Criticizing college athletes’ pay? Try again

Regarding Mike Bianchi’s column about the unionization of college athletes (“If college athletes become employees, then a bunch of them are going to get laid off,” March 27), while the gist of his objections to this development is legitimate, using Dartmouth as the “for instance” was a terrible choice. Why? Simple: Ivy League financial aid — even for recruited athletes — is predicated on family household income. A recruited athlete, even if said athlete had benefited from a “push” by the coaching staff to the admissions office, could decide as early as day one on campus that he/she didn’t want to compete on a collegiate level, and that athlete would lose not one cent of financial aid. The only thing that would impact the aid package would be a change in household income, up or down.

I have long held that such a financial-aid model is the fairest in the land, but as you note, revenue streams in big-time college sports “factories” ensure that such a paradigm will never become the law of the land. Way too much money at stake, including, of course, with Bianchi’s Gators. Imagine if Tim Tebow, whom I believe comes from a reasonably affluent family, hadn’t received a full athletic ride; those funds would have instead been available for other uses, including non-athlete students whose families struggled with nearly insurmountable loan package debt. Or Denzel Washington’s son playing football at Morehouse, as another example.

As The Beach Boys sang, “Wouldn’t it be nice?”

Brian Patrick Clarke

Orlando