Where's the money going to come from?
>> Friday
Nate made some great points in his post, and feeling that another great YCS debate is about to be touched off, I've decided to throw my two cents in.
The question that wasn't posed (as it often isn't) was, "Who's going to pay for it?" The money to pay college athletes isn't going to come out of nowhere. Any change in the NCAA financial structure will not happen in a vacuum. There will be consequences, both positive and negative. Some of these consequences could include...
A.) Schools cutting sports to save money (which wouldn't save much cash, since the ones on the chopping block are likely to be non-revenue-generating sports like crew or judo or whatever. Sports which, as non-revenue-generating as they may be, often represent the top level of competition for that sport in the US, ie: Women's Soccer, Men's Wrestling).
or
B.) An increase in student tuition to cover the increased costs, which many in this country are not willing to stomach, especially if the money isn't going towards academics.
or
C.) Payment of college athletes would come out of existing university money (endowment?), which would mean that the rich would likely get richer, since schools that can afford to pay players will perform better than schools who can't afford to pay players. The resulting increase in competition could lead to television rights being split even less evenly among schools than they are now. Think how big a deal it was when Utah finally made it into the BCS from the Mountain West Conference. In 8 seasons (64 BCS slots) there has been only one team not from a BCS conference (or Notre Dame) to make it to the big payday. I don't see how paying athletes will help this ratio.
Nate brought up a "salary cap," which I think would be integral to any sort of plan to pay college athletes. However, I'm not sold on a cap leveling the playing field in this situation. Even if a cap is established, there's still the matter of actually having the cash in hand. For instance, Notre Dame's endowment is over $3 billion. Will schools that don't have that kind of money lying around (say, Miami of Ohio or Central Florida or even Boston College) be able to regularly compete? OK, maybe they don't already, (granted) but it would seem that introducing payment to athletes would only widen that gulf.
I'm not even going to mention the possible tax hikes that could come as a result of state-funded institutions like UW-Madison having to pay their players, and the political ramifications that would entail.
To see how all this money adds up, for instance, just look at football. To pay its 89-man roster of football players $1,500/month as Nate proposes, the University of Tennessee would have to pay them $1,602,000 per year. It adds up fast. An ADDITIONAL $1.6 million to what's being sent already. That's one sport, admittedly UT's largest in terms of roster size, but UT carries 20 sports. Even the women's soccer team would be an extra $324,000 per year. Why bring up women's soccer? Because if you pay the football players but not the women's soccer players, then you have Title IX issues to worry about.
UT is admittedly a bigger athletic school and would probably be able to afford the increase through a combination of endowment, tuition hikes, ticket price hikes, and taxpayer funds, but what about schools like Kent State? KSU has an 89-man football roster as well (another $1.6 million). They also have 15 other sports that would need money. Does Kent State have that kind of money lying around?
On a nationwide scale, only Division I-A football would cost an additional $190,638,000 PER YEAR. Do the NCAA and its member schools really have almost 200 million extra dollars a year to pay just the football players? (Keeping in mind that the NCAA sponsors 88 championships in 23 sports).
I agree, college athletes sometimes get a raw deal (The Majerus fast food incident was my favorite), but if they're going to be paid, the money has to come from somewhere, and any change won't happen in a vacuum. Non-athlete students, schools that don't sponsor as many sports, and taxpayers will likely take the brunt of these new costs.
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10 comments:
Well sure...1.6mill sounds like a lot, but how much tuition revenue do schools sacrifice per year in scholarships already? By comparison, 500K per sport is peanuts.
True, but athletic scholarships are, if I recall correctly paid for from outside donors and booster clubs like the Blue and Gold Fund at Marquette, or similar organizations that fund athletic scholarships. What paying college athletes would do is increase the burden the funding that is already present, making it necessary to bring in new revenue streams, which would likely come in the form of cut programs, increased tuition or increased taxes for state schools.
Just look at UW-Madison for example. Pretend for a second that Madison is the ONLY taxpayer-supported college in Wisconsin, even though the prevelance of UW-Hyphens disproves that. On a plan of $1,500/month, UW would have to pay its athletes $11.25 million dollars PER YEAR! Now, even though there are fewer sports, apply that model to Milwaukee, Whitewater, UWGB, Oshkosh, Eau Claire, LaCrosse, Stevens Point, Wausau, Stout, and River Falls, etc.
Admittedly, UW-Madison sponsors many sports, but now let's imagine that this money did grow on trees, and an anonymous donor gave UW a gift of $11,250,000 dollars to spend on whatever they wanted for the coming year. Does anyone honestly think they would spend it all on athletics?
But of course, UW gets a good deal of their funding from the state government, along with UWM, UWO, UWEC, UWW, you get the idea. I'm not saying it's an inherently bad idea to pay college athletes. I'm just saying that it's not as easy as waving a magic wand and John Q. Studentathlete has 1,000 bucks in their wallet every month.
As for smaller schools, paying its athletes on a similar scale would cost Marquette AN ADDITIONAL 4.5 million dollars PER YEAR. I don't know if Bill Cords has that kind of money at his disposal, but I doubt it.
