[Originally published 5/2009]
Student athlete football players at Division I FBS schools are not amateurs; by playing football, they generate millions of dollars for their school’s athletic departments and fund other non-revenue generating sports. They receive extra perks on campus and sometimes may even be viewed as celebrities by their peers. They receive scholarships which include housing, food, and their education as long as they perform well. They also receive small amounts of cash when traveling, equipment and training gear, medical and academic services and when they win and go to bowl games they get additional gifts. Playing on a team is a full time commitment on top of school and most players have little means to get money for living expenses other than food and housing. Without the players, there is no game and there is no money. Paying players would reduce corruption in the form of illegal paying of athletes, it may reduce illegal plays by implementing fines, and it would compensate players for the risks taken while playing; these risks include concussions, serious ligament damage, and in the worst cases death. Although paying players may create increased pressure to use performance enhancing drugs like steroids, a better drug-testing system can and should be implemented to prevent use among both high school and college players. Since there already exists a black market for paying players, opening it up would make it more efficient and would allow athletes to be formally compensated in the way they ought to be. Football is an important part of college life at these big schools in the Division I FBS, but the shift to professionalism has taken away from the academic integrity of the institutions. By paying players, these schools would be recognizing this fact, and by putting it out in the open, steps can finally be made to ameliorate the situation. It is unclear what could happen in this situation, but there are measures to be taken that could to help rectify the current state. One possible change could be to implement a stipend that would be available to players in an amount equivalent to what a non-student athlete could make at a job near campus. While this isn’t perfect, it may be an improvement to the current situation.
Introduction
Under the current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules, intercollegiate athletes players are considered amateurs, and are not allowed to be paid or receive gifts of any sorts. Violating this rule can lead to an indefinite suspension of the athlete or cause the team to forfeit games won while the athlete was on the team and violating the rule. In 1879 the National Association of Amateur Athletes of America first defined an amateur as “any person who has never competed in an open contest, or for a stake, or for public money, or for gate money, or under a false name; or with a professional for a prize, or where gate money is charged; nor has ever at any period of his life taught or pursued athletic exercises as a means of a livelihood.” To this day, the NCAA strongly persists to maintain the principle of amateurism throughout all levels of intercollegiate athletic competition. One of the first lines of the 2008 season NCAA rulebook states that “Student-athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and by the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.”
The NCAA is broken down into three main levels, and each NCAA school is classified into Division I, II, or III, with Division I generally being the largest schools and the “most competitive”. In football, Division I is further broken down into Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly Division I and Division I-AA, with FBS (D-I) being the more competitive one of the two. Of all the divisions, the FBS receives the most attention. The teams at that level compete to win the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship and to be recognized as the best team in the country. FBS coaches and members of the media vote on the rankings of the teams depending on wins, losses, and difficulty of schedule, among other things. In addition to this, there is also a highly controversial and complicated computer calculation system that gives a “BCS ranking” and when combined with the polls, chooses the top two teams to play in the championship. The other top ranked teams are invited to play in post-season bowl games. While these are often coveted by many teams, it is not a playoff or tournament system and these teams have no chances of winning the National Championship. In the FBS, a team can have a roster of 85 players who receive full athletic scholarships and can also have more players, considered “walk-ons” who do not receive a scholarship but can earn one by becoming one of the top 85 players. The three service academies are exempt from this rule; Army, Air Force, and Navy are all Division I FBS schools and provide full scholarships to all students regardless of athletic participation.
Currently, a “full scholarship” is awarded to students-athletes for each given year, and covers tuition, fees, room and board, and the cost of books. This gives student-athletes the ability to live, eat, and attend class for free. Each school has its own policy for paying for the student’s books, but many work on a reimbursement system, where the student buys the books on his own, and later submits receipts in order to be refunded. Other schools have private bookstores for athletes only, where they can get any books they need free of charge, and other schools have similar stores but require that the students return the books at the end of each semester, similar to a library.
If a scholarship athlete decides to live off-campus, then most schools will give a monthly check equivalent to the predetermined amount for on-campus room and board. In this way, the athletes are technically receiving the same thing as the rest of the student body. If players manage to find more inexpensive housing, and have money left over after food expenses, then they are free to use the money at their leisure. In addition to this money, players are also given “per-diem” money to cover food expenses for missed meals on days when the team travels for a game. Each school is also permitted to provide special pre-game and post-game meals. The amount of per-diem is to be determined by the individual school, but cannot exceed what the school’s institutional staff members would receive as per-diem expenses when giving a lecture away from campus. For Division I FBS schools, the amount could be as high as $50 per day, and for schools in lower divisions it could be anywhere from $20-$30. Each player traveling with the team must receive the same amount of money. Although this money helps athletes pay for food, it does not provide them with any income to cover other expenses.4
Divisions I FCS (formerly I-AA), Division II, and Division III by nature are schools with smaller student bodies. Over time, the different divisions have come to signify the varying levels of talent of the players or team. When intercollegiate football first started in the late 19th century, there were only a few teams, who all played at the same level. Since that time, many of those teams have been separated by the different divisions and no longer compete against each other. Small schools like Williams College, who now play in what we call the New England Small Collegiate Athletic Conference (NESCAC), fall into Division III, where as Harvard and other Ivy League schools play in Division I FCS. These schools would never play today, despite having a history of playing against each other a century ago.
