If you follow college sports even a little, you have heard the discussion of pay-for-play come up. However, the frequency and seriousness of the argument that NCAA athletes should be paid has increased recently not only in the discourse of sports fans, but also among those who don’t follow college sports as a legitimate legal and ethical issue. The debate surrounding how a billion-dollar industry conducts business in regards to its workers will, in some way, affect us all.
The reason America not only allows but expects the NCAA to prohibit its athletes from receiving any sort of compensation stems from a culture of business and compensation designed to favor connections and longevity over a fair skill-based meritocracy.
A quick disclaimer before jumping in: I’m aware of the logistical problems of having a salary system for players. That would bankrupt teams and athletic departments, draw attention away from non-revenue generating sports (aka anything that isn’t football, basketball or sometimes hockey in the case of the University of Wisconsin) and create a whole host of problems regarding what is and isn’t compensation.
But schools or the NCAA do not have to directly pay players. One alternative to a salary system is an “Olympic” model, in which players are not paid by their universities, but are free to make money off of merchandising, licensing, sponsorships and outside business opportunities. The schools don’t lose money, and the players can benefit from their skill set the same way any talented college student, or American for that matter, would be able to.
Or did that policy totally ruin the Olympics, and did the presence of highly visible and profitable athletes such as Michael Phelps, Shaun White, Usain Bolt and the USA Men’s Basketball Team make the games a lot less interesting?
The NCAA, of course, prevents any of this from happening. If Melvin Gordon III wants a share of the profits from jerseys with his number on it (or is that just a random number 25 on it?), he isn’t entitled to it. If a girls soccer player wants to appear in an advertisement for a local car dealership (like football head coach Gary Andersen did this summer), or a water polo player wants to put on a clinic for the La Follete High School team with his coach, they aren’t allowed to do that either.
It’s a system to keep profits in the hands of the few individuals who designed the NCAA itself, instead of the people who support it by playing sports. In short, it’s the kind of exploitative system that many use to manipulate young workers, specifically recent graduates and college students – which is exactly why you should care about whether or not these athletes get paid.
Proponents of the NCAA’s current policy often claim the experience of other young professionals, such as doctors in residency or interns at financial institutions, is comparable to the work experience athletes gain playing college sports. This is the sort of labor that supposedly provides valuable experience but for which you receive no real compensation, aside from a paragraph on your resume. So stop complaining and work.
But this is a logical fallacy. Just because something is part of the status quo doesn’t necessarily make it right. The way that college students, not just athletes but anyone hoping to enter the labor force with an entry-level job or internship, are expected to work without due compensation is both unfair and anachronistic.
The model of business in America is changing. Once upon a time the most successful CEOs were typically experienced old men, but now the most successful people in business are the young upstart CEOs with dynamic skills and abilities – people like Larry Page and Mark Zuckerburg. But I digress.
Thousands of student athletes have a very real opportunity to make money off their hard work, an opportunity the NCAA’s compensation policy unreasonably eliminates. Similar policies abound for your typical student, who is expected to produce profit for other people simply for the privilege of work experience.
This status quo is only justified by the most circular of logic. According to a recent study by The Atlantic published last June, unpaid internships do not significantly increase future salary prospects or the chance of receiving a job. It’s time college students everywhere, not just athletes, stand up to unfair processes of hiring that provide no real compensation.
By this same logic, the NCAA should absolutely allow their athletes to be as capitalistic as everyone else and receive some financial reward from their work, beyond the invisible but supposedly invaluable currency of “experience.”
Charlie Freyre (charlie.freyre