Excellent point. While you're at it, make sure to include the salaries of the players.
Or are we applying corporate-compensation logic, in which all the money that a company brings in is credited to the CEO, who promptly gives himself a lavish raise?
You're preaching to the choir, I think the athletes should get a share of the pie as well.
Preferably, in fact, these unquestionably professional athletes would stop pretending to be students at all, with some sort of hybrid university-sports structure. (keeping in mind that this graph uses the top 150 college coaches; schools like Yale and Stanford unquestionably have true student athletes)
I think when discussing this it's important to get the image of the average student-athlete correct: the vast majority of student-athletes will never play pro sports, are often good students, and do it in their free time for pleasure, fitness, and love of competition. I think that this is a valuable tradition which should be maintained.
The problem is that high-level college football and college basketball, in particular, have grown from amateur sports into de facto professional leagues, with athletes who are grossly underpaid relative to the revenue gathered by the sport they play.
I'm in favor of separating de facto professional sports away from the truly amateur sports, but I think there's value in having amateur sports. (bias alert: I'm an amateur athlete who spends a lot of his time and money playing sports, and coaches a club ultimate team.)
Excellent question. The very best universities don't intermingle them... MIT, Caltech, Stanford come to mind. I know MIT has lots of intramural sports, where the focus is on healthy recreation for students. But they don't have ANY NCAA-style teams.
Stanford has one of the country's biggest and most successful NCAA Division 1 athletics programs.
"Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university with the most success in collegiate athletics, for 14 consecutive years (1994-95 to 2007-08)."
I'm not really sure as to what you mean by NCAA-style teams. Stanford is actually the school that the sports world points to as the shinning example of excellence in sports not interfering with excellence in academics. In fact last year Stanford Basketball went to the sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament. Before his career as pro-quarterback John Elway was a Stanford student-athlete. Furthermore every university in the academically vaulted Ivy league is also a member of the NCAA Division I.
Tell you what, though: when I chose between Stanford with its athletic program and Caltech with its lack thereof, I considered the athletics a knock against Stanford. I ultimately chose Stanford, but despite the athletics, not because of them.
This is just not true. MIT competes in Division III and has 41 varsity teams according to wikipedia. I'm not sure if they give out any athletic scholarships.
It's my opinion that college football players should receive salary, or at least be able to accept endorsement opportunities. There would be a decreased financial motivation to leave school early.
There's a ton of downside to this, I know, but I don't think that universities should be regulating what sort of money their students bring in.
Another way to look at it is that the university is 'paying' them with a free education, and 4 years with no financial obligations. Depending on the school, that has the potential for massive financial equivalents.
That said, let me propose a deal for you: Instead of being paid for your next four years of work, your employer gives the cash to a university. In return, the university gives you a four-year scholarship with a value equal to your deferred salary plus X%. Note that the scholarship is nontransferable, it cannot be deferred, and you cannot stretch it out over more than four years, unless the university agrees to give you a single extra "red-shirt" year. Also, if you quit your job, you lose the scholarship, so don't expect to be a full-time student unless you're really good at multitasking and don't need a lot of sleep.
How large does X have to be before you accept this offer? My guess is that it is considerably higher than zero.
Right, I think we're both in agreement here. To say that college athletes are unpaid workers isn't exactly true, but it also isn't entirely honest to say they're paid like a regular job. I responded to the parent of my post because it had been down-modded for simply saying scholarships are a form of payment.
If I were a high-school kid coming from a family with very little ability to help pay for college I'd say that sounds like fantastic deal.
Personal I would have gone to Standford on an athletic scholarship that paid less than full tuition. Few collage players can compete in the MBA and there is not a lot of paths for people with that level of skill to may any money from their sport. Few people complain that doctors need to do an internship before they make the "big bucks" because even if they are paid less than they are "worth" they are still gaining non monetary compensation.
Fine, I'll grant you that. But why are they not allowed to accept endorsements? It definitely pays better than being a bouncer at the local pub.
Some of these guys come from financially destitute situations and will leave school the minute they hear NFL so they can support the rest of their family.
