often high profile fashion. The document signed by each student-athlete describes this agreement in an unmistakable manner. Although wordy and at times complex – a necessity due to the nature of the agreement – there’s no vagueness in the general arrangement or a hidden agenda from either party (10). A failure to honor the basic premise of any such contract would cause all forms of business – big or small – to crumble. If for some reason the university could be held liable for entrapment or some other form of dishonesty, then their athlete’s argument would stand on firmer ground. But frankly, the details of this agreement are well known by all involved, and rather strangely, no one seems to mind when signing them.

In conclusion, it should be noted that any NCAA improprieties or blatant corruption may have a carry-over effect into empathizing with the position given here. While corruption and other related-concerns are legitimate and need investigation, paying college athletes still remains a separate debate. It is vital to this process to view each NCAA issue independently and avoid making judgments on them as a whole. The position here is that, like many organizations, the NCAA should not be dismissed or discredited on one issue due to the mishandling of others. Further, if the contention is that many student athletes enter college unprepared or that athletics takes up too much time to excel (or even earn a degree), those are separate, but much needed arguments, and are not related to the issue of paying athletes.

Now more than ever, we live in an era of entitlement. At one time our country viewed the chance at higher education as a priceless commodity. However, it now seems that a college education is not held in the same esteem and worse yet, some see it as simply an opportunity to earn money. Although it is now evident that there has been a failure to convince much of the public of the true value of an education, keeping college athletes as pure amateurs remains the right thing to do.

Counter Point: Athletes in “Big-Time” Sports Should Be Paid

Introduction.

The argument that a college athletic scholarship is an equal quid pro quo for a college education has been utilized since athletic scholarships were approved by the NCAA in 1950’s. My colleague makes one point that is totally accurate – a college graduate can in fact make a great deal more money over a lifetime when compared to non-graduates. However, the remainder of the author’s points are half-truths and in reality just plain falsehoods. For instance, a “full athletic scholarships” do not provide a “free” education (as it does not cover all costs incurred from matriculation to graduation. In many cases, the university does not live up to its end of the bargain of providing an education; as evidenced by the dismal number in the graduation rates, especially among African Americans. Furthermore, the athletic scholarship is only a one-year (renewable) agreement that can be terminated by the coach or university in any given year for any reason.

In debating the pay-for-play issue in college athletics, the history of the governing body (i.e., currently the NCAA), their mission and view of amateurism, the past history of college athletes benefitting financially, and the degree to which athletes benefit from the university experience must all be examined. The counter point section of this paper addresses each point made by my colleague. Using the Eitzen (12) analogy comparing the NCAA and big-time athletic programs to the old southern plantation system will be the underpinning wellspring for the subject of athlete exploitation and the financial benefits enjoyed by the university derived from that plantation-like exploitation. An economic viewpoint will be presented to demonstrate the cartel-like atmosphere held by the NCAA while maintaining the illusion of amateurism.

Finally, five proposals that outline means to promote pay-for-play in NCAA Division I football and men’s basketball will be presented. The arguments that follow are specifically tailored for those two sports at schools who receive bonus money from the NCAA, as those universities and their coaches enjoy considerable revenue from TV contracts and sponsorships generated by bowl games and “March Madness” appearances.

Point #1: Athletic Scholarships Provide a “Free Education” is not correct

As mentioned, in the 1950’s the NCAA approved adding living stipends to athletic scholarships that previously included only tuition and fees. Today, the “full ride” scholarship can only include tuition, fees, room, board, and books. And as mentioned in the previous section, in some cases, depending on the school attended, that scholarship can be worth anywhere from $30,000 to $200,000, although the figures $20,000 to $100,000 over a four year period might be more accurate. In any case, that still does not cover the full cost of attending college.

The Collegiate Athletes Coalition (CAC) estimates that NCAA scholarships are worth about $2000 less than the cost of attending a university, as it does not account for expenses such as travel and sundries. Former Nebraska head football coach and United States Congressman, Tom Osborne (R-NE), calculates the gap between scholarship funding and the actual cost of attendance to be closer to $3,000. Even former NCAA President, Myles Brand, indicated that he favored increasing scholarship limits: “Ideally, the value of an athletically related scholarship would be increased to cover the full-cost of attendance, calculated at between $2,000 to $3000 more per year than is currently provided, I favor this approach of providing the full cost of attendance” (23, p.232).

So yes, the scholarship can be seen as pay for play, or at the very least, a quid pro quo for services rendered during a four year period. However, even with a full scholarship, an athlete will have to pay somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000 out of pocket to bridge the cost-of-living gap. Therefore, the full athletic scholarship does not provide a “free” education. Thus question remains: is the full scholarship a fair and equitable deal for the athlete?

Athlete Exploitation-The Plantation System

Eitzen (12) among others (27) makes the analogy that the NCAA operates like the “plantation system” of the old south. The coaches are the overseers who get work from the laborers (players) who provide riches for the masters (universities) while receiving little for their efforts. Perhaps slightly over-stated (obviously the athlete is not a slave, but maybe an indentured servant), the student–athlete is dominated, managed, and controlled, and they don’t receive a wage commensurate to their contribution as expressed in dollars earned by the university. Eitzen notes that athletes are sometimes mistreated physically and mentally and are often denied the rights and freedoms of other citizens. Ultimately, they have no real democratic recourse in an unjust system.

There are other similarities to the plantation analogy. Slaves were not free to leave the plantation much like an athlete cannot get out of a letter of intent (without penalty) and/or transfer without the penalty of sitting out a year. Much like the slaves who had no right to privacy, athletes are subject to mandatory drug testing (even though their coaches/masters are not tested), room checks, and limits on where they can and cannot go in the community. The athletes can be prohibited from political protests and the right to assemble. And finally, they can be subjected to mental cruelty and physical abuse (e.g., early morning torture sessions), all in order to create obedient slaves; student athletes.

Furthermore, collegiate athletics is often the only game in town for many of these athletes. For instance, football players must be in their third year of college or over the age of 21 to enter the National Football League (NFL). Basketball players, on the other hand, must attend college for one year or ultimately sit out a year before they can enter the National Basketball Association (NBA). Thus, the college game has become a “feeder system” similar to a minor professional league and it is in reality, “the only game in town.”

Point #2: Athletes Don’t Know the “Real” Deal

My colleague is partially correct in that most student athletes know that they are getting a scholarship that will allow them to go to school and play a sport. However, many don’t know the “real deal” as they generally have very little understanding they are about to enter a “plantation-like” system in which their scholarship in not guaranteed (i.e., renewable yearly) and can be terminated at any time. Student-athletes are also a led to believe that they will play and receive a college degree while possibly picking up a few fringe benefits along the way.

Take, for example, the recent stories regarding players like Reggie Bush, Cam Newton, or the players at Ohio State who received money and/or other benefits as a result of playing football. Even though student athletes know they will not get directly paid for playing, many desire and even expect some form of compensation. Slack (25) surveyed 3,500 current and retired football players in 1989 only to find that 31% had received under the table money during their college careers and 48% knew of others who had received payments. This seems to imply that while many recruits may indeed know “the deal”, they display their discontent by accepting payments or other benefits not currently allowed by the NCAA.

In reality, the statement “athletes know the deal” with regard to academic achievement and degree completion seems to lack substance. Dr. Nathan Tublitz, co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletes, an organization of 51 faculty senates whose purpose is to remind college presidents, athletic directors, and coaches that student athletes are students first. He points out that:

“…schools aren’t doing these kids any favors by admitting them when it’s unlikely that they will succeed academically. We bring 17 year-old kids, some of them from the inner city and we wine and dine them. They have female chaperones. We put them up in fancy hotels. They come here and see an incredibly fancy locker room with individual TV screens, air conditioning and videogames. They go in and see the new football stadium and the new $200 million basketball arena. They see a medical training facility that is stunningly beautiful with waterfalls, treadmill pools, and the sate-of-the-art medical and dental equipment. They come here and are treated like royalty. Until they break a leg or get put on the second string and they get set aside. Many don’t earn a degree. They don’t have the training or the skills to be independent after they leave the university. They’re lost (28, p.D10).”

When the scholarship is signed, the athlete and his family have reasonable expectations which include efforts by the coaching staff and university administration to meet all obligations of the contract. Additionally, my colleague notes, “that failure to honor the basic premise of any such contract would cause all forms of business – big or small – to crumble.” If the NCAA and athletic departments in higher education are a business, why are they allowed to act in a cartel-like fashion? And finally, do student athletes really know the “deal” when they penned their name on national signing day? It appears they don’t.

Point #3: The University Offers More than Education-It’s Possible-But Not Probable

Academic Detachment. My colleague also makes the claim that the university offers more than an education (e.g., concerts, lectures, intramurals, and clubs) in settings that enrich the college experience. Due to the plantation effect, however, many athletes are not able to take advantage of those events. For instance, few if any of the scholarship athletes would be allowed to play in an intramural contest for the coach’s fear of injury. Student athletes are also over-scheduled with study halls, practices, weight training sessions, film study, individual workouts, more practice, travel, and competition; all in an attempt to help athletes maintain focus on their sport.

Adler and Adler (1) spent five years recording systematic information regarding the athletes’ lives in a big-time college basketball program. After observing, interviewing, and traveling with them, they concluded that big-time basketball and being seriously engaged in academics were not compatible. They also found that freshmen had a period of optimism regarding academics when they first arrived on campus, but after about two semesters they found that the social isolation combined with the fatigue of training kept them from becoming involved in academic life.

Positive feedback these basketball players earned was always athletic-related and not academic. They soon learned what they had to do to stay eligible. Coaches made sure they scheduled classes that did not interfere with practices. Ultimately, the researchers realized that academic detachment was encouraged by the peer culture, and because of their social status (e.g., big man on campus), it became difficult for them to focus on academics.

Coakley (8) reported that not all of the athletes in the Adler & Adler (1) study experienced academic detachment. Those who entered college well-prepared with appropriate high school courses, strong parental support and an ability to develop relationships outside of sport were able to succeed in the classroom. It’s important to note that too many minority athletes from low socioeconomic environments struggle in academics – an issue that is often perpetuated by the coaches. For instance, Robert Smith, former running back for Minnesota Vikings and pre-med student while at Ohio State, needed two afternoon labs in the same semester. Since the labs conflicted with practice, coaches suggested that he drop them because of the commitment he made to play football. Against the wishes of the coaching staff, Smith took the classes but was forced to sit out the season as red shirt athlete; a further example of the plantation effect.

Benson (3) noted that one perspective was missing from the literature included a full expression from the black athletes point of view. Benson conducted a qualitative interview study of 12 African American students at a DI football program where the graduation rate was 31-40% for black football players compared to 60-70% of white football players. The results in this instance cannot be generalized due to the small sample size (N=12), but it does provide a snapshot of the thoughts regarding education and athletics of this group. Further, they reflect the results obtained by Adler & Adler (1).

Another major finding of the Benson (3) study was that the marginal academic performance was created by a series of interrelated practices engaged in by all significant members of the academic setting, including peers, coaches, advisors, teachers, and the student athletes themselves. It began in the recruitment, and continued through the first year. Black student athletes received the message that school was not important, and that as time passed, they had no real control over their destiny in the classroom. It was simply a matter of survival to keep the grade point average (GPA) to a point to be eligible. They all felt like the coaches did not “walk the talk” in terms of academics. They would just talk the academic game in public but then in reality they would have “fits” if classes ever interfered with the program. Simply put, student athletes learned it was a matter of survival and a basic expectation to maintain a GPA just high enough to remain eligible to compete (3).

“The Black Dumb Jock”. Harry Edwards (13) discussed the creation of the “black dumb jock” image prior to studies completed by Alder and Alder (1), Benson (3), and Coakley (8). He (i.e., Edwards) theorized that they were not born, but rather systematically created. The previous mentioned studies serve as evidence to support his statement (1, 3, 8). The exploitation of athletes is not solely an NCAA issue but a societal one. For example, Fred Butler was passed on through elementary, middle, and high school because he was a good football player. He graduated from high school reading at a second grade level and went to El Camino Junior College. There he took a number of physical activity classes while hoping to be drafted into the NFL. When no offer came, he played at California State University-Los Angeles for a year and a half. When again no offer came and his eligibility expired, he failed out of school within months with no degree, no offers to play pro ball, and no skills to use for employment. And he still could not read! (18). Similarly, Former NFL player Dexter Manley testified before a Senate Committee that he played four years at Oklahoma State University, only to leave the school illiterate. And the sad feature is that academic detachment from the university athletic department perspective doesn’t seem to be an issue because there are always more impoverished (and usually minority) kids waiting to come in and play.

Thus, student athletes in many cases cannot take advantage of the many extras offered by a college education. Why do athletes accept a diluted academic experience or the corruption of doctored transcripts, phantom courses, surrogate test takers, and tutors writing papers? Perhaps it is because they are disenfranchised under the current system, and will lose scholarships, starting roles, and eligibility if they complain. George Will argued that “College football and basketball are, for many players, vocations, not avocations, and academics are unsubstantiated rumors” (12, p.5). So do full scholarship athletes get a chance to take advantage of all the extras of the university experience? More than likely it is not the case especially when they can’t even hope for a meaningful degree.

