College Basketball Players Should Get Paid
By: Kevin Dethloff
With the college basketball season just starting, many sports fans around the United States have turned their attention toward one of the most exciting sports. College basketball provides entertainment to a large portion of the population from November to early April. With millions upon millions of fans watching the games throughout the season, the NCAA reels in almost a billion dollars each year alone from broadcasting rights, sponsorships, and ticket sales. Depending on who is playing the basketball game, competition can vary the ticket prices because the higher the demand for the ticket by the consumer, the higher the price will be. Even though the NCAA is making millions solely off of the play of college basketball players, these athletes pocket zero dollars throughout their time playing college basketball, therefore; they should get paid.
One could argue that these athletes are offered incentives from colleges, and therefore they don’t need to get paid. Some incentives include playing at prestigious arenas, getting shoes from the university’s sponsors, or even a free education. In the end however, a lot of Division 1 college basketball players have one goal in mind, to play professionally. An education really doesn’t mean that much to them in that instance.
On the other side, there’s plenty of reasons why the NCAA should be paying the college athletes. First off, the NCAA and its schools make loads of money each year and don’t share any of it with the athletes. The schools do give these athletes scholarships which are worth a certain amount of money depending on the school. But in an article, Jay Bilas describes how giving an athlete a scholarship means almost nothing because what is really happening, is the athletic departments just pay the school to have a kid play basketball there, and in the end, the money ends up in the same place as it started, the school. Secondly, Jay Bilas also mentions that the athletes would stay in school longer if they were paid. This would result in an increase in demand from the fans watching college basketball, the better the teams, the more the fans want to watch. 
Some consider the NCAA to be a monopoly because they run most of the college sports in the nation. However, some consider it an oligopoly because the NAIA does a similar thing, but with less athletes and sports. Either way, I think that the NCAA should be more fair to the college basketball players and pay them money because without the athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t be making any money.
Works Cited
Calareso, Jeff. "College Sports: Just a Game or an Actual Monopoly?" N.p., 2015. Web. 14 Nov.
2016.
Maurice, Peebles. "7 Common Sense Reasons Why College Athletes Should Be Paid (According to
Jay Bilas)." Complex. N.p., 2015. Web. 14 Nov. 2016.
Although it is true that NCAA players do bring it a lot of revenue, I don’t agree that they should be payed. The cost of an education at most of the colleges is very high, so essentially they are making a profit of 20-50 thousand per year depending on the college, which is a lot to be making as a college student. Not to mention that the players do get offered incentives such as free merchandise, transportation, and more. Also, you mentioned that paying them would make them want to stay in college longer, which would make the teams better, however NCAA has a rule where an athlete only has 5 years to play 4 seasons of their sport. Therefore, even if they did want to stay in college longer to get paid more, they wouldn’t be able to. Lastly, NCAA is a non-profit organization, and most of the proceeds do go back to benefit the student who are involved in the NCAA. I do agree that most basketball player in the NCAA are trying to become professional athletes, so a degree doesn’t help them much, but paying them wouldn’t help much. If they go pro, they’ll make a lot of money, and if they don’t they will have an education to fall back on.
ReplyDeleteHey Kevin! This piece that you wrote was very interesting and very controversial! The idea of paying college basketball players is really interesting and arguments go both ways. However as a avid college basketball watcher for the past 10 years I’ve noticed that something like this could already be happening just underneath the table! Each year Kentucky pulls 3,4,or even 5 of the top 5 recruits in the country! This is unbelievable and almost makes you think “Why Kentucky?” Well this could be far fetched but it’s possible that Kentucky are already paying this college basketball athletes however it’s just underneath the table and the NCAA doesn't know. It’s a interesting point that I think needs to be brought up. Secondly I would like to disagree with the idea that paying players is smart. If programs started to pay players than recruits would go wherever they get the most money and then college basketball turns into a game of whoever has the most money wins. And that stinks we don’t want to see that happen to college basketball, personally I would like to see upsets and smaller mid major teams taking out the the giants of college basketball, but they may not be possible if money enters the game.
ReplyDeleteHi Jake, very interesting comment. For some reason, while I was doing my research, I couldn't find a single year that any team in all of college basketball has "pulled 3, 4, or even 5 of the top 5 recruits in the country". If you could provide the evidence to that, I would love to see it. Also, I couldn't find any evidence of Kentucky paying their players. I searched for hours for evidence of this but couldn't find anything. If you could provide some evidence to that, I'd love to see it.
