NCAA Amateurism Research Paper

Darrell Childs
Ms. Vasquez
English 101
Oct. 20, 2013 NCAA Amateurism Is an Illusion

UNLV sophomore Savon Goodman, a forward on the men’s basketball team, stole a pair of shoes, $500 and 26 video games in May from a friend’s apartment just north of campus, according to a metro police report released today. The UNLV athletic department made an estimate of $38,377,947 this year alone according ESPN college sports. So with the athletics programs making so much money why should their student athletes feel they have to steal? That’s because the student athletes that helps generate these millions and billions of dollars don’t see not dollar of it. The NCAA has created this multi-billion monopoly business on the
The ideals of amateurism and the capitalist benefits that the NCAA reels in annually do not mix and are in fact hypocritical. Television deals and sponsorships are only growing. The three weeks of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, known as “March Madness,” generate over $770 million in TV rights deals alone as reported by USA Today. College football moves to a playoff system for the 2014 season. ESPN is in the process of securing the playoff TV rights, and many expect the network will eventually have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million for them. So while the NCAA is signing multiyear, multimillion dollar deals it’s only giving out 1 year renewable scholarships to their athletes playing in these highly profitable games.” The rules have been set up in such way to avoid a public understanding that athletes are already paid. It’s just a matter of whether they are paid their value” said Staurowsky, who in 1998 co-authored the book” College athletes for hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth” with Allen L.
This logic is extremely flawed for many of the reasons discussed earlier. The athletes cannot get the same value out of the education because of the already intense time commitment to the sport that has given them the opportunity to be in school. The idea that a college education is payment would have to assume that a college degree always pays off in the long run. In reality, the glut of bachelor degrees entering the workforce is lessening their value. Without actually experiencing the class room and receiving the right networking and advising opportunities, it cannot be assumed that the degree is worth the athlete’s time. Especially considering that the time spent in college could be a player losing money available by playing in the professional leagues. The idea that an education is worth to a player what a professional salary would be seems to be a naïve view. While a cash payment may not solve the problems of a college athlete, and it may perpetuate some economic issues, payment is what these players are entitled to because they are the symbols that fill the stadiums across national campuses. Even with a full scholarship an athlete may have to pay between $8,000 to $12,000 more than the allotted amount due to travel and other needs. Assuming that the education itself, along with the opportunities and athletic department support, is payment enough, is assuming that those