Reported in the year of 2012, the NCAA who was started by former president Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, has recorded an annual revenue of nearly a billion dollars ($871.6 million dollars.) The revenue is generated from TV, marketing rights fees, championship revenues and other services according to ESPN.com. About $30 million dollars is put towards staff salaries and “administrative assistance” which is about 4% of the annual budget. The other 96% is claimed to have gone back to the member schools in programs or direct payments. 60% of the 96% goes to the Division I members. But guess what? Not a penny of it goes to student athletes. Why? Well, for the simple fact that current NCAA president Mark Emmert believes that paying the student athletes a cheap stipend of $2,000 should be enough. This man is sadly mistaken.
Firstly, the $2,000 Student Athlete Stipend is given to the players for extra fees that their scholarship does not cover. The scholarship covers tuition, room, board, books and fees. The average student athlete scholarship is worth at least $23,000 according to Ramogi Huma who is the president of the Players Association. The stipend is for tuition only and is set to cover the remaining balance, if there is a remaining balance. Other than that, Emmert believes the idea of paying student athletes to play is “silly.” “ It’s been called a $2,000 stipend, but it’s really just the full cost of attendance. It is not in any way paying players to play games. But it is covering the legitimate real cost of being a student athlete. We want to do that, and we have the flexibility to make that decision,” he said. Plainly speaking, the stipend is meant to cover miscellaneous expenses, not talent.
In October of 2011, the NCAA board passed legislation to give some athletes an additional $2,000 towards their tuition that would surpass tuition, room and board as well as books and other fees. Emmert constantly states that the stipend which was temporarily placed on hold in December of 2011 would not be “pay-for play” money.
As a result of this “stipend” which in my opinion is a rip off, the student athletes are seeking to unionize and stand up against the “NCAA cartel.” Former NCAA player, Ed O’Bannon filed a suit against the NCAA in 2009 after he saw an avatar of himself on a NCAA College Basketball game. O’Bannon strongly believed that it was wrong for the NCAA to license and sell his image without paying him. Of course, the NCAA believes that they actually own the rights to all of their players and can sell merchandise or anything with their name to the general public or a business, therefore, they believe that players are not subject to be paid any proceeds.
In 2013, Jay Bilas claimed that the NCAA was taking advantage of its student athletes when they began to sale their jerseys at stores and online. After hearing this, the NCAA pulled the jerseys from shelves. It is no secret that the NCAA is making a substantial amount of money off of its players whether its featuring them in the latest edition of Sports Illustrated such as Creighton’s Doug McDermott, video games, commercials promoting March Madness, etcetera. The NCAA has a bad reputation for how it treats is players and has caused national attention even on adult cartoons such as South Park in which they renamed the NCAA, the CBAA which stood for “Crack Babies Athletic Association.” This has to be embarrassing.
To increase the stipend or give players money, Emmert has made it clear that it is not going to happen under his watch. He has also made it clear that paying the student athletes would change the relationship between the student athletes and the NCAA. Understood. However, my question is, in what way will paying them effect the relationship? Exactly. Basically, the man who had made $1,674,095.00 on his tax return is saying that he does not feel the players will be dedicated if they are paid for play. Giving the student athletes scholarships and paying them for their performance on the court “utterly makes no sense” to the 51 year old Washington state native. The NCAA does not complain about how they spent $20.1 million dollars in legal fees in 2011-12 which was their highest since 2006-07.
Former NCAA president, Walter Byers stated in his book, “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes” that college game earnings go to overseers and administrators whom he described as overseers and supervisors, and also called student athletes, plantation workers (slaves).
One can easily look at the NCAA as a slaver and its student athletes as slaves. The relationship is horrible between the two. The student athletes are not being treated how they need to be treated. Why should student athletes go hungry at night because they have no money while the coaches, administrators, college presidents, athletic directors, etcetera have eaten a T-Bone steak for dinner. Why should they have to beg for money from their parents when they are one of the top scorers in the NCAA? Why must they become malnourished while the NCAA big wigs are becoming fat with money and success.
The problem is not with the NCAA not having enough money, the problem is them not wanting to lose the money they successfully make by paying its student athletes. The lowest an NCAA coach makes is at least a million dollars. In the year of 2012, the NCAA had made about a billion dollars in tv ad earnings promoting March Madness. That year, they earned more than the NFL playoffs that made $971 million dollars. Tickets and sponsors make close to at least $40 million dollars in revenue during March Madness. On April 22, 2010, the NCAA signed a 10.8 billion dollar agreement with CBS which made it its exclusive March Madness outlet. The agreement is for 14 years and the NCAA is expected to make at least over $700 million dollars annually from March Madness.
What should the student athletes do to get a piece of the pie? How about a union? Well, Mark Emmert is dead set against it. He agrees that the NCAA should change, but a union is not the answer in his opinion. He calls the idea a “grossly inappropriate solution.” “It would blow up everything about the collegiate model of athletics,” he said, “no one up here believes the way you fix that is by converting student-athletes into unionized employees.”
Maybe the slaver, NCAA should rid themselves of their prideful arrogance and finally pay their student athletes. Emmert needs to stop being so arrogant and pay the student athletes a fair amount and not a stipend. Give them at least $500/week or month. They are not property and you do not own them. Up until 1972, the NCAA gave student athletes monthly allowance for laundry money. I guess that was too much because that stopped as well.
I support Jeffrey Kessler and his antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA. It’s only appropriate and only right.
The NCAA and its president should be ashamed of themselves for the exploitation of its student athletes.
The Front Office News Sports Writer,
Briyant Hines
@CST_SportSnitch
theblogspot.sportsnitch.com
