photo credit: Paeonia*[/caption]I know the athletes who play the respective sports in college are designated as student athletes, but for all intents and purposes, we might as well pay them like professionals. USC was fined, scholarships were lost, USC aren’t allowed to play in any bowls for the next two seasons, and it may have to give back its championship – all due to USC’s breaching of the NCAA rules of giving perks to student athletes (Reggie Bush and OJ Mayo).
The genie is already out of the bottle, so let us not pretend that college sports – football, basketball, and baseball – are not Midas like businesses and that academia is far from the typical college administrator’s mind. Look how much we pay these college coaches… who all live large, while most of the athletes they coach cannot accept any gratuities. I once heard this law professor from the University of Michigan complaining about its affirmative Action program… no one pointed out to the professor that the monies brought in due the University’s respective sports programs, replete with black athletes, probably paid for his lucrative salary.
How many times are we going to watch this charade of punishing schools like USC when we know that the incentives are too great for these colleges to follow the rules? Most of theses athletes come from poor environs and we expect them to live hand to mouth, while the universities they play for reaped the millions off their backs? A few years ago, it was estimated that “March Madness” in the college basketball tournament brought in hundred of millions. You know what’s funny is when you hear some of these coaches who are living well off these athletes skills… opined about the athlete who does one year and done. How are we going to convince a kid to forego millions for a few years when he can get injured in the interim?
What makes Reggie Bush different from Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, and Serena Williams? How come young artists can make millions and certain athletes, in say tennis, could also do so at a young age and not college athletes who play football and basketball? I have no idea how to make the changes, but all I know is that these athletes should be paid – because everybody else is making money off their backs.
To the critics, please don’t tell me that the college degree is akin to a contract… because if this is so, it is a contract which is way disproportionate to what each party is receiving... and we know who is the getting the short end of the stick. One irony about these athletes, who are mostly African American, is that many of these colleges in the past refused to accept blacks during the sixties, but are now furiously competing to get them to be part of their student body.
Change the system and pay these athletes… for if the system remains status quo… especially for the black athletes who predominantly make up the personnel that fuel these lucrative college athletic programs, then George Orwell was right: Freedom is slavery.
The athletic budget at Michigan is completely fire-walled relative to the academic budget. The department is completely self-funded. Though it generally runs a slight surplus, when it is in deficit, NO money is taken from the academic portion of the budget.
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