The road to playing professional sports in the US is an unforgiving one. The route in the most simplified way possible from beginner to professional is this: youth organised sports, interscholastic sport competition, intercollegiate sport competition and then professional sports.
In basketball for example, this would typically be AAU, high school, college, and then the NBA. Whilst in college, those that play in the sports team are irreverently labelled ‘student-athletes’.
Student-athletes are usually athletes who have been recruited by colleges to play their sport for the college’s team. Scholarships remain, to this day, one of the only benefits that colleges and universities can offer to their athletes in return for them joining their sports team and playing for them.
In the early, formative days of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the trade of playing for education was considered relatively fair. However, since its formation in 1910, the NCAA has grown hugely, with American football and basketball being the two premier sports leading this growth in popularity.
In 2010, the NCAA inked a deal with CBS and Turner conferring television rights to ‘March Madness’, the nickname given to the post-season tournament for college basketball, for 14 years in return for US$10.8 billion, for good reason: the tournament last year netted in over US$1.15 billion in ad revenue alone.
With so much money in the system nowadays, what do student-athletes get in return for playing compared to 100 years ago besides scholarships? Nothing. Student-athletes, arguably the only ingredient in the recipe that is essential for the NCAA obtaining these television rights, don’t see a single dime of it.
This all stems from the legal terminology of ‘student-athletes’ created by Walter Byers in 1964. This terminology reinforces the concept that these athletes are still of amateur status and establishes the notion that universities and colleges owe no obligation to its student athletes in ways of payment.
One of the rules mandated by the NCAA to its student-athletes is that in no way can a student-athlete accept any form of payment whatsoever while in tuition with the university; to do so would be to violate the NCAA rules and subsequently forego their amateur status. Accepting a brand new Ferrari or a lump sum of money would be a violation, for good reason, and harsh penalties have been imposed for doing so.
However, this has gone far beyond that, going so far as to penalise a player for accepting a free lunch and in one instance, fining a player for getting free plane tickets to go to his grandmother’s funeral.
Money for simply surviving is also an issue that the NCAA has been unduly harsh upon. Shabazz Napier, member of the UConn NCAA 2014 Championship team stated that there were nights where he went to bed “starving” because he couldn’t afford food.
Jalen Rose, former member of the Michigan ‘Fab Five’, played poorly during a practice session whilst in college. “My lights are about to get cut off,” he says to his coach. “I don’t have any money in my pocket. That’s what’s wrong. You got a new car, that’s what’s wrong.”
Although many recognise that multi-million dollar contracts shouldn’t be on the table for student-athletes, at a certain point, the NCAA needs to stop clouding the line between accepting professional payment and receiving money simply to survive.
A US$2,500 dollar per-semester stipend is easily one way to solve this. Food and essential utilities grants are another.
The NCAA needs to recognise that it isn’t 1910 anymore; there is huge money now in collegiate sports, and everyone is benefiting except for the group of people on which all this money hinges on.