The NCAA now regulates which teams are in which division, and teams can petition to change divisions, but face what can be a long and drawn out process. Division II schools sometimes face pressure to move up or down depending on their success, but one stipulation for moving up includes minimum attendance requirements at football games, which restricts movement.3 Division I FCS schools are able to give 63 athletic scholarships, but unlike Division I FBS schools, they can split those scholarships among multiple players, however they can have no more than 85 players on scholarship at any time. The Ivy League, which falls into Division I FCS and is permitted by the NCAA to give up to 85 full or partial scholarships chooses to prohibit them among their student-athletes. Division II schools are also able to give athletic scholarships, but only up to 36 of them. And finally Division III schools are not allowed to give scholarships based on athletic participation. 3 Under this system, the best players would want to play at the highest level to receive the most benefits, a Division I full-scholarship. Partial scholarships are given to players at the coach’s discretion. If a team has 36 scholarships to divide, he has the option of giving 36 full scholarships to 36 players, or giving 72 half scholarships to 72 players, or any combination in between. Scholarships are divided by percentages, and the value is predetermined by the cost of attending school; this includes tuition, fees, room and board, and books. Each academic year, the coach has the ability to redistribute those scholarships based on who he feels is deserving of them. If a player earns a scholarship as a freshman, there is no guarantee that he will have it again the next year, and likewise, if a player walks-on and plays without a scholarship, then he has the chance to earn one for the next year. 4
The NCAA clearly defines that athletes at all levels are amateurs and also how the divisions are structured. The NCAA allows the larger, better schools to provide more money to its players through scholarships based entirely on athletic ability. It is undisputed that while the NCAA describes athletic competition as strictly an “avocation”, or an activity one does as a hobby, it also allows schools to reward the best players for their performance through scholarships.
Problem of Amateur Athletics
Two studies, published as The Game of Life by William G. Bowen and James L. Shulman and Reclaiming the Game by Bowen and Sarah Levine, both done by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, have indicated that although the Division I Ivy League and Division III NESCAC are the conferences of the nation’s best academic institutions in the country, there still exists a huge emphasis on athletics. The studies indicated that athletes at these institutions are more likely to study the social sciences than other students and also tend to perform worse than their high school records would indicate. These institutions practice admission policies in which athletic coaches send “preferred” lists of high school seniors to the admissions office, who will have a much better chance of acceptance than if they had not been on the list. Although these athletic programs do not generate money for the institution like the big FBS schools do, it is clear they are still viewed as an essential part of the social realm of American colleges and universities. Harvard University boasts the largest athletic program in the country with 41 varsity sports and perennially competes for National Championships despite its lack of athletic scholarships. This is the epitome of amateurism. These student-athletes compete at these high levels not to make money, or parlay their college experiences into professional contracts, but to enjoy the games and learn the lessons that sports can teach along the way. They embody the ideals stated in the NCAA rulebook that players are motivated to play by their education, and by the physical, mental, and social benefits gained. While Division I FBS football is widely recognized as the highest tier of intercollegiate football, the lower divisions still maintain the notion of amateurism and what intercollegiate football used to be like in a way that the FBS no longer does.
For this reason, it is in the FBS where most controversies arise. All of the best high school players will strive to play at these colleges and universities for the scholarships, the opportunity to play at such a high level, and the hopes to later play professionally. While this is the case for many players, football is a game of passion, and without it, it becomes very hard to succeed. It would be unfair to say that many players do not recognize their roles as amateurs who are motivated by those ideals put forth by the NCAA. Although this level of football has been very popular across the country for the past century, it has only begun to generate huge revenues in the past few decades. It is now at its highest level of popularity and because of this, games, and especially the corporately sponsored bowl games, are able to generate millions of dollars for the participating schools through television rights contracts, ticket sales, concessions, apparel sales, and alumni donations. Since a championship team is more likely to get the most televised games, sell the most tickets and jerseys, and probably secure more alumni donations, there is a great deal of pressure on each football program to perform well. This has led to huge budget increases for the football program and has skewed the line between the amateur and professional athlete. In fact, over the past twelve years, money generated by football at FBS schools has increased nearly 300%.
Not only have the huge revenues played a role in the transformation of amateur to professional, the NCAA has allowed for rule changes that further demonstrate the shift. In 1972, a previous rule that made freshman ineligible for varsity athletic competition was abandoned, which subsequently would allow seventeen-year olds to play football on national television despite never having attended a college class. Soon after, the NCAA changed the rules of the four-year scholarship. Before 1973, if a player received a scholarship, it could not be taken away, but after the rule change, if a player was injured, not skilled enough, or quit the team, their scholarship could be taken back. Because of this stipulation, players are no longer being treated like amateurs, but they are like paid professionals in the sense that they are essentially being contracted to play. They work to earn their scholarship, and if they underperform, at the coach’s discretion, they will essentially be fired, and lose their scholarship. The NCAA is currently working to change the rules back so that two-year or four-year guaranteed scholarships would be given and would prevent a coach from taking it away after a player has a bad season.4
Despite the fact that the games generate millions of dollars and that collegiate athletes are essentially contracted to play, they are still considered amateurs, and not professionals. College football programs are thriving; there is certainly no shortage of demand for football games, and the supply of high quality games continues to grow. Over the past decade, college games have gone from weekend only events to now being played almost every night of the week and aired on a national broadcast in order to meet the rising demand. There is no shortage of college football players either. High school football continues to be extremely popular and teenagers across the country continue to play the game, attend instructional camps, and attend recruiting camps and functions held by colleges among all divisions.
