Student-athletes shouldn’t be paid
Main focus of college must be on earning a degree to invest in one’s future, not performing on the field
Universities’ mission is to educate young men and women so they can be successful. But when it comes to students who play sports, powerful critics and trial lawyers view them as potential hires. If universities paid student-athletes for athletic performance, education would risk becoming a second priority to these teenagers with large paychecks. As salaried employees, they would be subject to market-based financial pressures and could even be fired or have their salaries cut for poor sports performance. Is this what we want the student-athlete experience to be? We believe in reform and have made great strides in modernizing college athletics, but paying students or unionizing them would be a serious mistake.
“We all want to play football at the highest level, but there has to be something in place to support a career and finances whenever playing football is no longer an option.” JACOB ALSADEK SENIOR OFFENSIVE LINEMAN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
These students are not professionals biding their time before being drafted into the National Football League. They are college students. They are young men chasing dreams and pursuing college degrees.
Ninety-eight percent of them will never be drafted, yet alone play a single down in the NFL. And 100 percent of them deserve an education so they can be prepared for life after school.
In last year’s NFL draft, Arizona and Arizona State combined had one player drafted out of 170 scholarship athletes. Athletes like Jacob Alsadek, a senior offensive lineman at Arizona, know graduation and a good job are far more likely than a future in the NFL.
“We all want to play football at the highest level, but there has to be something in place to support a career and finances whenever playing football is no longer an option,” Alsadek said. “Playing college football is a special opportunity that won’t last forever, but earning my degree by the time I was 22 is something I will have for the rest of my life.”
With a degree, Alsadek and other students who play college sports are prepared to compete in a new arena — the job market — with soft skills today’s employers value, such as the ability to work on teams, complete tasks efficiently and manage time effectively.
While many students work throughout college to scrape up living expenses and still accrue significant debt, students who play sports on scholarship graduate debt-free, giving them a huge head start on life.
Many students now receive stipends for living expenses based on their “full cost of attendance.” Today’s students on scholarship don’t pay for tuition, fees, room, board, books, transportation or many other personal expenses. Special funds from the NCAA help those with needs to afford transportation to funerals, or for winter coats or even eye glasses.
Reforms enacted over the past three years have impacted the day-to-day lives of students. That is especially true for those who represent the 65 institutions in the “Autonomy Five” conferences: the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC, but it’s also true throughout college sports.
College sports administrators have acted on other issues that needed to be addressed, too, from tougher protocols to protect athletes from concussions to changes that guarantee scholarships can’t be taken away for poor athletic performance or injury.
Paying students a salary to play sports or allowing them to join a union would change college sports as we know it. It would push many sports that don’t generate revenue toward extinction.
Paying students who compete in the few programs that do generate money, such as football and basketball, would have dire consequences for the majority of the sports that don’t generate revenue.
Such a drastic departure from what has been the core principle of college athletics would potentially take away opportunities for thousands of students who play other sports, from tennis and lacrosse to track and soccer.
It would also fundamentally change higher education and the core purpose of college athletics, which is to give more than 175,000 young men and women who play sports in Division I a chance to earn college degrees while launching them toward successful lives and careers.
A national survey conducted by Gallup shows students who play sports thrive after college compared to their non-athlete peers. College athletes graduate at higher levels. They are more likely to get a job. They are healthier, happier and more fulfilled.
In addition, women business executives disproportionately were college athletes. According to a study by the EY Women Athletes Business Network and espnW, more than half of all C-suite women executives played college sports.
More work must be done to ensure generations of future men and women have the same opportunity to earn degrees and learn the lessons athletics can teach. While our love of the game and loyalty to our institutions make all of us fans of college sports, we must remember it is more than a game.
College sports is about making dreams come true for thousands of young men and women, including many who are the first in their family to attend college. Those are the wins we should be cheering about this season.
“Playing college football is a special opportunity that won’t last forever, but earning my degree by the time I was 22 is something I will have for the rest of my life.” JACOB ALSADEK SENIOR OFFENSIVE LINEMAN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA