Paying College Athletes
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
At first glance one would think there is no moral dimension or “Catholic angle” to the question about whether college athletes should be permitted to unionize, or to whether they should be paid above and beyond the tuition, room, and board scholarships that are currently given to them.
But that may not be the case. Catholic colleges are among the schools with big-time athletic programs, especially basketball. Any dishonesty that is embedded in the current system, or in proposals to change it, involves them.
This issue came out front and center in recent weeks because of a ruling by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board that gave college football players the right to form a union. The college involved in the decision was Northwestern University, but the NLRB ruling will be taken as a precedent that will eventually affect other colleges. The question is whether it is good for colleges and college sports if it does.
Opinion seems to be changing on this issue. At one time you would routinely hear people say, “These college athletes already get their tuition, room, and board paid by the university. That is worth tens of thousands of dollars. They also get the chance to showcase their skills to help them secure a career in professional sports that will be worth millions of dollars. What more do they want?”
More and more people are having second thoughts about this logic, especially after hearing stories such as that of the University of Connecticut basketball player Shabazz Napier. Napier spoke of going to sleep hungry many nights in his college dorm. College athletes receive meal money, but most young men get hungry at times of the day when college cafeterias are closed and college meal tickets are of no use. Most college students have enough pocket change to go to a late-night fast-food place when that happens. According to Napier, he and many of his teammates do not.
Was Napier exaggerating his plight? Perhaps not. Many college athletes come from homes without the resources to send them pocket change. College athletes before the 1960s could be assumed, for the most part, to come from stable families with the ability to help out with their son’s expenses, especially when one considers that the family had been relieved of the responsibility to pay for his tuition and room and board.
That is no longer the case. Many college athletes come from broken homes and poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Should some form of “walking around money” be part of a college athlete’s room and board payments? It seems a reasonable proposal. Why balk at a few thousand dollars, when the athlete has already been given a scholarship worth $50,000 per year?
Some may object by pointing to the stories of college athletes being funneled large amounts of money by athletic “boosters,” often enough for them to be able to afford expensive cars while still amateur athletes. But that is done under the table. Such illegal activity cannot be functioned into the equation for what is proper financial support for a college athlete. One would think everyone’s goal would be to discourage such activities, not institutionalize them.
It must be kept in mind that not all student athletes become professional athletes with big contracts awaiting them in the near-future. Of the 9,000 college football players in a typical year, the NFL chooses only 310 for the pool from which teams make their draft selections. It is not hard to see why college athletes would object to a scenario where they provide the entertainment that earns their colleges vast amounts of money — Northwestern earned an estimated $30 million from its football program last year; the University of Texas, $139 million — when they get the same scholarship as that of a classmate on the school’s debate team.
Especially when they see their coach and athletic director earning millions of dollars per year. At Northwestern, the football coach earned $2.2 million last year, making him the highest paid employee at the school. Shabazz Napier spoke of his annoyance at seeing basketball jerseys with his name on the back being sold by the University of Connecticut, with no money going to him. It does strike a discordant note, no?
We must also keep in mind that major college athletes, especially football and basketball players, cannot go out and get a part-time job to earn spending money the way a student with an academic scholarship is able to do. These athletes routinely devote to their sport more than the typical 40-hour work week. This also prevents them from taking the kind of difficult and time-consuming courses that will prepare them for highly paid jobs upon graduation, if they do not make it in professional sports.
We cannot protest that many of these athletes have no interest in their studies and seldom earn a degree at the school they attend. Any reform in this area should be directed toward making such situations the exception rather than the rule.
No doubt there are college athletes who have no interest in academic work. The answer to that unfortunate situation should be to find a way for these young men to showcase their talents in a minor league setting, without pretending to be a “student-athlete.” The minor league system used by major league baseball does that successfully. People joke about the college athletes who mangle their grammar during television interviews. No one does that about minor league baseball players. No one expects them to be “scholarly.” Why should it be assumed that a college football or basketball player would have an interest in literature or biology under the current system?
These young men with an interest in a professional athletic career in basketball or football have no place else to go to pursue that goal other than university athletics. It is the system that forces them to pretend that they have an interest in academics. It is not “making excuses” for them to note that fact. A minor league system like baseball’s would permit them to develop their athletic skills without putting up a front.
The fact that a sizable majority of college football players and basketball players from schools with major athletic programs leave school without a degree is an indication that the current system is not working. The New York Post reported recently that the University of Connecticut basketball team that won this year’s NCAA title entered the tournament with the nation’s lowest graduation rate: eight percent. Not all these young men are like Johnny Manziel, the famous “Johnny Football” who left Texas A&M after his sophomore year to enter the NFL. They are more likely to be lesser-known players who will leave school after four years with little name-recognition and without a college degree to help them secure meaningful employment.
The choice facing our colleges is clear: Find a way to run an athletic program that permits your athletes to earn a degree. If that means not admitting “star” players unsuited for academic pursuits, so be it. The choice facing the NBA and the NFL is also clear: Stop encouraging a system to encourage the current dishonesty. Find some other way to nurture your future stars. Ask major league baseball how it is done.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.