Most players would agree that playing for an FBS team is like a full-time job. During the season, which can last from late July through January, players have a commitment of over 40 hours per week. Out of season, the commitment is less, but still between 20-30 hours per week. Players are essentially contracted to play for one team and a head coach, and their objective is to reach economic goals for their organization; one might even say they are working for a company and a boss.1 Scholarship players do receive compensation in the form of their tuition, fees, room and board, and books; a scholarship can be worth anywhere between 20-50 thousand dollars each year depending on the institution. Any player will receive playing equipment, workout equipment, and can even receive gifts from a certified sponsor of a bowl game that the team is playing in. Each player, from the starting quarterback to the third string kicker, must receive the same gifts and these are cleared by the NCAA. In addition to this, players have full access to a medical staff, including doctors, as well as training facilities, and often times a private “athletes-only” dining facility.4
While all NCAA athletes are required to meet certain academic criteria while in high school, the scholarship players on FBS teams are not recruited to a school for academic purposes, but instead for their playing skills and entertainment value. If they choose to stop playing or are forced to stop playing football, they forfeit the rights to their scholarship, regardless of how well or how poorly they are performing in the classroom. Because of this power, the coaches have the ability to terminate players who are underperforming to their standards.
Since playing football at this level is like a full-time job, many of these players have no time to work to cover living expenses other than those given to them for food and books. Many are ineligible to take out loans and their families do not have the means to help them.7 Often times, some of these players even have children of their own who they may need to support. One way for players to get money is through the NCAA’s Student Athlete Assistance Fund (SAAF). The SAAF is a program that gives money to athletes who qualify based on their family’s financial need. Student-athletes who are eligible for the Pell Grant are automatically eligible for the SAAF and can be reimbursed for up to $500 in clothing expenses, $50 in academic expenses, and one airline flight home. This is all available with little restrictions but requires the student to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which can be a long process, involving the previous year’s tax information. For these players on full scholarship, they often do not go through the hassle despite the obvious benefits.4 These players have few other ways to make money in order to be able to even go out to a movie on the weekend.
Despite not being able to collect any cash income, playing big-time college football certainly has its perks. Although the NCAA has very strict, specific rules about what the schools can and cannot give to its student athletes, there are ways for the schools to keep the players happy. For one, by giving the players $50 per-diem for food on road trips, the school is really giving money to the players. While players may be able to spend it all in day on meals, they also can easily spend $20 of it, and keep the rest for themselves. Additionally, on these road trips, teams have often been known to travel in style. They sometimes stay at upscale hotels and enjoy expensive all-you-can-eat buffets at the team’s expense. Allen Sack talks about playing football for Notre Dame back in the 1960’s in his book College Athletes for Hire.8 He says that on road trips, the team would fly first class and eat steak and lobster dinners. One time, the night before a game, the team gathered to watch a screening of a movie about to be released only to have one of the star actors walk in and hang out with the team. 8 Another ‘benefit’ that goes along with playing high-level football is the player’s status on campus. While some players would not enjoy the rock star lifestyle, some most certainly do. These players are already being treated like professionals, so it makes one wonder when they will start being paid like them.
The players of the game are the contributing units that make the game possible, without them, there would be no game. In addition to the players, each team also has many coaches, a training staff, a medical staff, as well as administrators and directors who are all monetarily compensated for their work (ignoring the possibility of un-paid interns who may be working for scholastic credit.) There are also facility caretakers and ticket office employees, and on game days there are hundreds of more paid employees who work to successfully manage the event, including referees and officials, security personnel, concession workers, and press box operators. One of these games, a University of Michigan versus Penn State University for example, often attracts over 100,000 spectators and generates over $2 million on gate receipts alone and millions more from television contracts, corporate sponsorships, concessions, licensed merchandise, and parking. 8
One economic analysis done by Robert Brown and R. Todd Jewell determines that exceptional players generate a “marginal revenue product” that far exceeds the monetary value of an athletic scholarship. Using data from the 1995 Division I FBS season, Brown and Jewell run an economic regression to determine how much economic impact a “premium player” has on overall revenue. A premium player is one who ended up being drafted into the NFL; this is only a small percentage of FBS players, about 5 for players each of the 87 teams looked at in the study. By controlling for other factors that influence revenues, they were able to determine that each premium player generates $406,914 in a season for the institution. This data is over a decade old and it is likely that this figure would be significantly higher today. While the analysis does not provide data for players who do not go on to the NFL, one can understand that without them, there is no game, so they certainly do have a significant value to the team and to the game as well.
