Alternative Perspective: College Athletes SHOULD Be Paid

At least one observer believes the Fab Five should have been paid

In Part 1 of our Blogger's Roundtable, three ILRSMC bloggers were unanimous in thinking that college athletes should NOT be paid. Here, Eric Weintraub (ILR '14) argues for the idea that these players deserve compensation.

I was shocked when I found out that I was the minority in the room, but I still believe collegiate athletes should be paid.

Follow the jump to hear me out.

In light of all the upheaval and the changing climate of college athletics, the paying of college athletes has recently become a major issue with the NCAA, and it has shifted dramatically in recent years toward a big capitalistic venture, away from its non-profit roots. College sports is making headlines more often for recruiting violations, pay-for-play schemes, and Nevin Shapiro-types than for Heisman-worthy performances and huge upsets.

One can argue that all this corruption on the college level is a direct result of talented, yet naive, athletes from inner-city backgrounds getting taken advantage of by seedy agents or boosters that throw a few bucks or gifts their way. I don’t think that giving every athlete two-to-three thousand dollars per year in stipends is going to fully eradicate these violations from the culture of college sports, but it can definitely help.

Additionally, these athletes should be entitled to these stipends simply because they are the central actors in the product that the NCAA and big-time colleges are selling to the public as entertainment, not to mention profiting from handsomely as well.

When studying for an economics test the other day, I tripped over one of those semi-irrelevant sidebars that just happened to be talking about the marginal revenue product of a college athlete. The blurb said that a Heisman-caliber performer at a D-I school can generate up to $800,000 of additional revenue for his school every year, adding up to over $3 million over the course of his four-year career. And to think that this student is only compensated in free education (which he probably has little use for anyway) is mindboggling. And don’t tell me that college athletes are compensated in other ways, such as the opportunities to market themselves to professional teams, or just the fleeting glory of being a college athlete. When it's a Division III softball player or the star quarterback for a D-I school, a large majority of these athletes have no pro aspirations; they are just playing because they love the game.

Unfortunately, the reality of this notion isn’t so idyllic. When thinking about the overwhelming daily stresses of the life of a college athlete today, I think back to the vivid interviews Jalen Rose gave in the hit ESPN documentary, "The Fab 5." Rose, a native of the projects of Detroit, was talked about how the life of the college athlete is not as glamorous as it seems. He revealed that he was driving around a beat-up old car, and he and his teammates on the Michigan basketball team would eat Ramen noodles and hot dogs for dinner more often than people thought. They had pressure to keep their grades up to avoid academic ineligibility, and they had to go to practice every day as part of a highly regarded team. Also, they did not reap any of the benefits that came with the success they were having on the court, aside from heightened exposure and expectations. This frustration Rose shared with the rest of the Fab 5 over their situation hit its peak when they came back from a trip in Europe after their freshman year and saw all this Fab 5 merchandise selling in the stores around Michigan. When they realized they weren’t getting one cent from those sales, (and the fact that the sales all lined the pockets of the Michigan athletic program) they eventually left school early and went to the NBA, finally able to taste the fruits of their unpaid labor.

From Rose’s perspective and background, can you blame college athletes for succumbing to the allure of improper benefits? By giving a few thousand dollars to each of these athletes, lending them some semblance of day-to-day financial living stability, a lot of these violations should be eliminated from the culture of college sports. This is perhaps the most compelling reason to pay college athletes.