DeleteHi Kevin, I appreciate your reply and I've done my research and what I found on the 2013 espn college basketball recruiting database was that during this year Kentucky managed to snag 5 out of the top 10 recruits in the nation! This is insane to me and raises some question in my mind.
DeleteHi Jake, I thought you said 3,4, or even 5 of the top 5 recruits going to one school? Not the top 10. But anyway, once again, could you find any evidence of Kentucky "paying" their players? I still can't find any. If you could provide that evidence, that would be awesome!
DeleteI agree that although NCAA athletes bring in a lot of revenue for the university, they should not get paid. The athletes most likely already have a full-ride, four-year scholarship. Yes it does not match up to the revenue they bring in from sporting events, but the money ha to go towards other needs of the university and the program. NCAA athletes don't always go pro. Many would argue that getting paid is not the point of college basketball. There are many opportunity costs that override real costs. In addition, it would not be fair to pay NCAA athletes because they would et different offers depending on who is willing to pay them more which would make only a few teams better than all and lead to less people watching the games.
DeleteWith the amount of revenue the NCAA brings in it's hard to imagine these players not being paid. When you think of all the time these players have to put in to even be able to play at this level on top of actually playing and going to school they hardly have the time for anything else. If it weren't for the players the NCAA surely wouldn't have nearly the revenue they bring in now. Although I think the players should be payed, I don't think they should be given the money right away, that way they can't abuse it while in college. The money should be put into an account and they will receive it once they graduate. This way the players that don't move on to the pros, have some sort of money to pay off loans and purchase a place to live while they are looking for a job.
ReplyDeleteVery great piece Kevin Dethloff. Some things I agree with that you said in your piece would be that the players bring tons of revenue in to the programs that they attend. This is very true as their high profile basketball play draws people in to watch them play the great sport of basketball. However, I also agree with some things Jake mentioned, as he said that paying the players would make college basketball into a "pay to win" game. No one would want to see that. Making it this way would just be turning it into a final four between Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, and Michigan State every year. That wouldn't be any fun because you would not get your Villanovas, or George Masons, or VCUs. That's the best part of college basketball, is the madness that ensues during March, and paying college athletes would potentially take this away from the game.
ReplyDeleteThis is an extremely controversial topic in the world of college sports today. Some people believe college football players should be paid as well but no matter how much they deserve to be paid they can't be. It is impossible to pay college athletes because then in sense it would ruin the competition of the game there are too many universities and not the same level of talent throughout. More money would mean a much better team and top programs would always have enough. However there are many cases of scandals and recruiting violations. Johh Calipari had them at Memphis and It may not be proven but star athletes at college get special treatment we just don't know how special.
ReplyDeleteI think the system that the NCAA should implement that benefits both parties the most is only paying players who have played a year at one college. This offers incentive for college athletes to stay and play another year or two (or even three). But, 18 and 19 year old freshmen are still able to retain their amateur status under the NCAA, so they still feel they have to try.
ReplyDeleteI do not think college athletes should be paid, solely because of the scholarships or free education they are most likely receiving. You say that the goal of many of these athletes is to go pro, however, odds are high that over half of these athletes will not go pro so an education is necessary for them. Also, how will they pay the athletes who don't play as much? All players work equally as hard at practice and attend the same amount of practices, games, and events; yet many players do not get playing time. Will these players get paid less for the same amount of work? This process would cause a bigger debate than the original "should athletes be paid" debate. It would be impossible to set a pay rate that is equal for starting players and benched players. Also, have you ever thought about where the NCAA profit goes to? It will cover expenses of teams and transportation and copyrights, but it will most likely cover some of the scholarships these students are getting. The NCAA benefits these athletes like crazy with all the free bonuses they receive in college, so no, they don't need to be paid.
ReplyDeleteHey Kevin! Unlike most people I actually agree with your point of college basketball players being paid. College athletes work extremely hard their whole life to become successful, and their training costs them a lot of money. Many very famous athletes including Nigel Hayes from Wisconsin, have little to no money to spend on anything they want, including food and clothes. It is the players that bring in the big crowds and revenue, so why is it that the owners of the college, receive all the profit. I think college basketball athletes should receive some money each year they play, even if it is a low wage of $35,000 per year. However I think each team should have cap space to spend on the athletes, so teams do not become to overpowered.