NCAA as a Cartel. Kahn (16) examined the operation of the college football and basketball systems of the NCAA and offers lessons about the determinants and effects of supply and demand. Specifically he utilizes economic principles to calculate the value of college football player to a university. He notes that total ticket revenues for football and men’s basketball were $757 million in 1999, total value that exceeded the total ticket sales for all of professional baseball, football, and hockey that year. A figure indicating that the NCAA is a very successful business entity engaged in capitalism.

According to the cartel theory, the NCAA has “enforced collusive restrictions on payments for factors of production, including player compensation, recruiting expenses, and assistant coaches salaries; it has restricted output; and it has defeated potential rival groups (16, p. 211).” He notes, along with others (11, 15, 16, 30), that the NCAA can impose sanctions that range from scholarship reductions, elimination from post-season play to program death penalties (e.g., Southern Methodist football); and possibly even threaten a school’s academic accreditation. However, restriction of pay to players is the main way in which the organization acts to restrict competition.

Economists who have studied the NCAA “view it as a cartel that attempts to produce rents, both by limiting payments for inputs such as player compensation and by limiting output” (16, p.210). When looking at the rent values based on college football or men’s basketball players’ performances, they are paid below a competitive level of compensation based on estimates of marginal revenue product produced of these players (6). Their analysis considered the total revenue for a school and the number of players that were eventually drafted by a major professional league. Utilizing this framework they concluded that in 2005 dollars a draft-ready football player returned $495,000 to the university, while a draft-ready basketball player was worth $1.422 million for men’s basketball. And all of this compared to the approximately $40,000 paid in scholarship worth. This indicates that the NCAA does indeed use cartel power to pay top athletes less than the athlete’s market value.

Based on a workload of 1000 hours per year and an average scholarship value, economist Richard Sheehan (16) calculated the basic hourly wage of a college basketball player at $6.82 and a football player at $7.69. Coaches’ hourly wages, on the other hand, ranged from $250-$647 per hour (depending on salary). Again, using the Eitzen metaphor, the masters accumulate wealth at the slave’s expense, even though the athlete/slave’s health is jeopardized by participation (12).

Parent (23) notes the hypocrisy of the amateurism construct when looking at these capitalism issues. He notes that the former president of the University of Washington, William Gerberding, said, “As one contemplates the obvious fact that so many of the most gifted athletes are economically and educationally disadvantaged blacks, this becomes less and less defensible. I have become increasingly uncomfortable about having a largely white establishment maintaining an elaborate system of rules that deprives student-athletes, many of whom are non-white, of adequate financial support in the name of the ideals of amateurism” (p.236).

So, why do athletes tolerate this system? They do mainly because they are disenfranchised and fear losing their scholarships and eligibility if they complain. In essence, this pay-for-play discussion revolves around amateurism, as advertised by the NCAA, and its competing capitalistic drive for income. According to Tulsa Law School professor Ray Yasser, the best option for athletes to change the system for their benefit is to unite and “file an antitrust suit…against the NCAA and their universities, with the claim being that the NCAA and their universities are colluding to create a monopoly over the athlete’s ability to share in the profits generated from college athletics” (23, p.236).

While the points for maintaining the status quo were stated previously, there has been sufficient evidence presented in this section to stimulate discussion of paying players. The “play for a diploma” agreement is not happening in many cases, as the athlete failure rate indicates. Another example is national champion Connecticut men’s basketball program losing two scholarships for the upcoming season as a result of a poor Academic Performance Rating (APR) from the NCAA (11). Thus, the following pay for play proposals are being submitted for consideration.

Pay Proposals

It would appear that NCAA should get out of the commercial business of football and basketball and follow the Ivy League example of providing an environment that is truly amateur where student athletes actually are students first. That move would certainly place the student first in the student athlete term. However, it doesn’t seem pragmatic that either the NCAA or any of the major universities are in any hurry to turn away millions of dollars per year in profits. Therefore, it is time to consider some pay-for-pay proposals. California and Nebraska have already passed state legislation that would enable colleges to compensate athletes; however they are blocked by the NCAA from doing so (23). Therefore, I submit five proposals that could possibly be implemented:

• Big Ten Plan and/or Work Study Proposal: At the very least, the NCAA should follow former NCAA President Miles Brand’s suggestion and allocate athletes include a $2,000-$3,000 cost of living increase to full scholarships. Since athletes are supposedly only allowed to spend 20 hours per week involved with sport-related activities, this might actually be paid as 20 hours of work study or as a monthly living stipend. This would provide the athletes with the needed income for clothes, laundry, sundries, travel, and other small item expenses. Officials from the Big Ten are currently discussing a similar proposal that would help their athletes meet expenses not covered in an athletic scholarship. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany reports league athletic directors and university officials have seriously discussed using some of their growing TV revenue to pay athletes more. This proposal which would give athletes a $2,000-$5,000 per year living stipend also has the support of current NCAA president Mark Emmert (2).
• SEC Game Pay Proposal: The Southeastern Conference, another of the big time football conferences recently entered into the pay for play discussion. University of South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier put forth a proposal at the recent conference meetings to pay players $300 per game. The proposal was supported by several other coaches. This type of a proposal could pay athletes anywhere from $300-$1000 per game based on time played per game. Since most players do not play more than 30 minutes a game, a player could be paid on a per-minute of competition basis. At a rate of $20 per minute a player could net $600 for a game and approximately $6000-$7,000 per season.
• Professional League Proposal: Ron Woods (27) puts forth a proposal submitted by Peter Plagensa, visiting professor at Middlebury College, regarding the pay-for-play issue. He appears to agree with the likes of Stanley Eitzen that the current practice of colleges and the NCAA do in fact “amount to a little more than a plantation system” (27, p. 67). He suggests that the big time college football and basketball maintain the million-dollar industry by making them an age 23 and under professional league. This proposal would allow universities to hire players as college staff (much like the cafeteria or groundskeepers) at moderate salaries plus room and board. Universities could also grant the athletes free academic classes until they earn a degree (even after playing days are over).

“College basketball players watch the coach roaming the sidelines in his $1,500 custom-make suit. They read about his $500.000 salary and $250,000 perk from a sneaker deal. They watch the schools sell jerseys (and T-shirts) with the player’s numbers on them. They see the athletic director and NCAA officials getting rich and you wonder why they might ask; hey where’s my share? What am I, a pack mule” (17, p.46)

My colleague has argued in point #2 that paying athletes raise a myriad of other issues, such as how much should they receive, what happens if an athlete gets hurt, and so on. That is a discussion for another time. First, we must agree that it is fair to compensate NCAA Division I football and basketball athletes beyond that of an athletic scholarship; then and only then may payout details be chronicled. Note: a reminder that we are only discussing compensation for the NCAA Division I-A football and basketball players; not the athletes in the AAU, Little League or other truly amateur venues of organized sport.

Throughout the history of the NCAA, college athletes have routinely received compensation beyond that of a full college scholarship (e.g., room and board, tuition, books). While such compensation is illegal, athletes like Reggie Bush and others receive under-the-table benefits as evidenced in the Slack survey (25).

Additionally, many athletes in “big time” programs do not receive a degree for their efforts in the athletic arena. Universities routinely admit students based on their athletic skills that are academically ill-prepared for success. As seen in the research (1, 3), many athletes that aspire to be academically successful soon lose hope with the over-scheduling and pressures of sport preparation. As a result, many college athletes, a majority of which are minorities, fail out of school once coaches have utilized their eligibility.

The NCAA functions like a cartel, keeping cost down while increasing profits. Rents for a draft-ready athlete earn the university somewhere between $500,000 for football and $1.422 million for men’s basketball (16), leading to a pseudo-plantation system where the coaches oversee the athletes demanding work and controlling their schedules on and off the field. This unbalanced system allows athletes to earn the equivalent of $6.80-$7.69 an hour (12) while coaches like Nick Saban of Alabama or Mack Brown of Texas earn over five million dollars a year (4).

If the NCAA continues as a corporate entity and acting in a cartel-like fashion making millions of dollars a year, implementing a plan to pay student athletes for playing must be considered. Otherwise, America’s institutions of higher learning should follow the Ivy League schools’ example and eliminate athletic scholarships, get out of the big time sport business, and get on with providing students with a complete educational experience.

Applications in Sport

Few discussions within sport are more common or controversial than the debate to pay college athletes. Some arguments are well thought and articulated, while others lack insight and are simply driven by passion. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a new perspective and some historical insight – all supported by the literature – regardless of their stance on this issue. Moreover, readers who may actually be heard by the NCAA may offer a position that has yet to be considered. The concession here is that despite any decision by the NCAA in the near future, we can be assured that college administrators, coaches, and athletes will continue this debate. However, their arguments may now be seen as relevant and more reasoned.

POSTSCRIPT: According to Michelle B. Hosick at the NCAA.org, the NCAA board of directors has moved on two issues discussed in this article since its submission. In April (2012), the board moved to implement a $2,000 allowance to an athlete’s full scholarship. They also voted to grant multi-year scholarships. However, both measures have been put on hold with the threat of an override vote by member institutions. On January 14, 2012 at the NCAA convention the board delayed implementation of the $2,000 supplement and sent it back to committee for revision at its April meeting. The multi-year scholarship issue will continue to be implemented on a conference-by-conference basis. And so the pay-for-play discussion continues.

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Should College Athletes Be Paid? An Expert Debate Analysis

Extracurriculars

The argumentative essay is one of the most frequently assigned types of essays in both high school and college writing-based courses. Instructors often ask students to write argumentative essays over topics that have “real-world relevance.” The question, “Should college athletes be paid?” is one of these real-world relevant topics that can make a great essay subject! 

In this article, we’ll give you all the tools you need to write a solid essay arguing why college athletes should be paid and why college athletes should not be paid. We'll provide:

• An explanation of the NCAA and what role it plays in the lives of student athletes
• A summary of the pro side of the argument that's in favor of college athletes being paid
• A summary of the con side of the argument that believes college athletes shouldn't be paid
• Five tips that will help you write an argumentative essay that answers the question "Should college athletes be paid?" 

The NCAA is the organization that oversees and regulates collegiate athletics. 

What Is the NCAA? 

In order to understand the context surrounding the question, “Should student athletes be paid?”, you have to understand what the NCAA is and how it relates to student-athletes. 

NCAA stands for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (but people usually just call it the “N-C-double-A”). The NCAA is a nonprofit organization that serves as the national governing body for collegiate athletics. 

The NCAA specifically regulates collegiate student athletes at the organization’s 1,098 “member schools.” Student-athletes at these member schools are required to follow the rules set by the NCAA for their academic performance and progress while in college and playing sports. Additionally, the NCAA sets the rules for each of their recognized sports to ensure everyone is playing by the same rules. ( They also change these rules occasionally, which can be pretty controversial! ) 

The NCAA website states that the organization is “dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes” and prioritizes their well-being in academics, on the field, and in life beyond college sports. That means the NCAA sets some pretty strict guidelines about what their athletes can and can't do. And of course, right now, college athletes can't be paid for playing their sport. 

As it stands, NCAA athletes are allowed to receive scholarships that cover their college tuition and related school expenses. But historically, they haven't been allowed to receive additional compensation. That meant athletes couldn't receive direct payment for their participation in sports in any form, including endorsement deals, product sponsorships, or gifts.  

Athletes who violated the NCAA’s rules about compensation could be suspended from participating in college sports or kicked out of their athletic program altogether. 

The Problem: Should College Athletes Be Paid? 

You know now that one of the most well-known functions of the NCAA is regulating and limiting the compensation that student-athletes are able to receive. While many people might not question this policy, the question of why college athletes should be paid or shouldn't be paid has actually been a hot-button topic for several years.

The fact that people keep asking the question, “Should student athletes be paid?” indicates that there’s some heat out there surrounding this topic. The issue is frequently debated on sports talk shows , in the news media , and on social media . Most recently, the topic re-emerged in public discourse in the U.S. because of legislation that was passed by the state of California in 2019.

In September 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a law that allowed college athletes in California to strike endorsement deals. An endorsement deal allows athletes to be paid for endorsing a product, like wearing a specific brand of shoes or appearing in an advertisement for a product.

In other words, endorsement deals allow athletes to receive compensation from companies and organizations because of their athletic talent. That means Governor Newsom’s bill explicitly contradicts the NCAA’s rules and regulations for financial compensation for student-athletes at member schools.

But why would Governor Newsom go against the NCAA? Here’s why: the California governor believes that it's unethical for the NCAA to make money based on the unpaid labor of its athletes . And the NCAA definitely makes money: each year, the NCAA upwards of a billion dollars in revenue as a result of its student-athlete talent, but the organization bans those same athletes from earning any money for their talent themselves. With the new California law, athletes would be able to book sponsorships and use agents to earn money, if they choose to do so. 