The NCAA’s persistently claims that “Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation” or in other words it is a leisure activity. Again, this is understandable at the lower levels of competition and among most Division I sports, but when we discuss Division I FBS football, we are not talking about a leisure activity. These football programs are required by the NCAA to have permanent stadiums with a capacity of at least 30,000 and to have averaged 17,000 paid attendees per home game during the previous four-year period. These athletes are specifically recruited and brought to the institution to play football and are compensated, through scholarship, for their participation. If they do not live up to the coach’s expectations, then they can be released.8
FBS football programs generate money for athletic departments. This is a fact. It is often argued that this is not the case and that if one is to look at the department’s balance sheet, it will never be under its budget, or seemingly profitable. The reason for this is that the department will see if it has money left over before the end of the fiscal year, and if so, it will spend the difference in order to balance the budget. This is a common practice done in order to keep the institution from reducing next year’s budget. The football programs generate extra money that goes back into the program in the form of renovations and improvements, but it also goes towards the entire athletic department and helps to fund almost every other, non-revenue generating sport. 4 Whether or not this is right or fair is up for debate. Mark Murphy, Director of Athletics at Northwestern University, argues that the scholarship is enough payment in itself. He says that all student-athletes at a university have made similar commitments to the school, and that football and players should not be treated any differently than those who participate in sports that are not as popular and lucrative. 7 One obvious problem with this logic is that these sports are different. Football requires a much larger time commitment than some sports and also involves taking on a much greater individual health risk than most sports.
While it is clearly against NCAA regulations to receive monetary compensation, it is not surprising that it still happens. Whenever there is a multi-billion dollar market, there is usually a bit of corruption to go along with it. Don Yaeger and Jim Henry document one specific, highly publicized case where a player allegedly received over $300,000 in cash and gifts for playing college football at the University of Southern California from 2003-2005. The player was Reggie Bush, who has now been playing for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints for the past three years. Lloyd Lake has accused Reggie Bush of accepting those gifts from him despite an agreement to repay him by endorsing Lake’s startup sports marketing firm called New Era Sports & Entertainment. If found guilty, Bush could also face charges from the NCAA and risk tarnishing his career and forfeiting some or all of his awards, including the Heisman Trophy that he won in 2005, the coveted award given to the best player in college football. A payment system of some form would help to reduce this corruption that is happening anyways. A libertarian economist would argue that prohibiting something, in this case the paying of players, does not prevent it from happening, but instead only drives the market underground. This creates inefficiencies and greater costs to everyone involved. While a free market is unlikely to be the best solution to the situation, there may be a better policy than strict prohibition of payment. The fact that there is a market, whether it is a black market or a free market, only further demonstrates that players should be paid. Economic thinking often assumes that people are rational thinkers, and if a black market for playing players exists, then there must be rational humans driving this market.
Given that players generate huge revenues for schools, they are a far stretch from being amateurs, they have a fulltime commitment to the program with little means to earn extra money, and there is already a black market for paying players, it may seem unbelievable that these players continue to go formally unpaid. It seems obvious that these athletes are already regarded as professionals and deserve to be paid as such. But there are many issues that muddle the situation and make it difficult to answer. When we consider the question of whether or not FBS football players should be paid, we find that it is not a simple yes or no question, and that a number of additional issues are raised in the process. By continuing to examine different aspects of the game of college football, one finds that while there are many more reasons why Division 1 FBS football players should be paid, but it may not be possible in the current state.
Health issues
One of the major arguments against paying FBS football players, as described by Mark Murphy, is that they are like any other student-athlete on campus. He argues that football players already receive scholarships for playing and there is no reason they should be treated any different because their sport is more popular and more lucrative.7 However, these scholarships are no more than contracts, in that they can be taken away due to poor performance. Additionally, the scholarships do provide food, shelter, and most importantly education, but they do not provide spending allowances for these players who certainly have no time to take on what would essentially be a third job after class and football. Finally, this argument fails to recognize that football can be a larger commitment, taking a longer portion of the year and perhaps more time during the week, as well as the fact that football is a much riskier sport from a health perspective.
Football has long been considered a “contact” sport, unlike tennis, where the players do not physically touch each other. The word contact does not necessarily do the game justice. One popular quote is that “Ballroom dancing is a contact sport; football is a collision sport.” This may be a little more accurate of the game. Injuries are very common and it is not surprising. On each play, in order to stop your opponent, you must use your momentum (mass and velocity) to collide into the opposing player with the football in order to bring him to the ground. Helmets, shoulder pads, and leg pads are worn to protect your body, but the force of these collisions can be so great that sometimes the protective equipment is not enough. In addition to those collisions of force, one may also experience a variety of twists and turns that can permanently damage the knees, ankles, elbows, and other joints.
Despite these potential consequences, amateur players choose to play the game, without expecting any monetary compensation in return for their pain and injuries. It is the same case for any amateur-athlete, even those who play non-contact sports like tennis. There is a risk taken each time a person competes, that he or she could sprain an ankle, tear ligaments in the shoulder, crash their head and receive a concussion, or injure oneself in some other way. The difference between the injury in Division I FBS football and perhaps a Junior-Varsity high school tennis match is that the school is making a profit when the athlete competes in the football game whereas the high school does not profit from the tennis match. For this reason, these college football players, who are taking on a high risk of injury and in doing so, they are generating revenue for the institution, deserve to be compensated for that risk.