What you're forgetting Mike, is that in most cases, this money is already being shelled out to the players anyways. The only difference is that the money would be given out legally instead of in the form of cars, houses, whores, etc.
As far as the problem with smaller schools, obviously Division I athletes should get paid more than Div. II and Div. III athletes. I suppose you could even base salaries on how much money a team brings in to the school. Simple economics: the more money you make for your boss (in this case, the University or College), the bigger share you should get.
Hell, I think they could even get away with only paying athletes in the major progams like basketball and football, as long as there were an equal amount of women that were paid.
Bribe money set aside, there are plenty of other places to get funding. The NCAA for one. After all, these kids make the NCAA filthy rich. Eliminating all these under-the-table deals would benefit many people, but the NCAA more than most.
Another likely source: donars, donars, donars. You don't think Syracuse alumni would have loved to keep Carmelo around for another year or two? Would LeBron have been so eager to jump to the NBA if financial issues were eliminated?
$200 million sounds like a lot of money, but can you honestly tell me that our country's schools don't already shell out that much money to keep their star athletes happy?
theannoyingspellingpolice said...
My favorite sentence from this whole debate:
"Another likely source: donars, donars, donars."
--Nate Franklin
Hah. Donars.
It's apparent that my point has been misunderstood. I'm not saying student-athletes shouldn't be paid as a matter of principle.
All I'm saying that while it's a nice sentiment to give student-athletes a share of the money they bring in, it's more complicated than that. I still haven't seen where this money is going to come from.
The closest we've come in this discussion to seeing a plan either stems from "Universities/the NCAA can afford it, therefore they should," or "If we make it legal, then the illegal money will disappear." I'm not so sure about that. After all, we have legal immigration, but illegal immigration still exists. (Or insert your favorite issue of the day here.)
This money isn't going to fall out of the sky, and non-athlete students, fans, state and federal (the service academies) taxpayers, and non-revenue-generating student-athletes seem poised to be first in line to feel the brunt of any major change to the NCAA structure.
Does the NCAA National Champion wrestler or gymnast put in fewer hours than the BCS Champion starting tight end? How do you tell one, "We can't afford to spend money on a wrestling program anymore because of these new costs. We're sorry," and to the other one, "Great job, here's a check, you'll get another in 30 days,"?
Again. I'm not saying that paying student-athletes is necessarily a bad thing, it could very well be a good thing. But it's not as simple as a quick wire transfer from NCAA/schools/crooked boosters to student-athletes.
Am I making sense or talking crazy-talk? I've thought about this. It's not some ridiculous Jeter-Beltran comparison.
How about this? All money that comes in to the school via athletic programs is shared with the athletes that help bring it in.
More specifically, here are a few suggestments:
-Athletes recieve a percentage of their jersey sales. The more popular the athlete, the more money he (or I suppose in the rare occasion, she) makes.
-Athletes recieve a percentage of ticket sales. This would be a small percentage, but split evenly, so that even the walk-on makes the same amount as the Heisman winner.
-Athletes recieve money rewards for certain awards/trophys/honors won. This rewards the exceptional athletes in EVERY sport. Obviously, someone who wins player of the year in soccer will not get the same cut as Big East Player of the Year, but at least athletes will get rewarded for being among the best in their given sport.
Of course, this system is based largely on your marketability, so it would have problems with Title IX (which is stupid for EXACTLY this reason) but as long as we are being completely hypothetical and wishful, I might as well propose this.
On the other hand, I'm sure there is a lawyer out there somewhere that could adequately point out that Title IX says NOTHING about salaries.
And honestly, if it means students paying a little bit extra for tuition (or fans/alumni paying a little bit extra for tickets), I don't see the crime in that (and remember, I am probably the poorest member of YCS...although it's kinda like being the shortest munchkin). After all, if an athlete is largely responsible for bringing the money in, doesn't that athlete deserve a small cut? Seems fair.
Also, I thought about the whole "Well big schools would just pile on to the salary limits" thing.
The thing is, as of now, if you DON'T cheat, you're at a huge disadvantage, because everyone does.
If the NCAA allowed a legal way to pay your athletes, then paying them over the top becomes much more risky.
Obviously, we'd still have those problems from time to time, but if the punishments were strict and consistent (which they could be under a more liberal regimen), the risk/benefit ratio becomes much higher and less appealing.
Could a big school like USC still draw in athletes like Bush with money? Yeah, but it would cost them a hell of a lot more than $100,000. And they probably couldn't pay off (and belive me, they did) Leinart, LenDale, Bing and Jarrett at the same time.
...I'm done now, but for anyone who has noticed the early-morning times I have been posting during tonight, the answer is yes...yes, I am drunk.
I just gotta say everyone give themselves a pat on the back. This has probably been the most rational discussion we've ever had on this site. The amount of profanity/childish name-calling/threats of physical or mental violence/excessive exclamation marks, and all the other things that come along were conspicuously absent here. Rock on.
You're all a bunch of stupid faggoty dumbfucks and none of you know shit from shit, so shut the fuck up and go to hell.
There...Back to normal.
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