The NCAA’s initial response to California’s new law was to push back hard. But after more states introduced similar legislation , the NCAA changed its tune. In October 2019, the NCAA pledged to pass new regulations when the board voted unanimously to allow student athletes to receive compensation for use of their name, image, and likeness. 

Simply put: student athletes can now get paid through endorsement deals. 

In the midst of new state legislation and the NCAA’s response, the ongoing debate about paying college athletes has returned to the spotlight. Everyone from politicians, to sports analysts, to college students are arguing about it. There are strong opinions on both sides of the issue, so we’ll look at how some of those opinions can serve as key points in an argumentative essay.

Let's take a look at the arguments in favor of paying student athletes!

The Pros: Why College Athletes Should B e Paid

Since the argument about whether college athletes should be paid has gotten a lot of public attention, there are some lines of reasoning that are frequently called upon to support the claim that college athletes should be paid. 

In this section, we'll look at the three biggest arguments in favor of why college athletes should be paid. We'll also give you some ideas on how you can support these arguments in an argumentative essay.

Argument 1: The Talent Should Receive Some of the Profits

This argument on why college athletes should be paid is probably the one people cite the most. It’s also the easiest one to support with facts and evidence. 

Essentially, this argument states that the NCAA makes millions of dollars because people pay to watch college athletes compete, and it isn’t fair that the athletes don't get a share of the profits

Without the student athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t earn over a billion dollars in annual revenue , and college and university athletic programs wouldn’t receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NCAA each year. In fact, without student athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t exist at all. 

Because student athletes are the ones who generate all this revenue, people in favor of paying college athletes argue they deserve to receive some of it back. Otherwise, t he NCAA and other organizations (like media companies, colleges, and universities) are exploiting a bunch of talented young people for their own financial gain.

To support this argument in favor of paying college athletes, you should include specific data and revenue numbers that show how much money the NCAA makes (and what portion of that actually goes to student athletes). For example, they might point out the fact that the schools that make the most money in college sports only spend around 10% of their tens of millions in athletics revenue on scholarships for student-athletes. Analyzing the spending practices of the NCAA and its member institutions could serve as strong evidence to support this argument in a “why college athletes should be paid” essay. 

I've you've ever been a college athlete, then you know how hard you have to train in order to compete. It can feel like a part-time job...which is why some people believe athletes should be paid for their work!

Argument 2: College Athletes Don’t Have Time to Work Other Jobs

People sometimes casually refer to being a student-athlete as a “full-time job.” For many student athletes, this is literally true. The demands on a student-athlete’s time are intense. Their days are often scheduled down to the minute, from early in the morning until late at night. 

One thing there typically isn’t time for in a student-athlete’s schedule? Working an actual job. 

Sports programs can imply that student-athletes should treat their sport like a full-time job as well. This can be problematic for many student-athletes, who may not have any financial resources to cover their education. (Not all NCAA athletes receive full, or even partial, scholarships!) While it may not be expressly forbidden for student-athletes to get a part-time job, the pressure to go all-in for your team while still maintaining your eligibility can be tremendous. 

In addition to being a financial burden, the inability to work a real job as a student-athlete can have consequences for their professional future. Other college students get internships or other career-specific experience during college—opportunities that student-athletes rarely have time for. When they graduate, proponents of this stance argue, student-athletes are under-experienced and may face challenges with starting a career outside of the sports world.

Because of these factors, some argue that if people are going to refer to being a student-athlete as a “full-time job,” then student-athletes should be paid for doing that job.  

To support an argument of this nature, you can offer real-life examples of a student-athlete’s daily or weekly schedule to show that student-athletes have to treat their sport as a full-time job. For instance, this Twitter thread includes a range of responses from real student-athletes to an NCAA video portraying a rose-colored interpretation of a day in the life of a student-athlete. 

Presenting the Twitter thread as one form of evidence in an essay would provide effective support for the claim that college athletes should be paid as if their sport is a “full-time job.” You might also take this stance in order to claim that if student-athletes aren’t getting paid, we must adjust our demands on their time and behavior.

Argument 3: Only Some Student Athletes Should Be Paid

This take on the question, “Should student athletes be paid?” sits in the middle ground between the more extreme stances on the issue. There are those who argue that only the student athletes who are big money-makers for their university and the NCAA should be paid.  

The reasoning behind this argument? That’s just how capitalism works. There are always going to be student-athletes who are more talented and who have more media-magnetizing personalities. They’re the ones who are going to be the face of athletic programs, who lead their teams to playoffs and conference victories, and who are approached for endorsement opportunities. 

Additionally, some sports don't make money for their schools. Many of these sports fall under Title IX, which states that no one can be excluded from participation in a federally-funded program (including sports) because of their gender or sex. Unfortunately, many of these programs aren't popular with the public , which means they don't make the same revenue as high-dollar sports like football or basketball . 

In this line of thinking, since there isn’t realistically enough revenue to pay every single college athlete in every single sport, the ones who generate the most revenue are the only ones who should get a piece of the pie. 

To prove this point, you can look at revenue numbers as well. For instance, the womens' basketball team at the University of Louisville lost $3.8 million dollars in revenue during the 2017-2018 season. In fact, the team generated less money than they pay for their coaching staff. In instances like these, you might argue that it makes less sense to pay athletes than it might in other situations (like for University of Alabama football, which rakes in over $110 million dollars a year .) 

There are many people who think it's a bad idea to pay college athletes, too. Let's take a look at the opposing arguments. 

The Cons: Why College Athletes Shouldn't Be Paid

People also have some pretty strong opinions about why college athletes shouldn't be paid. These arguments can make for a pretty compelling essay, too! 

In this section, we'll look at the three biggest arguments against paying college athletes. We'll also talk about how you can support each of these claims in an essay. 

Argument 1: College Athletes Already Get Paid

On this side of the fence, the most common reason given for why college athletes should not be paid is that they already get paid: they receive free tuition and, in some cases, additional funding to cover their room, board, and miscellaneous educational expenses. 

Proponents of this argument state that free tuition and covered educational expenses is compensation enough for student-athletes. While this money may not go straight into a college athlete's pocket, it's still a valuable resource . Considering most students graduate with nearly $30,000 in student loan debt , an athletic scholarship can have a huge impact when it comes to making college affordable . 

Evidence for this argument might look at the financial support that student-athletes receive for their education, and compare those numbers to the financial support that non-athlete students receive for their schooling. You can also cite data that shows the real value of a college tuition at certain schools. For example, student athletes on scholarship at Duke may be "earning" over $200,000 over the course of their collegiate careers. 

This argument works to highlight the ways in which student-athletes are compensated in financial and in non-financial ways during college , essentially arguing that the special treatment they often receive during college combined with their tuition-free ride is all the compensation they have earned.

Some people who are against paying athletes believe that compensating athletes will lead to amateur athletes being treated like professionals. Many believe this is unfair and will lead to more exploitation, not less. 

Argument 2: Paying College Athletes Would Side-Step the Real Problem

Another argument against paying student athletes is that college sports are not professional sports , and treating student athletes like professionals exploits them and takes away the spirit of amateurism from college sports . 

This stance may sound idealistic, but those who take this line of reasoning typically do so with the goal of protecting both student-athletes and the tradition of “amateurism” in college sports. This argument is built on the idea that the current system of college sports is problematic and needs to change, but that paying student-athletes is not the right solution. 

Instead, this argument would claim that there is an even better way to fix the corrupt system of NCAA sports than just giving student-athletes a paycheck. To support such an argument, you might turn to the same evidence that’s cited in this NPR interview : the European model of supporting a true minor league system for most sports is effective, so the U.S. should implement a similar model. 

In short: creating a minor league can ensure athletes who want a career in their sport get paid, while not putting the burden of paying all collegiate athletes on a university. 

Creating and supporting a true professional minor league would allow the students who want to make money playing sports to do so. Universities could then confidently put earned revenue from sports back into the university, and student-athletes wouldn’t view their college sports as the best and only path to a career as a professional athlete. Those interested in playing professionally would be able to pursue this dream through the minor leagues instead, and student athletes could just be student athletes. 

The goal of this argument is to sort of achieve a “best of both worlds” solution: with the development and support of a true minor league system, student-athletes would be able to focus on the foremost goal of getting an education, and those who want to get paid for their sport can do so through the minor league. Through this model, student-athletes’ pursuit of their education is protected, and college sports aren’t bogged down in ethical issues and logistical hang-ups. 

Argument 3: It Would Be a Logistical Nightmare

This argument against paying student athletes takes a stance on the basis of logistics. Essentially, this argument states that while the current system is flawed, paying student athletes is just going to make the system worse. So until someone can prove that paying collegiate athletes will fix the system, it's better to maintain the status quo. 

Formulating an argument around this perspective basically involves presenting the different proposals for how to go about paying college athletes, then poking holes in each proposed approach. Such an argument would probably culminate in stating that the challenges to implementing pay for college athletes are reason enough to abandon the idea altogether. 

Here's what we mean. One popular proposed approach to paying college athletes is the notion of “pay-for-play.” In this scenario, all college athletes would receive the same weekly stipend to play their sport . 

In this type of argument, you might explain the pay-for-play solution, then pose some questions toward the approach that expose its weaknesses, such as: Where would the money to pay athletes come from? How could you pay athletes who play certain sports, but not others? How would you avoid Title IX violations? Because there are no easy answers to these questions, you could argue that paying college athletes would just create more problems for the world of college sports to deal with.

Posing these difficult questions may persuade a reader that attempting to pay college athletes would cause too many issues and lead them to agree with the stance that college athletes should not be paid. 

5 Tips for Writing About Paying College Athletes

If you’re assigned the prompt “Should college athletes be paid," don't panic. There are several steps you can take to write an amazing argumentative essay about the topic! We've broken our advice into five helpful tips that you can use to persuade your readers (and ace your assignment).

Tip 1: Plan Out a Logical Structure for Your Essay

In order to write a logical, well-organized argumentative essay, one of the first things you need to do is plan out a structure for your argument. Using a bare-bones argumentative outline for a “why college athletes should be paid” essay is a good place to start. 

Check out our example of an argumentative essay outline for this topic below: 

• The thesis statement must communicate the topic of the essay: Whether college athletes should be paid, and 
• Convey a position on that topic: That college athletes should/ should not be paid, and 
• State a couple of defendable, supportable reasons why college athletes should be paid (or vice versa).
• Support Point #1 with evidence
• Explain/interpret the evidence with your own, original commentary 
• Support Point #2 with evidence
• Explain/interpret the evidence with your own, original commentary
• Support Point #3 with evidence
• New body paragraph addressing opposing viewpoints
• Concluding paragraph

This outline does a few things right. First, it makes sure you have a strong thesis statement. Second, it helps you break your argument down into main points (that support your thesis, of course). Lastly, it reminds you that you need to both include evidence and explain your evidence for each of your argumentative points. 

While you can go off-book once you start drafting if you feel like you need to, having an outline to start with can help you visualize how many argumentative points you have, how much evidence you need, and where you should insert your own commentary throughout your essay. 

Remember: the best argumentative essays are organized ones! 

Tip 2: Create a Strong Thesis 

T he most important part of the introduction to an argumentative essay claiming that college athletes should/should not be paid is the thesis statement. You can think of a thesis like a backbone: your thesis ties all of your essay parts together so your paper can stand on its own two feet! 

So what does a good thesis look like? A solid thesis statement in this type of argumentative essay will convey your stance on the topic (“Should college athletes be paid?”) and present one or more supportable reasons why you’re making this argument. 

With these goals in mind, here’s an example of a thesis statement that includes clear reasons that support the stance that college athletes should be paid: 

Because the names, image, and talents of college athletes are used for massive financial gain, college athletes should be able to benefit from their athletic career in the same way that their universities do by getting endorsements. 

Here's a thesis statement that takes the opposite stance--that college athletes shouldn’t be paid --and includes a reason supporting that stance: 

In order to keep college athletics from becoming over-professionalized, compensation for college athletes should be restricted to covering college tuition and related educational expenses.

Both of these sample thesis statements make it clear that your essay is going to be dedicated to making an argument: either that college athletes should be paid, or that college athletes shouldn’t be paid. They both convey some reasons why you’re making this argument that can also be supported with evidence. 

Your thesis statement gives your argumentative essay direction . Instead of ranting about why college athletes should/shouldn’t be paid in the remainder of your essay, you’ll find sources that help you explain the specific claim you made in your thesis statement. And a well-organized, adequately supported argument is the kind that readers will find persuasive!

Tip 3: Find Credible Sources That Support Your Thesis

In an argumentative essay, your commentary on the issue you’re arguing about is obviously going to be the most fun part to write. But great essays will cite outside sources and other facts to help substantiate their argumentative points. That's going to involve—you guessed it!—research. 

For this particular topic, the issue of whether student athletes should be paid has been widely discussed in the news media (think The New York Times , NPR , or ESPN ). 

For example, this data reported by the NCAA shows a breakdown of the gender and racial demographics of member-school administration, coaching staff, and student athletes. These are hard numbers that you could interpret and pair with the well-reasoned arguments of news media writers to support a particular point you’re making in your argument. 