ReplyDeleteI think that athletes in college should get some sort of pay if they're going to play. Even though the scholarships are nice, it would benefit them if they could get some sort of pay in their athletics. I don't think they should play without receiving money because of how determined they are in the sport, and how good they are to play for that college. It's hard to imagine that these players aren't getting paid at all, and the money keeps going to the schooling. Even though a good education (along with the athletics) is good, there are still some problems with paying the players. If they were paid, they would stay in school longer and the athletic department could impact to a higher demand from fans.
ReplyDeleteCollege basketball is definitely one of the most exciting and entertaining sports. In terms of athletes being paid, I 100% agree with you that Division 1 athletes should be paid for what they do. Not only would it encourage students to attend school longer and actually earn an education, they would draw more fans and more ticket sales. When you think about it, colleges make so much money off of ticket, concessions, programs, etc. selling at every home game. Not to mention, they make loads of money off of TV deals and College Gameday. While paying for a tuition and an education make seem like “a lot” to most, students still struggle with paying for things. Athletes should be paid for all that they do to bring a profit into the university they are representing, to me, it seems like a no brainer to pay college athletes.
ReplyDeleteCollege basketball is one of the most controversial topics with athletes recently complaining about not getting paid. I think that athletes shouldn't be paid because a scholarship is more than enough in most cases. The number of athletes actually going to the pros it is so minimal they are getting a free education for their future. Also with the incentive to play better to get to the league makes the college players try much harder than pros. If they were getting paid the intensity of the games would decrease and turn into the pros.
ReplyDeleteWhile the monetary profits of the NCAA are not allocated in favor of the players, they are paid in other opportunities and benefits. Because the NCAA is restricted to athletes in college, the players do have to be enrolled whether or not they plan to use the degree that they receive. If they did not receive these scholarships, they would have to pay full tuition which is a major source of debt for many non-athletes. Furthermore, since less that 15% of NCAA basketball players end up playing for a professional team, most of the players will end up using their college education in a different career. While they may not receive an even share of the NCAA profits, because the purpose of college athletics is to promote athletic competition in conjunction with academics, the players are foremost students and for that reason should not be paid for a co-curricular activity. extracirricular
ReplyDeleteAlthough this is an interesting idea, this would not work. If college athletes became paid, then all the colleges with a bigger budget would be able to attract all the the better athletes. With this, students will look to go to the college where they will get the most money rather than the college that suites them the best. On the other hand, I would agree to the idea of giving the athletes more money for food and equipment. I acknowledge that there are sponsors that provide equipment, I would imagine that this does not suit all of their needs. Also with all the extra activities, they are burning more calories. This will make they spend a larger amount of their budget on food. All in all students should go to a college and play sports because they love it and not because that is where they will get the most money to play.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alex, this would lead to system of employment with colleges. I believe that college is place of education and even though there would be increased competition among athletes to go to the highest paying college, they would not benefit from this competition as there chances of getting the job would decline and they would be left out and not much of the sport would remain. I also agree that more money should be imparted to scholarship athletes for food and other necessities. These players are huge and need more food than they can buy.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this idea is very interesting it is not plausible. Like Alex said athletes would attend colleges that would pay them the most money, and not the college that suits them and fits them the best. Also, if colleges paid basketball players they would have to also pay the other sports because they provide revenue too. Overall, this is a good idea, but would not complement the college experience and play that athletes already provide.
ReplyDeletePlayers should not be paid to go to college while people are people are paying thousands and thousands of dollars to attend something that they are doing for free and athletes are getting paid for this so maybe the money that they will get paid for should go to the people who are having to pay and go into debt for college.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that people should be college basketball players should be paid for playing. College is meant for an education, they offer sports to the students as an activity to participate in but the chance that any student playing college basketball would be going to the NBA is very small, so there's no point in encouraging them to keep playing with money. I completely understand the fact that colleges offer students scholarships for playing sports because this allows the school to gain popularity for their sports teams bringing in the cash money. But once the student graduates from the school they have their degree and they go do a real job because like I said before there's a really small chance they are going to the NBA and if they do make it there good for them.
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