In addition to being compensated for taking on risk, these players ought to be compensated when they are seriously injured. There have been many high-profile cases of serious injuries that have resulted in permanent physical handicaps. Until 1990, insurance was not given to NCAA athletes, and medical bills would not be covered even if an injury was sustained while practicing or playing in a game. 8 Today, this has changed and all bills are covered, but life altering injuries may still not be entirely compensated for. If a player is paralyzed while playing a football game, something that has happened more than a few times over the past few decades, the NCAA will not pay lost wages. Worker’s compensation is a form of insurance given to workers who are injured as a result of performing duties at their place of work. Although these insurance plans differ, most provide coverage of medical expenses but will also provide weekly or monthly payments in place of lost wages due to the injury. Because college football players are not treated as professionals, but instead as amateurs, they are not eligible to receive worker’s compensation for their injuries.
Kent Waldrep, President of the National Paralysis Foundation, is one player who experienced this situation fist hand. While carrying the football in a game at Texas Christian University, a Division I FBS school, on October 26, 1974, Waldrep was tackled and landed on his head. This injury left him paralyzed from the neck down and subjected to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. Because this happened in 1974, before the NCAA mandated insurance for all scholarship athletes, Waldrep was left to cover all of his current and future medical bills on his own. Had he been considered a professional employee and not an amateur, he would have been able to collect worker’s compensation as federal law mandates. He argues that had a groundskeeper tripped and fallen on the same day and had Waldrep’s same fate, he would have been fully covered by worker’s compensation. In 1993, the Texas Worker’s Compensation Board ruled that “Kent Waldrep was an employee of TCU” when injured.8 The decision awarded Waldrep $70 a week for life plus medical expenses dating back to 1974. The decision was appealed by TCU’s insurance provider, Texas Employers Insurance Association, and a trial was eventually set for the fall of 1997. The decision, which would have had profound impacts on the NCAA as an amateur institution, was overturned. 9
Allen Sack is a former football player at Notre Dame, an FBS school, and is the author of Counterfeit Amateurs, as well as other books describing NCAA athletes as professionals and not amateurs. He says that if Kent Waldrep had won his case, and the court recognized him as an employee of TCU, then the “billions of dollars generated by athletic labor would be vulnerable to what the Internal Revenue Service calls unrelated business income taxes” and “could also give players the right to demand a larger share of the revenue, to form players’ associations, and to bargain collectively for employee benefits”. 9 This would certainly put an end to the college game as we know it, and while this may not be the most favorable result, Sack argues that it is necessary to get away from the web of deceit that the NCAA has created in order to maintain the idea that FBS football involves amateur athletes competing in “leisurely activities”.
Death and injuries and football have always been closely intertwined. In the early days of the game, before the forward pass had been invented, there were many deaths due to the brutal contact each year. The game was almost banned, but in 1905 the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton met with then US President Theodore Roosevelt in order to discuss what could be done to keep the game around. They legalized the forward pass, in order to make the game safer, and created the game of football as we know it. 5
Unfortunately, to this day death in football still exists. Even over the past decade, there have been dozens of highly publicized deaths among high school, college, and even professional football players. The Annual Survey of Football Injuries, done by the University of North Carolina based National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, shows that 33 football players have died since 1995; 25 of them at the high school level, 5 in college, 2 professionals, and 1 playing youth football. Many of these deaths are the result of heatstroke or dehydration. Similar to the argument that any amateur athlete can get hurt, any football player, and clearly most often high school players, face the risk of heat-related death. Whether or not the risk of death is high, playing football involves taking that risk, and again, if those players are generating revenues to support other programs, they ought to be compensated for taking that risk.
Another very serious issue that has come to surround the game of football only recently is that of concussions. While they have always been considered dangerous, the long term effects of concussions were not understood until the research done on ex-football player’s brains showed the effects were quite devastating.
A concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury, was originally believed to have no structural brain damage, but that is now being reconsidered. A concussion is caused by a blow to the head, something that happens far too often playing the game of football. A person who sustains a concussion could experience a temporary loss of consciousness, dizziness, nausea, headache, or loss of motor coordination and balance. Longer term effects of concussions can include sleep disorders, mental fatigue, and even depression. The problem with these injuries to the brain is that they are not detectable by any of today’s imaging technology, including x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs. The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine has been leading the research on concussions by posthumously examining brain tissue of ex-football players. They discovered that concussions actually do serious damage to the brain, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Dr. Ann McKee, neuropathologist and co-director of the CSTE, describes the finding as “shocking” because it’s so extensive, saying that the injury “is throughout the brain, not just on the superficial aspects of the brain, but it’s deep inside.” The brain tissue of these men, who are between 30-50 years old, is flecked with brown tangles throughout it, something that may be found in the brain of an 80-year old with dementia. The CSTE has discovered that this type of damage affects the parts of the brain that control emotion, rage, hypersexuality, and even breathing. They have also found that CTE is a progressive disease that eventually kills brain cells.
Kevin M. Guskiewicz, is another researcher who has studied the long term effects of concussions on retired football players. His study of over 2,500 former players found that depression has been statistically linked to concussions, and even more so when there were multiple concussions.
It was always understood that concussions were bad, but it was not until this recent research that people knew the extent of the danger. Football players take the risk of getting a concussion every time they step onto the field both for practice and for games. One may argue that it is part of the game, and the truth is that while advances will be made to make the game safer, people will continue to play, get concussions, and suffer the long term effects. There may not be a way to repay someone who is battling depression later in life, but again, if there are profits being made now, then the players taking on the risk of concussions should be compensated for that risk. If the NCAA paid its players, then they would at least in part be compensated for any consequences they may face in the future, although no amount could ever be enough for some of those effects.