Though this may seem like a topic that wouldn’t generate much scholarly research, it’s worth a shot to check your library database for peer-reviewed studies of student athletes’ experiences in college to see if anything related to paying student athletes pops up. Scholarly research is the holy grail of evidence, so try to find relevant articles if you can. 

Ultimately, if you can incorporate a mix of mainstream sources, quantitative or statistical evidence, and scholarly, peer-reviewed sources, you’ll be on-track to building an excellent argument in response to the question, “Should student athletes be paid?”

Having multiple argumentative points in your essay helps you support your thesis.

Tip 4: Develop and Support Multiple Points

We’ve reviewed how to write an intro and thesis statement addressing the issue of paying college athletes, so let’s talk next about the meat and potatoes of your argumentative essay: the body paragraphs. 

The body paragraphs that are sandwiched between your intro paragraph and concluding paragraph are where you build and explain your argument. Generally speaking, each body paragraph should do the following: 

• Start with a topic sentence that presents a point that supports your stance and that can be debated, 
• Present summaries, paraphrases, or quotes from credible sources--evidence, in other words--that supports the point stated in the topic sentence, and
• Explain and interpret the evidence presented with your own, original commentary. 

In an argumentative essay on why college athletes should be paid, for example, a body paragraph might look like this: 

Thesis Statement : College athletes should not be paid because it would be a logistical nightmare for colleges and universities and ultimately cause negative consequences for college sports. 

Body Paragraph #1: While the notion of paying college athletes is nice in theory, a major consequence of doing so would be the financial burden this decision would place on individual college sports programs. A recent study cited by the NCAA showed that only about 20 college athletic programs consistently operate in the black at the present time. If the NCAA allows student-athletes at all colleges and universities to be paid, the majority of athletic programs would not even have the funds to afford salaries for their players anyway. This would mean that the select few athletic programs that can afford to pay their athletes’ salaries would easily recruit the most talented players and, thus, have the tools to put together teams that destroy their competition. Though individual athletes would benefit from the NCAA allowing compensation for student-athletes, most athletic programs would suffer, and so would the spirit of healthy competition that college sports are known for. 

If you read the example body paragraph above closely, you’ll notice that there’s a topic sentence that supports the claim made in the thesis statement. There’s also evidence given to support the claim made in the topic sentence--a recent study by the NCAA. Following the evidence, the writer interprets the evidence for the reader to show how it supports their opinion. 

Following this topic sentence/evidence/explanation structure will help you construct a well-supported and developed argument that shows your readers that you’ve done your research and given your stance a lot of thought. And that's a key step in making sure you get an excellent grade on your essay! 

Tip 5: Keep the Reader Thinking

The best argumentative essay conclusions reinterpret your thesis statement based on the evidence and explanations you provided throughout your essay. You would also make it clear why the argument about paying college athletes even matters in the first place. 

There are several different approaches you can take to recap your argument and get your reader thinking in your conclusion paragraph. In addition to restating your topic and why it’s important, other effective ways to approach an argumentative essay conclusion could include one or more of the following: 

While you don’t want to get too wordy in your conclusion or present new claims that you didn’t bring up in the body of your essay, you can write an effective conclusion and make all of the moves suggested in the bulleted list above. 

Here’s an example conclusion for an argumentative essay on paying college athletes using approaches we just talked about:

Though it’s true that scholarships and financial aid are a form of compensation for college athletes, it’s also true that the current system of college sports places a lot of pressure on college athletes to behave like professional athletes in every way except getting paid. Future research should turn its attention to the various inequities within college sports and look at the long-term economic outcomes of these athletes. While college athletes aren't paid right now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a paycheck is the best solution to the problem. To avoid the possibility of making the college athletics system even worse, people must consider the ramifications of paying college students and ensure that paying athletes doesn't create more harm than good.

This conclusion restates the argument of the essay (that college athletes shouldn't be paid and why), then uses the "Future Research" tactic to make the reader think more deeply about the topic. 

If your conclusion sums up your thesis and keeps the reader thinking, you’ll make sure that your essay sticks in your readers' minds.

Should College Athletes Be Paid: Next Steps 

Writing an argumentative essay can seem tough, but with a little expert guidance, you'll be well on your way to turning in a great paper . Our complete, expert guide to argumentative essays can give you the extra boost you need to ace your assignment!

Perhaps college athletics isn't your cup of tea. That's okay: there are tons of topics you can write about in an argumentative paper. We've compiled 113 amazing argumentative essay topics so that you're practically guaranteed to find an idea that resonates with you.

If you're not a super confident essay writer, it can be helpful to look at examples of what others have written. Our experts have broken down three real-life argumentative essays to show you what you should and shouldn't do in your own writing.

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Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Should College Athletes Be Allowed to Be Paid? A Public Opinion Analysis

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Traditionally, public opinions have largely opposed further compensation for U.S. college athletes, beyond the costs of going to school. This study uses new data from the National Sports and Society Survey ( N  = 3,993) to assess recent public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid more than it costs them to go to school. The authors found that a majority of U.S. adults now support, rather than oppose, allowing college athletes to be paid. Also, the authors found that White adults are especially unlikely, and Black adults are especially likely, to support allowing payment. Furthermore, recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination is positively, and indicators of traditionalism are negatively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

The compensation of U.S. college athletes, beyond educationally tethered compensation such as scholarships, has been the subject of significant concern and empirical inquiry for decades ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998 ). Many college sports programs generate massive amounts of revenue, specifically in the highest competitive division (i.e., Division I) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The sports of football and men’s basketball hold special distinction and generate billions of dollars of annual revenue—much more than other college sports combined ( Branch, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ).

Notably, these two sports are disproportionately played by Black males. Although Black males make up <5% of the undergraduate population in U.S. colleges and universities, they comprise 56% of the participants in NCAA Division I men’s basketball and 55% of the participants in football. Conversely, athletic administrators and coaches are overwhelmingly White ( Harper & Simmons, 2019 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). For example, 80% of men’s basketball coaches and 86% of head football coaches are White, very much out of proportion to the percentage of racial/ethnic minority athletes that they coach. Furthermore, White males are disproportionately NCAA administrators, and over 90% of conference commissioners are White ( Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Consequently, the leadership and policymakers in charge of college sports are overwhelmingly White, while the athletic revenue generators are disproportionately Black.

Also, the commercially popular college sport industry is replete with highly paid coaches, well-compensated administrators, multimillion-dollar facilities, and significant perquisites for college athletes beyond academic scholarships—but no payment in excess of the full cost of attendance has been allowed for the athletes ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Ridpath, Rudd & Stokowski, 2019 ). Still, revenues in intercollegiate athletics have dramatically increased in the past 20 years. There is now a 14-year $10.8 billion television contract with Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and Turner Sports for the rights to televise the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Also, a $7.3 billion television contract exists for the College Football Playoff and six associated football Bowl games ( Berkowitz, Upton & Brady, 2013 ; Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ). Nevertheless, revenue increases have not resulted in much of an increase in compensation to the group that generates the money, the players ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ).

Even with increased revenue streams and the ability to provide more compensation to athletes, the long-held concept of amateurism and the new public-relations-driven moniker of the “collegiate model” are presented by defenders as nondebatable ideals for the industry of intercollegiate athletics. It is argued that college athletes should not be paid a salary or direct remuneration for performance; otherwise, the popularity of the industry will suffer economic damage ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Tatos, 2017 ). Consequently, college athletes are denied access to billions of the dollars that they generate, and adults in leadership positions defend the status quo, while disproportionately claiming the rewards. Yet, resistance to this arrangement has been clearly building ( Branch, 2011 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

The purpose of this study is to analyze public opinions about college athletes being allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Information from public opinion research is commonly used to help inform interested parties about the public’s concern over key issues that can directly or indirectly affect them. It can also provide insight into the factors that predict public opinions, if variance in public opinion is analyzed comprehensively with appropriate theory and research methods ( Price & Neijens, 1997 ; Winter, 2008 ). Specifically, we used information from a large, new, national sample of U.S. adults ( N  = 3,993) to gauge public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Then, using regression analyses, we tested hypotheses about the significance of race/ethnicity, sports involvement, and traditionalism in shaping public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. We built upon and extended previous research by (a) analyzing new public opinions about college athletes’ basic economic rights; (b) contextualizing our research more fully within understandings of power, control, and exploitation processes—especially as informed by critical race theory (CRT); and (c) leveraging these unique data to more comprehensively analyze predictors of public opinion attitudes about compensation. Our main predictors include measures of sports fandom, racial/ethnic identities, recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination, conservatism, and two sets of demographic characteristics associated with race/ethnicity and traditionalism: age and urbanicity. Previous work on public opinions about college athlete compensation has focused on descriptive reports of opinions about paying college athletes, the implications of different anti-Black framings of the issue, and Black–White differences in public opinions about paying college athletes ( Druckman, Howat, & Rodheim, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten, Nteta, McCarthy, & Tarsi, 2017 ).

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework for this study draws upon CRT to help situate the history of amateurism in college sports, the increased commercialization of it, and an apparently emerging willingness to approve of higher levels of compensation for athletes to anticipate public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Critical analyses of race in society are central to the advent of sociology (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois) and the sociology of sport (e.g., Harry Edwards), but the emergence of CRT in the 1970s from the work of legal scholars such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Alan Freeman has become particularly influential in not only attempting to address racial/ethnic inequalities through the judicial system, but also in helping to better understand, and theorize about, race in society. Now integrated within the theory and practice of many different academic disciplines and applied to the study of countless fields of inquiry, CRT has become a prominent and instructive approach to understanding the history and the continuity of embedded racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination—including within sports, education, and other parts of society ( Cooper, 2012; 2019 ; Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). Central to CRT is its recognition of the origin and maintenance of White property rights, control, and hegemony in society; these conditions are evident in the history and current application of amateurism in college sports as well ( Cooper, 2012; 2019 ; Comeaux, 2010 ; Rankin-Wright, Hylton, & Norman, 2016 ; Shaw, Moiseichik, Blunt-Vinti, & Stokowski, 2019 ). CRT encourages us to understand that the logics, structures, practices, and opinions of compensation for college athletes are eminently, and even originally, racialized and social justice issues ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Wallsten, et al., 2017 ).

Theorizing that has stemmed from CRT has included common principles that help to direct a rigorous awareness and redress of racial/ethnic inequalities; still, different authors and studies often adapt these principles in nuanced ways. Our study is informed by the following CRT tenets: (a) race is socially constructed ( Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); (b) racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination are endemic to society ( Bell, 1992 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); (c) Whiteness as property norm ( Cooper, 2019 ; Harris, 1993 ); (d) counter narratives, counter storytelling, and experiential knowledge, especially from voices of color, are neglected ( Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ); (e) interest convergences enable changes in racial/ethnic inequalities ( Bell, 1980, 1992 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); and (f) challenges to dominant ideologies are necessary for social justice ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ).

In turn, these tenets note that race has been socially constructed in ways that are connected to and based upon false premises of racial/ethnic inequalities, such that notions of White supremacy and justifications of racial/ethnic inequalities are perpetuated. Thus, corresponding racial/ethnic prejudices and discrimination are endemic to individuals’ thoughts and experiences, as well as societal structures, cultures, and policies ( Bell, 1992 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Comeaux, 2010 ). The Whiteness as property tenet recognizes that Whiteness carries with it identities, status, and a set of rights (e.g., rights of disposition, use and enjoyment, reputation and status, exclusion of others) that were originally connected to owning property, the ability of which has been facilitated by racially unjust means, but came to embody the characteristics of White privilege (i.e., Whiteness). Consequently, the statuses, privileges, and rights of Whiteness are normalized ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Harris, 1993 ). The voices-of-color tenet references the neglect, discounting, and need of counter narratives and perspectives based on experiential knowledge from people of color; oftentimes, CRT methodologies utilize storytelling and narrative approaches—although we did not employ these in the present study ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). The interest convergences tenet observes that there has been little motivation or action among White individuals to reduce racial/ethnic inequalities in society; gains that have occurred have largely been facilitated by a convergence of antiracist interests with the self-interests of Whites ( Bell, 1980, 1992 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). Finally, CRT advocates for social justice outcomes, and this process is connected to the need to dismantle dominant ideologies that perpetuate racial/ethnic inequalities ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ).

