College football is back in season, and everyone is happy, even the players. Somewhere along the way, however, these players will cease to be completely happy, even the two percent who are drafted into the NFL.
Eventually, they will regret that at great risk of bodily harm they entertained fans and did not get paid for it, even though they were generating millions of dollars—and everyone was paid except them.
Some critics of this perspective will argue that the players are getting paid by getting a free scholarship. To this, I refer to the about $27,000 per year each player “earns” in tuition, room, and board. With the many hours each player puts in each week this $27,000 is not more than minimum wages.
A study in 2012 found that more than 80 percent of top-level college athletes on full scholarship lived below the poverty line. There are many scandals in big-time college sports. However, the real scandal is the very structure of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves.
Others may argue that the players get a “free” education. That is a cruel joke. As one former quarterback at Ohio State famously stated, they are there to play football, not for education. At many schools, players cannot take classes after 2 pm, because at that time they must start and/or continue their football training and practice.
Studies by professor Richard M. Southall show that the true graduation rate for college athletes in football and basketball is far below that of the student body, which means that much fewer than 50 percent of these athletes complete a four-year degree in six years. This is especially true for African Americans playing in the biggest and most powerful conferences, like the ACC and the SEC.
But the worse thing is the free labor football players provide. “College sports is heavily commercialized in the United States. It’s probably an $8 billion industry, roughly the size of the NFL,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist, in 2011. Currently, 27 schools make at least $100 million a year each in college sports, mostly from football.
Zimbalist continued, “Economists often refer to the NCAA as a cartel. . . .That is to say, it’s a conglomeration of independent producers — in this case athletic departments at all the schools — that come together to set rules.” Many of those rules benefit the members of the cartel economically. So one of the rules–the most prominent one—is that athletes can’t get paid. The NCAA cartel imposes other restrictions on athletes—restrictions on the number of scholarships that can be awarded and the number of games that can be played; and athletes cannot have endorsement contracts or receive licensing money.
The NCAA is a nonprofit organization; however, it operates to provide benefits to athletic directors, coaches, and conference commissioners. The bottom line is that football players in the Division 1 FBS should be paid.
They are the entertainers that people want to see perform, and they are the only people involved who are not paid. Walter Byers, who served as executive director of the NCAA from 1951 to 1987, agreed with me.
Byers, who died in 2015, wrote a book in 1995, Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes, where he turned against the NCAA. He said modern-day college sports are no longer a student activity. Instead, they are a high-dollar commercial enterprise, and college athletes should have the same access to the free market as their coaches and colleges.
College football’s biggest scandal will continue until that is corrected.