Blog - #8 - Paying College Football Players?

1/11/14-Author:Tali
Is it time to start paying college football players?

In Bloomberg Businessweek’s January 2, 2014 edition Jonathan Mahler makes the argument for paying college football players. (Click on the link to read the full article: LINK.) I generally have been against this idea, but the article had some good points and it made me consider what would be a good model for the FBS schools.

The system is presently broken: colleges make hundreds of millions of dollars off their football programs both in actual football revenue and “hidden” revenue from boosters. Boosters, while maybe not donating directly to the football program, might donate for a major library upgrade even though their main interest is the football program. The sports networks and media outlets make their money, the merchandising companies make theirs, the game developers theirs, the coaches theirs, but the athletes who are the product receive a scholarship and a small stipend and most of the time they need to have an additional job to make ends meet. This is because the football players are amateurs and don’t get paid, but these vast football programs are big business and there is nothing amateurish about them!

Because this is big business, the athletes think they should get paid as well but can’t, so for some temptation takes over and they find ways to get paid outside of the rules of the NCAA, but not outside of the rules of the law. When caught this results in sanctions and penalties, but to break NCAA violations and get caught seems to be a rule, not an exception, amongst the major programs.

So what can be done? Well, paying the players is one way to avert most of these issues, but in what form? Mahler proposes various solutions. One that I think is intriguing is to let the players form a union, have the NCAA negotiate with the union, and then go from there. Far-fetched? It seems to work well for all other big time sports in the United States.

We would love to hear your opinion via the comment button below:
<--- PRE 8 of 202 NEX --->

© 2017 itCoder.net LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: College Football Faniacs.com does not implement cookies; College Football Faniacs.com does use Google Analytics for Display Advertising.