In analyzing variance in public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid, besides being informed by these CRT tenets, we also recognize the usefulness of considering aracial (i.e., purported disregard of race/ethnicity) racism and an understanding of traditionalism as a propensity to be resistant to change ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Hochschild, 2016 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ; Winter, 2008 ). Overall, due to racialized origins and practices of college sports that idealized amateurism but became particularly exploitative of commercialized college athletes, we expected that racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic prejudices and discrimination were likely to shape public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid—despite the common understanding of one’s own opinions, particularly in sports, as being based on an aracial approach to thinking about lofty ideals that involve assumptions about morality, responsibility, hard work, and integrity ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Furthermore, indicators of traditionalism—such as those that can be tapped by age, urbanicity, and self-identified conservatism—are likely to lead to greater levels of resistance to changing rules about compensation to college athletes ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

• CRT, College Sports, and Amateurism

The application of CRT tenets to better understand the issue of college athlete compensation leads to a number of observations. First, the social construction and endemic nature of race tenets direct us to observe that the creation and implementation of U.S. college sports has been done in a country with a sordid history of socially constructing race to justify and reify racial/ethnic inequalities and perpetuating, as well as institutionalizing, racial/ethnic inequalities; college sports, and public opinions about it, have been similarly shaped and influenced by constructions of race and perpetual and corresponding racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination processes within structures, cultures, and policies—anti-Black racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination have been especially prominent ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ). Second, it is instructive to recognize that college sports, and the ideals and priorities of amateurism, were originally created by White individuals for White participants. Non-White voices were not seriously considered, and non-White experiences were not a priority; this dynamic has largely continued such that voices of color are not well represented and valued ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ). Third, White control, and emerging profiteering, over college sports has ties to the origin of property rights, and Whiteness as property has been naturalized and viewed as normative. This is not unique to college sports ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Fourth, interest convergences have occasionally led to increased opportunities for non-Whites, and especially Blacks, in college sports. Interest convergences have also led to shifting and flexible definitions of amateurism in attempts to regulate and control college sports and pursue commercial interests ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). These modifications in college sports appear to mostly follow American practices of White Racism Capitalism rather than exemplify magnanimity and concern for (non-White) athletes. That is, increased opportunities for non-Whites in college sports and adjustments in the definition and application of amateurism have amplified the exploitation of non-White, and primarily Black, labor in efforts to pursue commercial interests and profits—which have been largely maintained by Whites ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ). Finally, challenges to the dominant ideologies and practices of college sports are necessary for social justice ( Cooper, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Southall, Eckard, Nagel, & Randall, 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). Below, we have integrated these observations into a brief history of amateurism in college sports before focusing on public opinions about compensation for college athletes.

American intercollegiate athletics are structured as an amateur sport enterprise. Amateurism was developed as part of a White, Eurocentric, middle/upper class vision of sport for developmental and enjoyment purposes—for White males. By strict definition, an amateur athlete should not receive any remuneration for athletic performance; thus, amateurism ideals have also functioned as barriers for widespread sport participation for those with lesser means. Non-White individuals were not prominent in creating intercollegiate athletics, participating in them during much of their history, or creating or romanticizing amateurism. Although interest convergences have enabled many non-Whites to participate in collegiate athletics, and commercialized college sports are now largely associated with Black athletes and some Black adults in leadership positions, the ideologies and practices of amateurism have continued to disproportionately reflect the ideologies and experiences of White adults ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ). Furthermore, the increasing commercialization of college sports has exemplified what Cooper ( 2019 ) described as the American tradition of White Racism Capitalism. Centrally, White Racism Capitalism is the historical and continual exploitation of non-White and, especially, Black labor. In the process, non-Whites are frequently problematized, scapegoated, blamed for any relative lack of achievement, and dismissed as being unworthy of concern ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ; Singer, 2019 ). Consequently, the issues that surround compensation for collegiate athletes are racialized in many ways. Thus, we expect that racial/ethnic identities, views about racial/ethnic discrimination, and even traditionalism reflect this racialization of the notions and practices of amateurism—and U.S. adults’ public opinions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid.

Relatedly, remarkable changes have occurred in who participates in college sports and how amateurism has been defined. Interest convergences led NCAA schools to increasingly integrate Black athletes into their athletic programs and modify their practices of amateurism during the middle of the 20th century. The NCAA moved away from a strict definition of amateurism in 1956 by offering a scholarship to pay for college expenses based on athletic ability. Thus, challenges to racial/ethnic inequalities and increased demands for athletic talent enabled more opportunities for Black men, especially, to attend predominantly White institutions, as athletes. Increasingly, also, Black and other non-White individuals were afforded athletic scholarships. Consequently, interest convergences have allowed for more racial/ethnic diversity among college athletes. Yet, disproportionate White control of predominantly White institutions and athletic programs has persisted ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Also, the presumptive overriding concerns for a student’s personal development and educational enrichment while participating in college sports appear to have been taken over by concerns about winning, financial gains, and maintaining control over an increasingly lucrative and valuable college sports system ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

Indeed, the NCAA has leaned into its definition and mythologizing of amateurism over the past 75 years, especially ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). According to the NCAA Division I Manual, intercollegiate athletes “shall be amateurs in intercollegiate sport and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and college athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises” ( National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2019 , p. 4). Still, rule violations that have often included payments to players have remained common throughout the entire history of college sports. Also, the definition of amateurism has been fluid and flexibly applied ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ).

At least through 2015, any payment amount above the standard full-ride scholarship (tuition, room, board, course-related books, and course-related fees) could cause an athlete to lose their amateur status and result in further individual or team sanctions or penalties. This applied to any extra benefit from boosters; companies seeking endorsements; or licensors of an athlete’s name, image, and likeness (NIL; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2019 ). This even extended beyond payments to actions, such as signing a professional contract, entering a professional draft, or hiring an agent. All of these occurrences have been considered violations of amateurism and a form of payment that renders an athlete a professional and terminates eligibility for intercollegiate athletics ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Ridpath, Kiger, Mak, Eagle, & Letter, 2007 ; Ridpath et al., 2019 ; Rudd & Ridpath, 2019 ).

However, in an attempt to provide greater flexibility in interpretation, the NCAA now consistently uses the term “collegiate model ” instead of amateurism to describe the relationship between the organization of intercollegiate athletics and the participating athletes ( Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). The Collegiate Model of Athletics is essentially “a term of art” that was created by former NCAA President Myles Brand ( Branch, 2011 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). It is used to refer to enrolled students who are not directly compensated by salary for competition, but can receive whatever the NCAA allows. After significant pressure and landmark rulings in the courts, and continued record-breaking salaries and revenues from the commercialization of college sports, the NCAA passed legislation to allow a cost-of-attendance stipend starting in 2015, which allows for compensation commensurate with the average estimate of a student’s educational expenses for the period of one full academic year ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ).

More recently, California passed SB 206, the Fair Play to Play Act, into law in 2019. This will allow college athletes in the state to hire agents and earn endorsement money relating to their own NIL. Since SB 206, over 30 states have passed similar legislation regarding NIL rights, with the state of Florida notably passing legislation that speeds up the timeline for NIL opportunities to emerge in 2021. The NCAA continues to strategize about how to respond, but has indicated they will likely capitulate to the pressures to uphold key aspects of the California law and similar efforts by other states’ legislatures ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Although the NCAA and its members have continually resisted allowing college athletes to hire agents and earn endorsement money, they seem to be now signaling that interest convergences may once again shape changes in amateurism and their willingness to partially address racial/ethnic inequalities. That is, pressures to maintain control and financial rewards in an exploitative system may urge them to change the definition of amateurism yet again and allow for some basic economic rights for college athletes. Consequently, the disproportionate numbers of Black athletes in commercialized college sports appear likely to become the most common beneficiaries of new compensation from the use of their name, images, and likenesses—which is widely seen as some measure of social justice, by many ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ). Still, an actual pay-for-play salary has not been permissible, and it is still considered to be contrary to the promotion of the collegiate model ( Rudd & Ridpath, 2019 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

• Public Opinions About Allowing Athlete Compensation

Public opinion is expected to be mixed but increasingly supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid. There is increased recognition of the disparities in compensation between the adults in charge of organizing college sports and the players who are working hard and risking their health, in many cases, to compete in sports—in a hypercommercialized setting for men’s basketball and football, at least. Furthermore, basic human economic rights, to many, suggest that one should own, and be able to profit from, one’s own name recognition, images, and likenesses. Relatedly, court decisions and collective actions by athletes, activists, scholars, legislators, and attorneys are increasingly promoting and affecting changes in public opinions and policies ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Still, the celebration and mythologizing of amateurism, concerns about disrupting the status quo of college sports, and opposition to modifying amateurism by institutionalized stakeholders continue to hold great sway ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Historically, in response to questions about paying college athletes and supporting college-athlete unionization movements, overall public opinion sentiment has been opposed to paying college athletes and treating them as workers ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). However, public opinion appears to be shifting such that there is now initial evidence that it is supportive of college athletes being allowed to at least profit from the use of their NIL—still, a seemingly marked change over previous public opinion polls that consistently registered opposition to forms of compensation, beyond a college scholarship ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). In fact, in an October 2019 poll of 714 U.S. adults, 60% responded that they believe that college athletes should be able to benefit from their NIL ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). In previous research, there is some evidence that sports fans are less supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid, but we suspect that this is also changing, as fans have become more comfortable with the Olympic model (i.e., sponsorship and endorsement opportunities), knowledgeable about athletic revenues, and mindful of addressing social justice concerns ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

• Race/Ethnicity and Public Opinions About Payment to College Athletes

We now turn to consider the explicit salience of racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination. A CRT focus, as well as previous research and theorizing about amateurism, suggests that there are inextricable influences of racial/ethnic identities, prejudices, and knowledge of discrimination in shaping public opinions—including opinions about paying college athletes ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Especially given that disproportionate percentages of athletes in the two main revenue-generating sports of football and men’s basketball are Black and disproportionate percentages of leaders in college sports organizations are White, one might expect that racial/ethnic identities and prejudices are likely to influence perceptions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid ( Branch, 2011 ; Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). For example, racial/ethnic in-group solidarities may shape perceptions. Blacks, Whites, Latinx individuals, and members of other racial/ethnic groups may simply want members of their own racial/ethnic group to succeed and to obtain a larger proportion of the revenue from college sports. In-group boundaries may also surround Whites and non-Whites, given the historical power imbalances in society and sports ( Hylton, 2010 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Racial/ethnic identities may also be indicative of lived experiences that normalize, or attune one toward, the racialized power dynamics in sports and society ( Kendi, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ). Indeed, the origin and history of college sports and the prioritization of amateurism are rooted in White experiences and hegemonic ideals. Also, due to the overrepresentation of White males in positions of power in sports and society, Whites may be less mindful or concerned about the racialized power imbalances in sports, compared with non-Whites—even when athletes in particular sports (e.g., basketball, football, pro baseball) are disproportionately non-White ( Lapchick, 2019 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Furthermore, there is reason to believe that racial/ethnic prejudices, especially anti-Black sentiments, and beliefs about the existence and influence of racial/ethnic discrimination may shape public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Racial/ethnic prejudices, resentments, and discriminatory processes persist in society. Also, racial resentments, beliefs about the presence and influence of discrimination, and other forms of racial/ethnic prejudice often sway public policy attitudes ( Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ; Winter, 2008 ). Anti-Black sentiment, actions, and structures continue to be especially common and influential ( Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Yet, many adults believe that racial/ethnic discrimination of non-Whites is not very prevalent or impactful ( Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Public Religious Research Institute [PRRI], 2017 ).

As commercialized college athletes are commonly recognized as being disproportionately Black and likely beneficiaries of any additional compensation that may be given to college athletes, prejudices about the character, intellectual, and athletic capacities of Black college athletes, in particular, may influence perceptions on whether college athletes should be compensated with payment beyond the cost of going to school ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). There continue to be widespread beliefs that racial/ethnic minority, especially Black, athletes would not be in such a premier position in college sports with access to a university education, but for their athletic ability. Thus, they should be thankful for what they already receive for playing a game and should not expect or agitate for more ( Branch, 2011 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

In addition, recognizing institutionalized patterns of racial/ethnic inequalities in society may urge one to perceive the NCAA system of commercialized college sports as exploitative of Black males, especially—and advocate for changes in the status quo ( Branch, 2011 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). Indeed, sociological perspectives and CRT tenets encourage the recognition of these patterns and pushes for social justice ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ). In contrast, blaming non-Whites for not having the same levels of status attainment in society as Whites is thought to reflect symbolic racism, notions of White superiority, and a lack of a sociological imagination; thus, expressing such beliefs may reveal that one is less cognizant of racial/ethnic inequalities and maybe less motivated to advocate for eliminating them ( Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Empirical evidence suggests that racial/ethnic identities influence public opinions about payment to college athletes. Mondello et al. ( 2013 ) analyzed 2009 national survey data from 400 households, sampled through random digit dialing, and found that Black respondents were more than three times as likely to support financial compensation for college athletes as Whites. In addition, even with age, education, gender, and employment status included as predictors, only race was found to be a statistically significant factor in shaping public opinion about paying college athletes. Similarly, Druckman et al. ( 2016 ) used national data from survey volunteers ( N  = 1,500) to assess both public opinion support for paying college athletes and allowing college athlete unionization. They also found that Blacks were especially likely to support more resources and rights for college athletes. Finally, Wallsten et al. ( 2017 ) focused on 674 White respondents to a 2014 online survey conducted by YouGov. Consistent with previous research, they found that nearly 60% of White respondents opposed paying college athletes a salary, beyond any scholarship money that they may receive. In sum, previous research suggests that Whites are especially opposed to paying college athletes and giving them more rights, while Blacks are generally supportive of paying college athletes.

