Your Take: Pay for Play – Don’t Hold Your Breath

It’s really a matter of slave labor vs. political correctness. The workers who bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to schools are the college athletes. The political correctness folks are the establishment – the government, NCAA and the universities.  

    We’re talking the long-debated subject of pay for play. Should the athletes who work year-round to win games, championships, and thus bring big dollars to their institutions deserve some type of compensation? Yes. Will it happen anytime soon? No. Boise State and TCU will have won national two championships each before we see it.  

    I was on football teams at the University of Oklahoma that won Big 8 Conference championships all four years I played and two consecutive national titles. It was only natural to sit around the dorm and talk with your buddies who didn’t have spending money and griped about all the money we were helping bring in – going everywhere but to the guys who were doing the heavy lifting. And football today is a 365-day proposition.

    It was appalling to me to see kids who came mostly from single-parent homes with serious financial problems go home for the summer. They’d leave all buffed up after eating chow hall food and lifting and running weighing 190 pounds, and come back in the fall rail thin at 170. No food at home. We all felt sorry for players like that and believed whole-heartedly that the tiny monthly stipend was insufficient for a great number of players. 

    Didn’t seem fair. Some players that won championships and made money for the school didn’t have enough money to buy a new pair of jeans or take their girl to dinner. Of course, the dollars today dwarf the 70’s, but it was evident to us back then that it just wasn’t right.  

    My mates basically believed in the free enterprise system. Go compete with your competition. If you win and win then my guys wondered things like why shouldn’t our players’ tickets be worth more than the losers? Let the market decide who gets what. And if somebody buys a jersey of a player, shouldn’t that player something put into an account for pickup after he graduates? 

    Leaping to the assumption that the naysayers give in to the majority of the athletes and public, the big question is the big question to most everything in life: Where’s the money?

    The NCAA? They  hit a home run when they signed contracts with network television entities for billions of dollars. Yes, the “B” word – the “M” word (million) is now chump change. There are many streams of revenue, none bigger than the cash cows brought to the vault via the NCAA Basketball Tournament and BCS football.

    Where else would money be available to get out of the slave trading. Texas has led the nation in football revenue for the 21st century – over $100 million these days. Ohio State, Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma. They turn profits. So maybe they can donate to the others who are always in the red.

    The naysayers refer to college sports as amateurism and point to the data that shows the value of a full scholarship and say that’s enough. I say great. Good to hear, But it doesn’t make it right.

    Some believe that the wide chasm between academia and athletics would grow. And some argue it’s unfair to other students. That athletes are already pampered and why should they be getting paid. I’m not buying it. The day a pianist gets 85,000 people to put upwards of a hundred dollars a ticket to watch a recital, then I’ll listen – and my son’s a pianist.

    Not only do athletes go to school, they spend enormous amounts of time working their trade. Most people have no idea of the time involved in being a successful athlete.  It’s a full-time job to devote the time to sports and to do what it takes to make the grades. Athletes chose to participate in an endeavor that is of significant value in the marketplace.  Pure and simple.

    The University of Oklahoma is generally considered one of the best-run operations in all of college sports. It is in the minority in that the department turns a profit. But when asked if he felt athletes should be paid, OU’s Senior Associate Athletics Director for Communications, Kenny Mossman said, “In practice, this would place substantial financial hardship on the majority of college programs nationally. Most proponents for paying athletes ignore or are unfamiliar with the legal and financial implications, and they tend to under-value the significance of a scholarship. Beyond the scholarship, the commitment to academic support, sports medicine, travel and so many other areas of support are immense and costly.”

    But in the end, all the talk about paying athletes is a moot point.

    Remember Title IX?  Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Although Title IX is best known for its impact on high school and college sports, the original statute made no explicit mention of sports. Make no mistake, Title Nine has been the most wide-sweeping and controversial piece of legislation that impacts sports to come down the pike since, well, since forever.

    Basically, Title IX ensures that regardless the sport, the gender and whether the sport is profitable, every athlete would be treated the same – in this case they’d be paid the same. So the Heisman-winning quarterback and the last member of the equestrian team would see the same money. I disagree. The athletes who participate in the sports that produce the most revenue are the ones who should see largest financial gain. Other athletes should still receive more spending money, but not as much as the others – basically football and men’s basketball. But Title IX wipes this theory away. 

    Bottom line is that many of us believe athletes should receive some type of compensation. But the financial times we live in and Title IX ensure that pay for play is nothing but pure fantasy.