By paying players, the NCAA could also very effectively make the game safer. Currently, players are penalized for a personal foul when they commit a penalty for a dangerous play. A personal foul results in a net change of 15 yards against the team whose players committed the penalty. A personal foul can be called for hitting a player after the play has ended, when a player brings another player to the ground by grabbing the facemask of his helmet, by spearing another player or leading their momentum with their head, by blocking an opposing player from behind, or any other act that the official views as “unnecessary roughness”. These infractions can be very dangerous, and the NCAA modified the rules of the game before the 2008 season by clarifying what was illegal in order to make the game safer. If players are paid, then the league could effectively fine players for dangerous hits, similar to the way that professional football leagues already do. While there should be incentive enough to play the game safely and protect one’s own body, this increased financial incentive would likely have a positive effect in reducing the number of these penalties. A person may argue that this would result in some players being too careful and prevent them from making plays that are not in violation of the rules; however it is likely that coaches will spend more time preparing for these situations and focusing on how to make clean plays. Any ways to make the game safer and protect the heads and necks of players ought to be utilized, as they are one of the leading causes of serious injury.
On the other hand, one must consider the negative effects that paying players could have on their health. When money is introduced, there becomes an immediate increase in competition. There will likely be more pressure to perform well because the stakes are raised. If this is the case, high school and college players alike would have more incentive to use steroids. Anabolic-androgenic steroids allow the users to gain more muscle mass than usual at a much faster rate than normal. Though these effects may help to achieve short term strength goals, there are also many documented short and long-term negative effects of steroid use on the human body. If college athletes were paid to play, they would be more likely to pay this price that using steroids elicits.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) work like human testosterone by increasing protein synthesis which builds up the cellular tissue in muscles. The American College of Sports Medicine acknowledges that AAS can increase body mass and contribute to muscular gains when combined with exercise and a proper diet. Because football has come to rely so heavily on physical strength, using steroids gives the user an obvious advantage. For this reason, steroids have been banned by the NCAA as well as most professional athletic leagues. As of this publication, the use of steroids continues to be a major problem in the sports world as more and more professional athletes have admitted to using or have been accused of using steroids in violation of league rules.
These size advantages do come with a price. Not only does being caught by the NCAA result in a one-year suspension and a potentially tarnished name, but the health risks are serious as well. Physical long term effects include heart and liver problems, unbalanced bone growth, and even male and female trait reversal. Some short term effects are dehydration, cramping, muscle tearing, and hyperextension. Additionally, overdeveloped muscles can lead to tendon and ligament injuries. Steroids can also cause drastic mood swings, aggression, and “homicidal rage, mania and delusion.”5 The use of steroids is nothing new. Allen Sack describes rampant steroid use at Notre Dame, a school that prides itself in its academic integrity, as early as 1986. He says that not only did freshman arrive having taken steroids in high school, but older players started to use them in order to compete with the newcomers. While the coach did not encourage use, “he set the bar so high and put such an emphasis on size, strength, and speed in his players that steroids seemed like the only way for some of the older guys to hang in there.”
Despite the facts that steroids are illegal, that using them is considered cheating under NCAA rules, and that their negative side effects are widely recognized and understood, many collegiate athletes continue to use them. Over the last few years, about 2% or 7,000 student-athletes tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. The NCAA’s year round random testing began in 1990, but athletes continue to use banned substances.5 While none of these players are being paid, at least in a formal sense with money, they still may face pressure to earn a scholarship or to hold onto the scholarship they’ve already earned. It is likely that most of the offenders are in fact using to satisfy their own desires or on-field success.
The Josephson Institute Center for Sports Ethics surveyed over 4,200 high school student-athletes asking about many sports-related issues including drug use. It found that 12% of males admitted to using performance enhancing drugs in the past year. 5 It is of the utmost importance that if college football players are ever to be paid, that much more stringent drug testing policies are put in place not only in college, but also in high school, to prevent those kids from using in order to make it to the next level, the professional level.
Athletics and the Institution
Intercollegiate athletics are an important part of most American colleges and universities. Whether or not players are paid or deserved to be paid, the games will go on and schools will continue to host the games and events. All sports are an important part of campus life, garnering attention from all over. Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University and author of the paper Intercollegiate Athletics, says “athletic programs have brought great satisfaction to thousands of athletes and millions of spectators. Few aspects of college life have done so much to win the favor of the public, build loyalties of alumni, and engender lasting memories in the minds of student-athletes.” Yet Bok also recognizes the stresses that athletics can place upon these institutions as well. He continues to describe the problem of overemphasis of athletics, especially at the large Division 1 FBS schools, where big-time football rules:
[T]he very success of intercollegiate athletics and the passionate enthusiasms they arouse create constant tendency toward excess, pushing the search for winning teams to extremes that threaten to harm the lives of student-athletes and compromise the integrity of universities as serious educational institutions. And so it is that university presidents find themselves in the strange position of having to regard athletics as a serious ethical challenge.