Also, there is evidence that beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, and particularly anti-Black resentments, shape attitudes about college athlete compensation. Druckman et al. ( 2016 ) found that support for affirmative action policies, designed to account for Black–White differences in educational and job opportunities, was positively associated with support for paying college athletes and allowing them to unionize. Also, racial/ethnic prejudices that reflected anti-Black racial resentments were negatively associated with support for paying college athletes and allowing them to unionize. Similarly, Wallsten et al. ( 2017 ) found that higher levels of racial resentment were positively associated with opposing salaries for college athletes. Furthermore, in innovative experimental procedures, they found that the presentations of pictures and names of Black athletes hardened responses in opposition to supporting greater compensation for college athletes among racially resentful Whites.

Still, many individuals who do not express racial/ethnic resentments or prejudices, and are mindful of racial/ethnic discrimination patterns, appear to support college sports as a way to improve diversity and social mobility for racial/ethnic minorities—ostensibly under the belief that many could not attend college otherwise—but that support does not extend to advocating for more compensation for college athletic participation ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). A college education is extremely valuable, but CRT theorists and many other scholars note that even the primary college athletic scholarship benefit of greater access to a quality higher education is not being adequately delivered for Black athletes, especially, particularly in football and basketball ( Benson, 2000 ; Beamon, 2008 ; Hawkins, 2010 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ).

Alongside CRT, the concept of aracial racism is often used to inform understandings of racialized issues ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ). Aracial racism refers to the use of purportedly noble principles, and “aracial” structures and criteria for decision making, that nonetheless often have unequal racial/ethnic effects ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ). White individuals, especially, are prone to deny the influence of race/ethnicity on their behaviors, beliefs, and advocacies—and become appalled and often resentful when they believe that they are being accused of being racist ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ). Yet, the origins of amateurism, the dismissal of the voice and interests of commercialized sport athletes—who are disproportionately Black—notions about racial/ethnic abilities and who is deserving of rewards, and the perpetuation of the control and disproportionate profiteering from college sports by Whites, make the issue of compensation for college athletes an eminently and inescapably racialized issue ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ). Still, opinions about the ideals of “amateurism,” “student-athletes,” and even the capabilities of White and Black athletes are often viewed as aracial understandings and are connected to major issues in college sports ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Indeed, sports-related interactions and understandings are rife with aracial racism ( Leonard, 2017 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ).

• Traditionalism and Payment to College Athletes

Thus, we also drew upon understandings of traditionalism in anticipating public opinions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid. In this sense, traditionalism is tied up with a resistance to change and nostalgia for the past. Traditionalism is also frequently reactive to perceived threats to established ways of doing things ( Johnson & Tamney, 2001 ; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ; Winter, 2008 ). Indeed, changes to amateurism can be seen as destroying the student-athlete ideal and threatening the uniqueness of college sports. Furthermore, traditionalism is also associated with discomfort with changes that are designed to address racial/ethnic inequalities, as well ( Jost et al., 2003 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). For example, among conservatives, affirmative action is often viewed as “reverse racism” and eliminating racially insensitive terms and images is derided as “political correctness.” Consequently, traditionalism is commonly indicative of at least aracial racism, too ( Hochschild, 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Traditionalism, often supported by older, White, more rural, and more conservative individuals, has led to an array of defenses of the NCAA’s definition of amateurism and resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid ( Branch, 2011 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Foremost among these is a concern that allowing college athletes to be paid could irrevocably damage the sanctity of traditional principles that are connected to intercollegiate athletics, such as amateurism and students only playing sports for the love of the game and their institutions ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Tatos, 2017 ). There is also a fear that allowing college athletes to be paid would result in the uniqueness of college sports being destroyed, with the marketing and allure of them then becoming diminished ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Thus, backed by previous research findings about, particularly, age differences and political identities in supporting payment for college athletes, we anticipated that traditionalism would be associated with a resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

In fact, one of the main public relations strategies of the NCAA is to portray intercollegiate athletics as an extracurricular activity played by students and then to argue that its product would not be as popular with the public, and procompetitive with other options for consumers, if its athletes were paid a salary for performance. Then, the NCAA cites and uses public opinion as a reason to maintain a tradition of not allowing college athletes to be paid ( Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ). Yet, the NCAA defined and continues to employ the “student-athlete” moniker in order to minimize the appearance of college sports operating as a business, with employers (i.e., adults in charge) and employees (i.e., college athletes). This public relations strategy has helped to uphold the myth of amateurism and the support for its ideals, especially among traditionalists ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ).

• Other Factors

Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, family structures, and regional contexts may confound our understandings of the associations between race/ethnicity, traditionalism, and public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Gender may matter in that men may be more supportive of male athletes benefitting from the revenue that is produced through their labor; similarly, women may be especially concerned about the Title IX and gender equity implications of allowing college athletes to be paid ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ; Staurowsky, 2018 ). Socioeconomic status may also shape one’s resistance to changing the status quo, with more privileged individuals likely being less amenable to change ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). Family structures may influence perceptions as well, as intimate partners and kin may shape one’s opinions. Finally, geographic region may correlate with public opinions, especially since the landmark passage of the California law that allows for endorsement opportunities, with persons from the West potentially being more supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid, compared with others ( Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

Overall, the conceptual framework for this study and previous research leads to four main hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: There will be substantial, but mixed, support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Yet, adults’ sports involvement will be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 2: Racial/ethnic identities will be predictive of support for allowing college athletes to be paid. White identities will be negatively, and Black identities will be positively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 3: Recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination will be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 4: Traditionalism will be negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. That is, older, less urban, and more conservative individuals will be less supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid.

We used data from the National Sports and Society Survey (NSASS), a landmark new survey that offers a wealth of information about sports and society issues from a large sample of U.S. adults ( N  = 3,993). The NSASS was explicitly created to enable comprehensive and wide-ranging social science research projects on sports and society issues. Thus, it is well suited for our focus on public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. The sample for the NSASS was drawn from participants in the American Population Panel, a panel of over 20,000 volunteers who have signed up to be invited to participate in social science research surveys. The American Population Panel was created by the Center for Human Resource Research, a longstanding and respected survey research organization, which also collaborated in the design and data collection of the NSASS.

The NSASS was designed as a quota sample of N  = 4,000 to maximize its sample size within a fixed budget that demanded timely and economically efficient data collection. Between the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019, American Population Panel members who reported years of birth that were 21–65 years ago were sent invitations to take the NSASS. The survey was offered online, and respondents were given $35 for their participation. The respondents represented all 50 states and Washington, DC, but were disproportionately female, White, and Midwestern  ( Knoester & Cooksey, 2020 ). Still, the large sample of the NSASS offers unique information across many different subgroups. Furthermore, the data were being weighted to offer more representative descriptive statistics about U.S. adults.

In the present study, we initially utilized a sample that consists of the 3,868 NSASS respondents who answered ( N  = 125 of the total 3,993 NSASS respondents refused to answer) a survey question about allowing college athletes to be paid, in order to report estimates of U.S. adult public opinions about the issue of college athlete compensation. That is, we first considered the responses from the participants who indicated some level of (dis)agreement about allowing college athletes to be paid—or that they “Don’t Know.” Then, for our regression analyses, we employed a primary sample ( N  = 3,519) that further removed the 349 respondents who replied with “Don’t Know.” The decision to eliminate “Don’t Know” responses from our main analysis follows previous research ( Mondello et al., 2013 ). Missing data for our predictor variables were addressed with the use of multiple imputations with chained equations, a preferred approach for dealing with missing data. Nonetheless, our results are robust to the use of listwise deletion of missing data, as well. Sensitivity analyses that considered Don’t Know responses as a middle response category and others that coded support for allowing college athletes to be paid as a binary variable produced results that are consistent with what is reported in the present study.

• Dependent and Independent Variables

The dependent variable for this study indicates support for allowing college athletes to be paid. It is an ordinal variable that represents responses (1 =  strongly disagree , 2 =  somewhat disagree , 3 =  somewhat agree , and 4 =  strongly agree ) to the statement “College athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school.”

The primary independent variables include measures of adults’ racial/ethnic identities, beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, traditionalism, and sports involvement. Racial/ethnic identities were coded with mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicate whether one self-identified as only White (used as the reference category), (any) Black, (non-Black) Latinx, or another racial/ethnic identity. Recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination is a variable that was formed from responses (1 =  strongly disagree , 2 =  somewhat disagree , 3 =  somewhat agree , and 4 =  strongly agree ) to the following statement: “On average, non-whites have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people. Do you think these differences are … mainly due to discrimination?”

Indicators of traditionalism include measures of adults’ age, urbanicity, and self-reported conservatism. Age was coded with dummy variables for being (a) ≤30 years old (used as the reference category), (b) 31–40, (c) 41–50, or (d) 51 or above. Similarly, urbanicity was coded with mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicate self-reports of living in a (a) large city, (b) suburb near a large city, (c) small city or town, or (d) rural area. Conservatism was created based on responses to the question “In terms of politics, do you consider yourself … ?” The response options range from 1 =  Very liberal to 5 =  Very conservative .

Adults’ sports involvement includes reports of sports fandom, sports participation, and whether one was ever an athlete on a college team. Sports fandom was formed from responses (0 =  Not at all ; 4 =  Very much so ) to the question: “Are you a sports fan?” Sports participation indicates whether the adults reported (1 =  yes ) playing a sport(s) regularly (i.e., more than occasionally), over the past year. Finally, college athlete status indicates whether the adults reported (1 =  yes ) playing on a college team in their responses to either of two questions. Specifically, the respondents were asked a series of questions about the sport that they played the most while growing up (i.e., through age 18). One question asked them to identify all of the levels (e.g., youth recreational, high school varsity, college team, etc.) at which they played this sport while growing up. Later, the respondents were asked to identify all of the levels at which they played this sport since the age of 19 years.

• Control Variables

Finally, background characteristics such as gender, socioeconomic status, family structure, and geographic region served as control variables for our analyses. Gender was based on reports of identifying as female (1 =  yes ). Educational attainment variables, which were drawn from reports of the respondents’ highest level of education, consisted of mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicated whether the respondents attained a (a) college (used as the reference category), (b) some college, or (c) high school or less education. Household income (in $10,000s, up to 15+) and working in paid labor (1 =  yes ) were reported by the respondents and were also used as socioeconomic status indicators. Family structure measures were created from reports of marital status (i.e., married, cohabiting, or single [used as the reference category]) and the number of one’s own minor children or one’s partner’s minor children who were living in the household. Finally, census regions were coded as proxies for geographical contexts (i.e., West [used as the reference category], Midwest, Northeast, and South).

To analyze public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid, we first examined the distribution of responses about allowing college athletes to be paid. Then, we proceeded to predicting public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid in a series of nested, ordinal logistic regression models.

Consistent with our first hypothesis, there is mixed but substantial support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Specifically, 25% of the NSASS respondents strongly disagreed, 19% somewhat disagreed, 25% somewhat agreed, and 23% strongly agreed with allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school; 9% of the NSASS respondents indicated that they didn’t know. Thus, overall, a plurality of the NSASS respondents endorses allowing college athletes to be paid. As shown in Table  1 , among the adults who provided a response that indicated support or opposition (i.e., after removing the “Don’t Know” responses for our main regression analyses), over half of the NSASS respondents reported agreement with allowing college athletes to be paid.

Descriptive Statistics for All Variables Used in the Regression Analyses

Note . N  = 3,519.

a The response options that are used for descriptive analyses of public opinions include the following: (a) strongly disagree, (b) somewhat disagree, (c) somewhat agree, (d) strongly agree, and (e) don’t know.

Next, to better estimate public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid among all U.S. adults, we used poststratification weighting based on the 2018 American Community Survey demographic characteristics. This procedure generates more accurate estimates of U.S. adults’ public opinions, because the American Community Survey is a preeminent compilation of yearly population estimates, based on millions of households that are surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau, whereas, the NSASS respondents are disproportionately female, White, and Midwestern, for example. These weighted NSASS estimates are displayed in Figure  1 and indicate greater support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as compared with the unweighted estimates. As shown in Figure  1 , the weighted estimates of support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school suggest that 51% of U.S. adults ages 20–64 support allowing college athletes to be paid, 41% of adults do not support allowing college athletes to be paid, and 8% of adults do not know.

—Weighted comparison estimates of public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid, among U.S. Adults. Note . These NSASS estimates are weighted according to 2018 American Community Survey demographics for U.S. adults aged 20–64, based on age, gender, race, education, work status, marital status, income, and region. NSASS = National Sports and Society Survey.

Citation: Sociology of Sport Journal 38, 4; 10.1123/ssj.2020-0015

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We now turn to predicting public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid in ordinal logistic regression models. These results are shown in Table  2 . We first focused on racial/ethnic identities and other common demographic characteristics; to do so, we initially emphasized White/non-White differences and then used White as a reference category. As displayed in Model 1, and anticipated by our second hypothesis, the individuals who identified as White (only) were 36% less likely than non-Whites to strongly agree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as opposed to another response option ( b  = −0.44, p  < .001, odds ratio [OR] = 0.64). Also, as predicted in our fourth hypothesis, there is evidence that older generations of adults are less likely to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Compared with adults ages 30 years or younger, adults ages 41–50 ( b  = −0.37, p  < .001, OR = 0.69) and ages 51+ ( b  = −0.64, p  < .001, OR = 0.53) are markedly less likely to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Although gender is not a focus of this study, it is also striking that women ( b  = −0.51, p  < .001, OR = 0.60) are much less likely than men to support allowing college athletes to be paid. One interpretation of this finding is that women may be disproportionately concerned about the implications that allowing college athletes to be paid may have on gender equity in college sports.

