Paying college athletes an issue with a racial divide

More black respondents in favour

Earlier this week, behind the closed doors of a hotel conference room outside Cincinnati, Mississippi State linebacker Leo Lewis explained to NCAA officials what he alleges a booster offered a few years ago to try to get him to attend the University of Mississippi: $10,000 cash.

Last week in Clemson, S.C., recruits toured the football team’s new $55 million complex, which features an 18-hole miniature golf course, an arcade, and a nap room. Over in Alabama, Nick Saban’s $11.1 million in compensation this year would make him the highestpaid coach in the NFL, even though Alabama football only generates about $100 million in revenue, compared to $300 million to $700 million by NFL teams.

To some economists and labour lawyers, these stories of boosters waving bags of cash, luxury recruiting palaces and disproportionately large coach salaries are all manifestations of what they believe is a critical problem with college sports in America: The schools are barred from paying the valuable top recruits in lucrative football and men’s basketball.

A slight majority of American adults — 52 per cent — still believe a full scholarship is adequate compensation for college athlete. But the racial divide on the issue is significant, according to a nationwide poll conducted in August by The Washington Post and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

More than half of black Americans, 54 per cent, support paying college athletes based on revenue they generate, the poll finds. Among white Americans, however, a far smaller 31 per cent support paying athletes while 59 per cent are opposed. Hispanics split more evenly: 41 per cent say athletes should be paid while 47 per cent say scholarships are adequate.

Dawson Gaymon and Theresa Melki represent opposing viewpoints on each side of the divide. Gaymon, a 54-year-old water department employee in Summerton, S.C., thinks athletes should get paid.

“The schools are making an awful lot of money, and the coaches are making millions and millions of dollars, and they’re (the players) the ones bringing in the money, really,” said Gaymon, who is black.

Melki, a 38-year-old nurse from Boston, disagreed.

“The whole reason they go to college is to get an education, and a scholarship should be enough,” said Melki, who is white. “They shouldn’t be paid to play football.”

The idea of allowing players to earn money if their image or likeness is used through the sale of merchandise has more broad-based support than revenue-based pay, with 66 per cent of Americans in favour. A sizable racial gap exists on this issue as well, however. Nearly 9 in 10 blacks (89 per cent) say athletes should be paid for the use of their name or likeness, while 60 per cent of whites are in favour.

This week, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany cowrote an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune defending the current benefits offered college athletes.

“Despite the claims of critics and plaintiff’s lawyers who want to dismantle college athletics as we know it, our students who play sports are not exploited. They are educated,” Delany wrote. “College students who play sports are supported at the highest level with strong academic and counselling resources, outstanding facilities, high-quality medical care, unlimited meals and basic benefits the critics take for granted, including scholarships covering tuition, room and board to stipends for living expenses.”

As a longtime commissioner, Delany has been a beneficiary of the soaring revenue and controlled labour costs in college sports. The Big Ten’s most recent financial disclosures, for 2016, showed Delany’s total compensation had risen to nearly $2.4 million — up from $1.1 million a decade prior, adjusted for inflation — and he’s owed more than $20 million in future bonus payments.

“Jim Delany’s op-ed is a good example of the noblesse oblige conservative view: ‘Look, pay no attention to my $20 million bonus. We are giving these athletes an education,’” said Andy Schwarz, an economist who has consulted for plaintiffs in class-action lawsuits against the NCAA and college conferences over restricted benefits for college athletes.

According to NCAA data, 48 per cent of Football Bowl Subdivision players are black, to 38 per cent white. In men’s basketball, the other major money-making sport, 58 per cent of Division I athletes are black, to 25 per cent white.

When it comes to political leaning, Republicans (62 per cent) are more likely to say scholarships are enough for athletes than Democrats (51 per cent), the Post-UMass Lowell poll finds.

This Post-UMass Lowell poll was conducted Aug. 14-21 among a random national sample of 1,000 adults reached on cellular and landline phones.

THE SCHOOLS ARE MAKING AN AWFUL LOT OF MONEY …