Since that publication in the mid 1980’s, the NCAA has enacted propositions 42 and 48 in an attempt to redefine academic eligibility criteria for freshmen athletes. A sliding scale based on high school grade point average (GPA) and SAT or ACT nationally standardized test scores determines whether or not any NCAA freshman athlete is eligible to compete. If the student maintains a GPA of 1.8 on a 4.0 scale over 24 credits during the first year, he or she will be able to compete in the future. Additionally, the NCAA put caps on the time a team may spend on practice each week. Student athletes can practice no more than 20 hours per week, no more than four hours per day, and there must be at least one day free from any team obligations each week. Conditioning out-of-season is limited to 8 hours per week.
The truth of the matter is that while the academic rules and the practice limits do help, they do not fix the issue. Like anything involving billions of dollars, there is corruption and there are loopholes. Even Ivy League schools, who again do not play at the highest level of football but do maintain the highest academic standards in the country, find these loopholes in the system. For example, Monday is a typical day to serve as the one day of the week with no team obligations. However, it is a common practice to have individual film sessions as well as rehabilitation treatment on this day. These activities, while not enforced by the coaching staff, are considered essential to the success of the team. The rules limit practice to four hours each day, but for football, this ignores the preparation times before and after practice. On a Tuesday, a team may have a one hour strength workout in the morning, then 45 minutes of film study right before a 2 hour and 15 minute practice. Exactly four hours. This logic fails to recognize the fact that going to and from the facility, getting dressed for lift and showering after can take nearly an hour in itself and the same situation presents itself for the afternoon practice. Now one is looking at six hours a day, while ignoring potential rehabilitation treatments which can be at least a half hour before and a half hour after practice. When it is all said and done, a student-athlete may end up spending well over 6 hours a day preparing for a game. When you add a few hours of class and homework into the mix, it becomes easy to see why many student athletes fall behind. If they do not perform well on the football field, they will lose their scholarships and be off the team and out of school. If they do not perform well in the classroom, they will fail out and be out of school and off the team.
In order to ensure academic success and then success on the football field, educators and coaches may go to great lengths to help student-athletes. There have often been scandals regarding academics in order to maintain a player’s eligibility. Many of the issues include blatant cheating, fake transcripts, and false credit given for classes not completed. This is done in an attempt to ensure a successful program, where success is measured by wins and losses, and further by dollars. When teams win championships, they attract better post-season bowls, bigger television contracts, more donations, and generally more fans. John Fizel and Timothy Smaby use data from Penn State in 1995 to perform a statistical analysis of the affects of athletic participation on classroom achievement. They found that despite Propositions 42 and 48 by the NCAA, athletes on average have lower SAT scores than non-athletes. Also, the revenue producing sports, like football and basketball, have the lowest SAT averages. They also found that the football team had average GPAs equivalent to the 39th percentile of the student body. Not only do these facts potentially take away from the credibility of the institution, but now universities are actually putting these student-athletes at a disadvantage. They are being accepted despite lower SAT scores, they are required to take the same courses as everyone else, they have a full-time commitment to their team, and it is no doubt that on average they perform worse than the average student.21
By selling the athletic program to television networks, universities are undermining American higher education and “prostituting academic values” according to William Dowling, professor of English at Rutgers University. “To win games and keep the revenue flowing, universities recruit athletes with embarrassingly low academic credentials and keep them eligible by turning a blind eye to cheating or by steering them into courses with little academic substance.” Dowling and his followers describe it as academic corruption.
Since there are scandals regarding illegal paying of players, like Reggie Bush, it is not surprising that there are also scandals in the academic realm as well. One recent instance of scandal came at Florida State University, a perennial contender in the NCAA Division I FBS. In the fall of 2008, FSU self-reported a violation to the NCAA involving 61 student-athletes, 23 of which were football players. Crib sheets were given to these students by employees of the Athletic Academic Support Services office. This blatant act of cheating has led to 19½ lost scholarships, four years probation, and games forfeited by 10 different athletic teams on campus, including 14 wins from the 2006 and 2007 football seasons. This instance demonstrates the lengths that people will go in order to win; people help students cheat on tests in order to ensure their academic eligibility in order for them to compete in sports and help their team win games. Without sports would FSU’s academic reputation be tarnished in such a manner? Perhaps not, but perhaps that is part of the price of being home to an FBS football team.
Not only has the cheating scandal marred the institution’s academic credibility, it has also unveiled university president T.K. Wetherell’s true colors. Murray Sperber confirms that FSU, like so many others, has suffered from the recession and will face budget cuts across the board. And it seems as though Wetherell may have his priorities mixed up as he spends a great deal of money on lawyers in an attempt to preserve the football victories. The man at the helm of the university may in fact be putting football ahead of academics, possibly to keep donors happy, but at what cost? 24
On the other hand, there are stories, likely just as frequent, of student-athletes who recognize that their education is superior to their athletic endeavors and decide to focus only on the former. One in particular involves the backup quarterback at Wake Forest, another FBS team perennially competing for national recognition. To the shock of his teammates, Brett Hodges quit the team in March of 2009 in order to focus on his schoolwork, saying that in order to reach his goals of graduate school and finding and internship in a tough economy, he was going to need more time to achieve better grades. Wake Forest’s head coach, Jim Grobe, was upset, but understanding and supportive according to Hodges. If every coach replicated Grobe’s actions, maybe more student-athletes will learn to embrace education in the way Hodges has.