Results From Ordinal Logistic Regressions Predicting Public Opinion Support for Allowing College Athletes to Be Paid

Note. N  = 3,519. OR = odds ratio.

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

As shown in Model 2 of Table  2 , and anticipated by our second hypothesis, Black adults ( b  = 0.91, p  < .001, OR = 2.50) were especially supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, they were 2.5 times as likely as Whites to strongly agree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Latinx adults ( b  = 0.23, p  < .05, OR = 1.26) were also more likely than Whites to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Thus, moving forward, based on our conceptual framework, these empirical results, and our indicator of recognizing White/non-White discrimination, we only include a White/non-White racial/ethnic indicator in our models.

Model 3 includes the addition of adult sports involvement indicators. Consistent with our first hypothesis, we found that sports fandom is positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( b  = 0.16, p  < .001, OR = 1.17). Little else changes in Model 3 when compared with previous models, as expected.

Finally, in Model 4, we showed the results after including additional indicators of traditionalism and discrimination into the previous model. As anticipated by our third hypothesis, a greater recognition of the influence of racial/ethnic discrimination was positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( b  = 0.25, p  < .001, OR = 1.28). Also, consistent with our fourth hypothesis, urbanicity and conservatism were associated with support for paying college athletes, in expected directions. That is, conservatism was negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Also, compared with living in a large city, living in a suburb ( b  = −0.20, p  < .05, OR = 0.82), a town or small city ( b  = −0.35, p  < .001, OR = 0.70), or in a rural area ( b  = −32, p  < .001, OR = 0.72) was negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

The present study sought to advance research by analyzing the patterns and predictors of public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. This research is particularly important because there are vast and longstanding racial/ethnic inequalities in the production and receipt of revenue that is tied to college sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 , Smith, 2009 ). Furthermore, the recent passage of The Fair Pay to Play Act, and related legislation efforts, has challenged the status quo of defining amateurism ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ). As the NCAA and member schools continue to negotiate a strategic response to this new challenge, they have argued and cited that college sports are unique, and celebrated, because the athletes are not allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

The present study offers valuable new insights into the extent to which public opinions are aligned with these traditional NCAA defenses of their view of amateurism. We went beyond previous research by assessing responses to a recent survey question from new landmark data that gets to the heart of the current debate about amateurism. In asking about support for allowing college athletes to be paid, rather than asking about whether or not they should be paid or opinions about the precise mechanisms and amounts of payment, the question focuses on support for college athletes’ basic economic rights. We uniquely utilized a series of multiple regressions to assess the extent to which various factors, including indicators of racial/ethnic identities, beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, and traditionalism, predict public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. Finally, we advanced a conceptual framework for understanding public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid that emphasized CRT tenets and the roles of both race/ethnicity and traditionalism in shaping public opinions. Below, we review the support that emerged for these hypotheses and further contextualize our findings.

Our first hypothesis anticipated that there would be substantial, but mixed, public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. It also anticipated that adults’ sports involvement would be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, we did find support for these expectations. Both weighted and unweighted data indicate that U.S. adults are now prone to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Nonetheless, over 40% of U.S. and NSASS adults seem to still disagree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. This finding is consistent with recent research from a Seton Hall Sports Poll ( N  = 714) that found that 60% of U.S. adults endorsed college athletes being able to profit from the use of their name, image, or likeness ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). We also found evidence that sports fandom is positively associated with support for college athletes being allowed to be paid, in our regression models. Thus, in contrast with the fears of the NCAA and its member schools, it appears that sports fans are now especially likely to endorse allowing college athletes to be paid. Overall, it seems that most U.S. adults support changes in the notions of amateurism in college sports, notions that were born from White privilege and that have served as flexible, lucrative, and exploitative ideals ( Branch, 2011 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Smith, 2009 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). Indeed, CRT suggests that Black male athletes are particularly exploited and that changes in the ideologies and practices of amateurism in college sports are necessary for social justice ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Singer, 2019 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ).

Our second and third hypotheses looked at the salience of race/ethnicity, through racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, in predicting support for allowing college athletes to be paid. First, we anticipated that identifying as White would be especially likely to be negatively, and identifying as Black positively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Indeed, our regression results indicated that White adults were consistently less likely than non-White adults, and especially Black adults, to endorse allowing college athletes to be paid. This finding is consistent with previous research that notes Black–White differences in adults’ views about paying college athletes, but also extends the analyses and findings to other non-White racial/ethnic groups ( Branch, 2011 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). As part of this pattern, and informed by CRT, it seems probable that in-group loyalties, unique lived experiences, and patterned perspectives about the promises and deliveries of amateur ideals are at work, especially in the case of Black adults wanting to see the labor of young Black athletes being appropriately rewarded—in a society that has perpetually exploited non-White and particularly Black labor ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Smith, 2009 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Second, we expected to find that recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination would be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Indeed, this is what we found. Consistent with previous theorizing and research, this result suggests that CRT and sociological perspectives, which emphasize and criticize the prevalence and effects of racial/ethnic inequalities, encourage one to make connections between general patterns of racial/ethnic discrimination and the exploitative nature of commercialized college sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ). Furthermore, our finding corresponds with previous research on how racial/ethnic prejudices and resentments, sometimes indicated by a lack of awareness of systematic racial/ethnic discrimination, shape attitudes about college athletes being paid ( Cooper, 2012 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Specifically, as Afro-Pessimist scholars emphasize, anti-Black sentiments and practices are particularly prevalent and influential ( Cooper, 2019 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Olaloku-Teriba, 2018 ; Sexton, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ), although, in the present study, we focused on racial/ethnic prejudices and beliefs about discrimination that affect non-Whites. Beliefs and practices that adversely affect non-Whites, as opposed to just Blacks, are also common and have been largely neglected in public opinion research ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Public Religious Research Institute [PRRI], 2017 ).

Finally, our final hypothesis anticipated that indicators of traditionalism would be negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. We viewed traditionalism as emblematic of a resistance to change the status quo; in this case, the status quo refers to the tradition of NCAA-defined amateurism in college sports. Yet, our indicators of traditionalism—age, urbanicity, and conservatism—are also commonly associated with racial/ethnic prejudice ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Crowder & Krysan, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Furthermore, as our conceptual framework and CRT observations highlight, the history of amateurism in college sports in America is born out of, and continually infused with, racial/ethnic prejudices, inequalities, and exploitation. Thus, it was not surprising to find that older generations, adults who did not live in large cities, and self-identified conservatives were less likely to advocate for allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, the processes that encourage a resistance to change the status quo in collegiate athletics may be akin to the processes of encouraging resistance to modifying other policies (e.g., affirmative action, criminal justice reform, welfare policies) in ways that are expected to alleviate racial/ethnic inequalities, injustices, and sufferings for social justice ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ).

Overall, the results of the present study bring to light evidence of majority support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. In fact, this support appears to be highest among passionate sports fans. Yet, we find that Whiteness and a lack of recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination are significant predictors of believing that college athletes should not be allowed to be paid. Although expected, this is concerning, due to the historic and continual racial/ethnic discrimination that has led to, defended, and prioritized White voices, experiences, statuses, and control in society, including in the realm of sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Notions of White supremacy in abilities and character and a comfort with exploiting non-White and especially Black labor are endemic to this history ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Branch, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ). Indeed, the results of our study and previous work suggest that norms of White power and control, notions of White supremacy, and, especially, anti-Blackness are linked to attitudes about allowing college athletes to be paid, although this issue is commonly seen as “aracial.” In society, traditionalism frequently acts to resist and obstruct attempts at addressing racial/ethnic inequalities, including in sports ( Kendi, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Consequently, it is notable that, in this study, traditionalism seemed to generate opposition to allowing college athletes to be paid, too. A sociological perspective, CRT tenets, and an antiracist approach, defined as working to enact racial/ethnic equalities, suggest that changes in the ideologies, practices, and policies of college sports are needed ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Singer, 2019 ).

There are limitations to note this study. For example, the NSASS respondents were survey volunteers and not randomly selected. Thus, their responses may not accurately reflect the characteristics and beliefs of the general U.S. adult population—even after introducing statistical controls. In addition, we relied on closed-ended survey question responses in analyzing the factors that lead adults to formulate their opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. Future work may complement this focus by further investigating how people view this issue, in their own words and in greater detail. Finally, comprehensive analyses in future research are needed to consider how intersectionality considerations, particularly between race/ethnicity and gender, may better inform our understandings of college athlete experiences and U.S. adults’ public opinions about the structures and practices of college sports.

Nonetheless, this study improves our understanding of the extent to which U.S. adults support allowing college athletes the right to be paid as athletes. It offers new information that suggests that most adults now support this right. In fact, our findings fit nicely into the recognition of an upward trend over recent years in support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Currently, sports fans appear mostly in favor of allowing college athletes the right to be paid. Yet, beliefs about payment to college athletes are integrally intertwined with race/ethnicity and traditionalism. White adults are especially likely to oppose payment to college athletes, Black adults are particularly likely to endorse payment, and the recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination appears to encourage support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Finally, indicators of traditionalism, such as old age, residence outside of large cities, and conservatism, seem to galvanize levels of resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid. Yet, although previous research and a CRT interpretation of these findings point to continued challenges, and defenses, of the status quo in college sports, they also suggest another likely set of interest convergences is ahead ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Apparently, increasing public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid and market pressures from The Fair Pay to Play Act and other related legislation seem to be pushing the NCAA and its member schools to enact more socially just policies and practices ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2020 ). Future research should seek to extend this work and continue to explore public opinions about the structure and historic ideals of college sports—and their links to race/ethnicity and traditionalism.

• Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. The NSASS was generously funded and supported by the College of Arts & Sciences, the Sports and Society Initiative, and CHRR at The Ohio State University.

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* Knoester is with The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Ridpath is with the Department of Sports Administration, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA.

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Economists recommend paying college athletes

The current compensation arrangement for big-time college athletics is inefficient, inequitable and very likely unsustainable, according to a new study by economists from the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University. The article concludes that an evolution to a competitive labor market with fewer restrictions on pay for top athletes may be inevitable, though the transition will be difficult.

In their study released this week in the Winter 2015 issue of Journal of Economic Perspectives , Allen Sanderson, senior lecturer in economics at UChicago, and John Siegfried, professor emeritus of economics at Vanderbilt, write that the practice of setting a binding limit on remuneration for student-athletes – grant-in-aid restricted to room, board, tuition, fees, and books – may violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The authors argue that payment caps set by the NCAA are holding down benefits that otherwise would go to top-performing athletes, many of them African Americans from low-income families, while top coaches and athletic department personnel receive disproportionately high salaries.

Instead, the researchers recommend, schools should compensate student-athletes according to the value they provide, whether that value comes in the form of measurable revenue or more subjective benefits.

Sanderson said recent proposals by the NCAA to shift from single-year to multiyear scholarships, and to cover unrestricted meal plans and other incidental out-of-pocket costs for players, fall well short of a free competitive labor market.

Such proposals “are mainly an attempt by the NCAA to stay one town ahead of the sheriff," Sanderson said.

In addition to exploring the labor market for college athletes, the paper, entitled “The Case for Paying College Athletes” also examines why U.S colleges and universities operate large-scale commercial athletic programs, with a focus on men’s football and basketball. The authors question the rationale among many universities that such big-time programs subsidize their money-losing intercollegiate sporting ventures.

The Student-Athlete Debate

Since athletes have historically been considered students rather than employees, they have not been covered by general labor laws, says the study. Therefore, they cannot bargain collectively via union representation, nor can they apply for workers compensation.  

As a result, university athletic departments can essentially dictate many aspects of a student-athlete’s routine and engage them in long hours of practices, something that might not be possible if they had to obey general labor laws. The study claims that the NCAA is allowed to maximize its profits by steadily expanding regular-season and playoff/bowl games since the marginal operating cost is minimal.

For example, the study notes that college football started a four-team playoff in January 2015 without reducing the number of regular-season games. There are already calls to expand the football playoffs to eight or even 16 teams. Television exposure has also led to an increased number of games played at neutral sites, where both teams must travel, as well as games played on weeknights during the academic year. 

“The players have no voice in these decisions to expand the schedule, and no claim on the incremental revenues generated,” said Sanderson.

Additionally, minimum age requirements in the National Football League and the National Basketball Association restrict alternatives available to prospective college athletes, according to the study.  Such restrictions give the NCAA virtually total control over the labor market for players. Moreover, the NCAA makes it difficult for student-athletes to transfer to another institution that might be a better fit.

