Making The Call: Pay The Players

Ty Lawson helped lead North Carolina past Villanova to the men's NCAA Finals where the Tar Heals will face the Michigan State Spartans. (AP/Paul Sancya)

John Calipari just left Memphis for Kentucky and will receive over $4 million a year to coach basketball there. Jim Calhoun is the highest-paid employee of the state of Connecticut, something you better not ask him about. Roy Williams, the coach at North Carolina, makes around $1.5 million a year. The NCAA itself earns over $500 million a year from its TV contract with CBS. Everyone is making a killing from March Madness except for the people who make it all possible, the players. Why don’t they get a cut of all the profits they generate?

Purists will argue that the players already get paid in a way; they obtain a free education from the college they attend. Sadly, this is a benefit that way too few of the athletes ever take advantage of. 21 of the 65 tournament teams had APR scores (the method the NCAA uses to measure academic progress) lower than 925, which means the NCAA can penalize them. There are certainly some schools where academic achievement is taken seriously, Villanova and North Carolina graduate over 85% of their men’s basketball players, but clearly the first priority for most schools and players is to simply hoop it up.

So, the “student-athletes” spend their hours playing basketball and some spend it attending class, but apart from the 50 or so lucky ones who get drafted by the NBA each year, how many of them are leaving college prepared to face the future? Yet, billions of dollars change hands each year because of the efforts of these players on the court. Without them, none of this is possible.

Not only do the players not get paid, they have to follow some ridiculous rules. John Calipari just left Memphis, but his players can’t do the same unless they want to sit out a year. Why should the coach be free to leave whenever he wants to and the players unable to do so? Abolish the transfer rules and allow the players to receive some sort of salary as a result of their efforts. Tie it into academic performance as well, if you don’t graduate, you don’t get paid. What would emerge is a more just system that better reflected the economic realities of college athletics.

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By Peter Trinkle in News on April 5, 2009 7:06 PM

Comments [rss]

Sketto

This one is tough. I don't want to pay the players for all the reasons already mentioned regarding academics vs. sports at the university level.

But I also think it's ridiculous that star players, who can blow out their knee and end their career at any moment, whose jerseys are sold by the university and apparel manufacturers who make a fortune, who are the reason games and tv contracts exist, who travel and practice constantly, who really have little prayer of getting a decent education while playing ball full-time, who watch their coaches and universities make millions, and who generally help promote the university ...get zero dollars and will be penalized if they get a free sandwich from a booster. It's F'ed up.

spreetaper

title of this article should be changed to "Who is paying the players?"

If you think D1 College Bball is clean and guys aren't already getting "paid" or family members aren't getting things under the table or their AAU coaches aren't getting hired by the same D1 team as an assistant or a scout etc you are kidding yourself! The schools that consistently win and stay "clean" are just better at hiding things that's all.

jaycjay

The fact is that there are only a few dozen Division 1 athletic programs that make money. So, if you're going to pay players for some sports (and if some, how do you justify not paying all?), that money has to come from somewhere, which means a negative impact on educational or research spending at a university.

And here we are coming to the wrap-up of "March Madness," the tournament that we go into with schools of all different sizes on essentially equal ground. Start paying college basketball players, and you immediately say goodbye to that. Recruiting would no longer hinge on presenting the whole of the a particular school's experience, it would simply come down to which school could pay the most money. So, which school do you think would become the New York Yankees of college basketball? There are only a few possibilities, but there's no doubt that within a few years there would be one. Might as well do away with the tournament entirely; the most compelling aspect of college athletics will become a joke.

Really this whole argument is so poorly thought out that it barely deserves a thought out reply. So I'll keep it simplistic: this is a resoundingly stupid idea.

themsthebreaks

This.

I go to NJIT, where the school has increased its athletic spending by several million dollars to join D1, and maybe 100 people go to those games. Tuitions have noticeably increased so that we could own the record for longest losing streak in D1 history (even if it's not "official" like our athletic director insists). It's not generating anything, paying players would never work for anyone but the UNCs and the UCONNs and like jay said, theyd be the Yankees (even more than they are now) within a few years.

Whether the athletes use it or not, they at least have the opportunity to get an education. I can see the point that it's kind of a broken system, but paying them...no.

MrManhattan

I wish my basketball team was good enough to have its own college.

Snoopy

It can be done. You need a strong alumni association to support it.

If you decide to go the football route you need a large parking lot.

Snoopy

It's hard for the students to perform at high standards both academically and athletically in college, so I think it makes perfect sense to some people to draft a kid out of high school who is a great athlete but can't spell "cat" and give him a free ride so he can be drafted into the pros in his sophomore year.

You see this attitude more in basketball and football then you see it in baseball, because college baseball doesn't draw the crowds and baseball has a very lively minors league division. Let's see minor league basketball and football and you will see a change in how things are organized.

non_sequitur

Let me get this straight... You assume that students don't get paid, then counter it immediately by saying they get scholarships. But even after that - your reasoning is just hilariously awful.

Broken down:

1) (a large portion of) student athletes receive a free education

2) a lot of these student athletes do not graduate because they either drop out, transfer or leave early for the pros

3) these students therefore do not receive the full benefit of their free education

4) therefore we should pay them.

This is the stupidest reasoning I've ever heard. Ever. Schools paying students (even more than they already are) who don't perform? How about we start giving out full rides to the D student frat boys who smoke pot while skipping class?

Rfive

This is a pretty silly article. First off, a college is for higher education. That is ultimately why they have things like clubs and teams. If those teams happen to do very well and faculty benefits from their success, they should reap the benefits as employees of the school. Students, on the other hand, are not employees. They are students. They are paid by their grades, and whatever other education they might receive. Maybe allow them to transfer without sitting out, but ultimately, again, they are there for an education.