Such labor practices have led to a series of legal challenges. The authors list several high-profile pending lawsuits, which they believe could result in “an evolution well beyond the incremental steps taken by the NCAA.”

One case, O’Bannon vs. NCAA, would do away with wage fixing, allowing schools to pay players up to $5,000 per year of eligibility. Another involves an appeal before the National Labor Relations Board by Northwestern University, which has petitioned the body to reconsider a regional director’s recognition of Northwestern football players as university employees. 

“These lawsuits and pressures from the regulatory bodies could ultimately reduce, if not completely eliminate the monopoly power of the NCAA, the intercollegiate sports teams, and conferences,” says Sanderson.

Redirecting Scarce Academic Funding to Sports 

Contrary to the popular belief that intercollegiate athletics is profitable, the study notes that according to NCAA data, only one out of every six of the Football Bowl Subdivision universities earned a profit in 2013, a typical year, and only a portion of those profits were transferred to the academic side of their universities.

A USA Today report in 2013 also found that over $1 billion of student tuition and fees was transferred annually to athletic departments in NCAA Division I to support intercollegiate sporting ventures.

None of those institutions’ charters mentions commercial entertainment activities in their mission statement, said Sanderson. But when they incur financial losses on athletics, officials   spend more on “salaries for coaches and improving physical facilities rather than interpreting losses as a signal to redeploy assets elsewhere.”

The study notes that academic institutions subsidize athletics “with a combination of mandatory student fees, scarce general institutional funds, public monies from state governments, and contributions solicited from alumni and well-heeled donors that might have been directed to other academic purposes or toward reducing the seemingly perpetual escalation of tuition costs in higher education today.” 

The authors dispute the rationale for such subsidies, that success in intercollegiate athletics attracts larger state appropriations and private donations from alumni who might view a university more favorably, and the presence of high-profile athletic programs attracts additional applicants. Citing numerous studies and data, the study says any such gains are "meager" and fleeting."

The future of college sports

The researchers envision an arrangement where student athletes receive labor law protections, competitive compensation and more thorough medical coverage. In most cases this would require more subsidies from the school’s general fund and force university leadership to have soul-searching conversations about how much the school is ultimately willing to charge its student body to subsidize an intercollegiate sports program. It would also create Title IX implications, as there are far fewer women in revenue-generating college sports than men. Whatever happens, the researchers write, “It seems unlikely that the landscape of big-time commercialized intercollegiate athletics 10 years from now will resemble today’s incarnation, or anything seen in the last half-century.”

Liz Entman at Vanderbilt University contributed to this article.

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Multiple parties file legal oppositions to NCAA revenue settlement case

Written opposition to the proposed settlement of the  proposed multi-billion-dollar settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that is pending with a federal judge in California grew on Friday.

Two separate sets of attorneys made filings asking U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken to deny preliminary approval of the proposed settlement. Taken together, the arguments combined to raise myriad issues about the deal, including whether it undervalues the claims, discriminates against female athletes, creates another illegal cap on compensation and the money that would go to the plaintiffs' attorneys.

On Thursday, attorneys for plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit concerning Ivy League schools’ refusal to award athletic scholarships filed an opposition to the proposed settlement that seeks a carve-out for their claims.

Meanwhile, also on Thursday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set a initial briefing schedule for Houston Christian University's appeal of Wilken's rejection of its bid to become involved in the case as an objector and to have the proposed settlement thrown out. Houston Christian, a member of the Football Championship Subdivision's Southland Conference, claims it would adversely by the proposed settlement and that neither it nor its conference had any input into the deal.

The 9th Circuit's briefing schedule comprises dates in late October and November.

Wilken has scheduled a preliminary-approval hearing for Sept. 5, and lawyers for the plaintiffs involved in the proposed settlement have until Aug. 16 — next Friday — to respond to the new opposition filings.

Who filed oppositions on Friday

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in another athlete-compensation lawsuit against the NCAA and the Power Five that has been allowed to proceed in a federal court in Colorado made one set of arguments

Attorneys representing six current or former women's rowers made the other.

What would happen under the proposed settlement

On its most basic level:

▶There would a $2.8 billion damages pool that would be funded over 10 years by the NCAA and its Division I schools and conferences. A heavier financial burden for this would be placed on the Power Five schools, but the impact would be felt by all schools.

▶Division I schools would be able to start paying athletes directly for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL), subject to a per-school cap that would increase over time and be based on a percentage of certain athletics revenues.

▶NCAA leaders would seek to engineer rules changes eliminating longstanding, sport-by-sport scholarship limits and replacing them with a new set of roster-size limits.

▶While athletes would continue to have the ability to make NIL deals with entities other than their schools, the settlement would allow the NCAA to institute rules designed to give the association greater enforcement oversight of those arrangements.

▶The damages pool would include money that would go to the plaintiffs' lawyers for their fees and costs. According to documents filed in connection with the settlement proposal, they will ask the judge to approve up to $495.2 million in fees, just under 18% of the total, plus "out-of-pocket expenses." 

The arguments raised against the proposed settlement

▶ The damages pool undervalues the claims: Lawyers involved with the case in Colorado say that while the proposed settlement values the claims they are pursuing at a little over $1.8 billion, they “obtained an independent, preliminary estimate from a respected economist” that places the value of these claims at $24.3 billion. A submission from that economist was included among their filings.

The attorneys leading the case in Colorado initially brought their proposed class-action case on Nov. 20, 2023, on behalf of former Colorado football Alex Fontenot.

In their complaint, they wrote that their case “takes aim at the full cut of television and other revenues would receive in a truly open market” rather than the one that exists under the NCAA’s rules.

They are asking for an injunction that would bar any NCAA rules that prevent such an open market – basically the creation of a formalized pay-for-play system in which athletes can be paid by their schools for their athletic services. They seek to represent all athletes who played for an NCAA Division I team in any sport from roughly 2020 through a judgment in the case. And they are seeking damages covering money that they allege all of those athletes would have received — the more than $24 billion they cited Friday.

On Dec. 7, 2023, the plaintiffs lawyers who are leading two earlier cases involved in the proposed three-case settlement that is pending before Wilken filed a similar case in California on behalf of three athletes, including now-former Duke football player DeWayne Carter. It sought an injunction against the NCAA’s athlete-compensation rules and a narrower set of damages: One that would cover athletes in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball who played for schools in Power Five leagues — including the 12-school version of the Pac-12 — or Notre Dame.

As part of legal maneuvering with the proposed settlement, the Carter case was consolidated with one of the two earlier cases, a complaint brought on behalf of plaintiffs led by former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, and a new, revised complaint broadened the range of athletes who would be entitled to damages, so it is now similar to one set up under the Fontenot case in Colorado.

However, the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case in Colorado, this week filed yet another lawsuit against the NCAA. This one concerns athletes who have received partial scholarships under the NCAA’s sport-by-sport scholarship rules. For most sports, the scholarship limit equates to a pool of money that can be allocated to many members of a team.

This new suit alleges that, absent the scholarship limits – which would abolished under the proposed settlement -- athletes would have received more scholarship money. As such, there should be a damages award to athletes who have been impacted by this. Friday, the lawyers involved with this case placed that amount at likely $300 million – and they want those claims exempted from the proposed settlement.

▶ The per-school cap on future NIL payments is illegal: Both groups of attorneys that submitted filings on Friday covered this. Those involved with the cases in Colorado argued that the proposed settlement “swaps one arbitrary cap for another arbitrary cap. … Further the plan unfairly excludes several important types of revenue ..,that should be included … Settlements are creatures of compromise, but future athletes should not have a new artificial cap forced upon them unless it goes through collective bargaining.”

The lawyers representing the women’s rowers wrote that: “Courts have repeatedly held that the NCAA has violated (antitrust law) in fixing compensation that student-athletes can earn…. Undeterred the NCAA seeks to continue to fix and depress the prices for student athletics” through the settlement.

▶ The settlement discriminates against female athletes : The economic modeling for the $2.8 billion in damages is largely – though not entirely – underpinned on an analysis of the value of athletes’ NIL to live TV broadcasts and the value of different sports to TV contracts. The result is a proposed arrangement under which football and men’s basketball players will get a huge percentage of the damages money.

The lawyers for the rowers argued that “the NCAA’s failure to promote women’s sports depressed the value of female athletes’ NIL over decades … yet instead of compensating … the Settlement perpetuates the same inequalities it should remedy… By reinforcing wrongful gender inequities instead of remedying them, the Settlement is a major setback for efforts to achieve gender equity in college athletics.”

▶ The fee arrangements for the plaintiffs’ lawyers: The attorneys for the rowers allege that the settlement’s “extreme preferential treatment of male football and basketball players suggests that Class Counsel pursued those groups’ interests to the near exclusion of of interests of other” athletes.

“The Settlement’s fee arrangement,” they added, “reinforces those concerns.” They specifically cited what they said is the proposed settlement’s inclusion of “$20 million as an ‘upfront injunctive fee and cost award’ ” that the NCAA and conferences agreed not to oppose. The arrangement, they wrote “raises the question of what Class Counsel bargained away to get it.”

Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact

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Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump

This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .

Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And it was front and center on Night 1.

WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC

“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.

“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.

Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.

Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.

Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.

PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.

Are Trump and Project 2025 connected?

To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)

The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.

Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.

WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors

However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.

Project 2025 wouldn’t ban abortion outright, but would curtail access

The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”

The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.

What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.

Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”

It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.

If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.

WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.

The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.

The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.

Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.

Project 2025 doesn’t call for cutting Social Security, but proposes some changes to Medicare

“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.

Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.

In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.

Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.

The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.

Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.

Project 2025 would eliminate the Education Department, which Trump supports

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.

Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.

In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.

What Project 2025, Trump would do on overtime pay

In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”

The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.

The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.

The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.

It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.

Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.

Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.

But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.

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Patrick Mahomes, adidas Sign Six Texas Tech Athletes to NIL Deals

Michael ehrlich | aug 23, 2024.

• Texas Tech Red Raiders

Although Texas Tech legend Patrick Mahomes dominated for the Red Raiders in a pre-NIL universe, the now three-time Super Bowl champion is getting into the space for the first time. Weeks after his footwear and apparel sponsor adidas and Texas Tech announced a 10-year partnership, Mahomes revealed the signing of six Red Raider student-athletes to NIL deals, making them the inaugural class of "Team Mahomes."

The student-athletes joining Team Mahomes will participate in brand marketing campaigns, including for the Chiefs quarterback's signature shoe and apparel line with adidas.

“The energy around this partnership has been incredible, and this announcement shows just how important this is to me, adidas and Texas Tech,” said Mahomes.“adidas has been a collaborative partner from the start, and we worked together to select athletes who are among the best and embody the drive and dedication we’re looking for in a Team Mahomes athlete. We’ve got a lot of great stuff coming up for the Red Raiders – stay tuned for more.”

The inaugural “Team Mahomes” athletes include:

• Five-star freshman football wide receiver  Micah Hudson
• USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year  NiJaree Canady
• Jasmine Shavers , the leading scorer for the Women’s Basketball team
• Matthew Comegys , one of the Nation’s top amateur golfers
• Women’s Soccer player  Sam Courtwright , 2023 Big 12 Freshman of the Year
• Baseball player  TJ Pompey , named a Freshman All-American

“Our partnership with Texas Tech - which we announced just a few weeks ago - continues to grow and evolve, and our goal is to make it one of the strongest and most visible in all of college sports," said Chris McGuire, adidas Vice President of Sports Marketing. “Our belief is that long-term equity in sport starts with investment, which is why we’re proud to have worked with Patrick in welcoming such an incredible group of student-athletes to the three stripes family.”

This week, Mahomes also announced a major donation to Texas Tech Athletics, helping to wrap up their largest facility investment in school history – the $240 million South End Zone and Dustin R. Womble Football Center project that opens this season.

“The creation of Team Mahomes further positions Texas Tech Athletics as a national leader in NIL. This wouldn’t be possible without a tremendous partner in adidas that believes strongly in investing in our student-athletes under the Patrick Mahomes brand,” said Kirby Hocutt, Director of Athletics at Texas Tech University. “In this era of sports, there aren’t many generational athletes like Patrick Mahomes who promote their alma mater so proudly and give back in such a meaningful manner.”

In addition to the six NIL deals announced today, all eligible Texas Tech student-athletes can join adidas' NIL Ambassador Network, which has included over 12,000 student-athletes nationwide thus far.

 The Red Raiders kick off their 2024 football season on August 31 at home versus Abilene Christian.

MICHAEL EHRLICH

Michael Ehrlich is a seasoned sports marketing executive with experience across the global sports brand, athlete representation, media and education sides of the business. The Founder and CEO of Playbook Marketing, Ehrlich consults with brands on all things NIL and athlete partnerships, advises student-athletes on their personal brand building endeavors and is an adjunct professor at his alma mater, the University of Southern California where he teaches a course on athlete communications and marketing. As a writer, his previous bylines include Boardroom, Business of College Sports, DIME Magazine and UPROXX, among others. You can follow him across social media at @MichaelEhrlich and reach out via [email protected]