It is difficult to know what Grobe’s true motives were in supporting Hodges. While it would be nice to imagine that he was completely sincere and hopes the best for one of his players, it is not out of the question that he has reacted in such a positive manner in order to uphold his image to the public as well as the university. Grobe is being paid $987,843 per year by Wake Forest according to the NCAA 2005 Financial Report. While this ranks him as the 45th highest paid football coach in Division 1 FBS, it is more than three times the average salary of a university president/CEO and ten times that of tenured male professors at US Doctoral-granting universities. A salary of this magnitude is only deserving if the team is successful, which may make one wonder why Grobe was so understanding of Hodges’ decision. The case may be that even though the institution is willing to pay so much for its coaches, they still require them to prioritize academics before extra-curricular activities including football, and this must be reflected in all player-coach interactions.
Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of specific data regarding the effects of athletics on an academic institution. Although Fizel and Smaby do provide data on college GPA, it would be very difficult to have the same data on high school GPA since students come from many different high schools and many high schools have different GPA calculation systems. It would be interesting to see if these same students also performed below the average at their individual high schools. If that is the case, then it seems that institutions are willing to lower their admission standards in order to bolster its academic teams.
This issue not only reflects poorly on the institution, but also puts the students at a disadvantage when it comes to collegiate academic performance. Although attending college is about more than just a degree, for our purposes we will assume that the purpose is to get a degree and to find a job. If this is the case, then it is probable that college GPA will also play a role in finding a job. If these students are unable to perform at an equivalent level of their peers, then they will also be disadvantaged when it comes to finding a job. However, it may also be true that athletes are more likely to find jobs through alumni, especially those who played the same sport. Data in this area would certainly yield interesting results, and further may expose institutions for putting student-athletes at a disadvantage.
Another issue that is difficult to measure is the effect college sports have on other students. As Derek Bok has mentioned, athletic competitions bring satisfaction to those who watch them, but other educators argue that there are adverse effects on the individual student non-athlete as well. William Dowling says “Screw the [big-time] college athletes. What I care about are the thousands of regular students whose educations are degraded by the presence of athletes on campus who are merely masquerading as students.” Whether or not the students themselves feel this way is yet to be known. A student poll may in fact show that students feel that their education is worth less when the same opportunity is given to undeserving athletes. It may also demonstrate a feeling of jealousy towards athletes who are living the lives of superstars instead of being peers in the classroom. Students may also feel that athlete-only dining halls and tutors are unfair. While the NCAA maintains that student-athletes are to be treated exactly the same as all students, one need not look far to see that football players at Division 1 schools have a significantly different college experience than their peers.
Amateur athletics are certainly an important part of college life for many students. Unfortunately the highest level of college football has shifted away from being amateur competition, and instead is becoming professional competition. Football players have commitments of over 40 hours per week, they are admitted from high school with lower SAT scores than their peers, cheating and scandals are commonplace in the classroom, and the academic integrity of the institution is being undermined as schools sell themselves to television networks. Compensating these athletes would be the NCAA’s recognition of the fact that Division I FBS football is not an amateur activity; football at this level is for a very small percentage of highly trained and highly skilled football players. If the schools were to recognize this, then they could make necessary changes as to how the football program and the school would continue to be affiliated. Whatever those may be is unknown and it is unclear as to whether or not they would be good or bad for the game. This paper does not attempt to answer this question, but instead proposes a more reasonable solution to this issue.
Plausibility
Student athlete football players at Division I FBS schools are not amateurs; by playing football, they generate millions of dollars for their school’s athletic departments and fund other non-revenue generating sports. They receive extra perks on campus and sometimes may even be viewed as celebrities by their peers. They receive scholarships which include housing, food, and their education as long as they perform well. They also receive small amounts of cash when traveling, equipment and training gear, medical and academic services and when they win and go to bowl games they get additional gifts. Playing on a team is a full-time commitment on top of school and most players have little means to get money for living expenses outside of food and housing. Without the players, there is no game and there is no money. Paying players would reduce corruption in the form of illegal paying of athletes, it may reduce illegal plays by implementing fines, and it would compensate players for the risks taken while playing; these risks include concussions, serious ligament damage, and in the worst cases death. Although paying players may create increased pressure to use performance enhancing drugs like steroids, a better drug-testing system can and should be implemented to prevent use among both high school and college players. Since there already exists a black market for paying players, opening it up would make it more efficient and would allow athletes to be formally compensated in the way they ought to be. Football is an important part of college life at these big schools in the Division I FBS, but the shift to professionalism has taken away from the academic integrity of the institutions. By paying players, these schools would be recognizing this fact, and by putting it out in the open, steps can finally be made to ameliorate the situation. It is unclear what could happen in this situation, but there are measures to be taken that could to help rectify the current state.
The biggest reason against paying players is the unknown implications that can only now be imagined. Whether or not the football team would remain affiliated with the institution is unknown and this would essentially put an end to the college game that so many people know and love. Even imagining that the school and the football program could continue to coexist as players get paid, there would be issues of player’s unions being formed as they do in professional football leagues. Along with that would come demands for more money and benefits though collective bargaining. If the NCAA were to recognize that these players were professionals, then the players would begin to hire agents, which are currently forbidden. The richest schools or teams would end up dominating the competition because they would have the means to acquire the best players; small conferences would likely no longer be able to compete. Non-revenue generating sports would lose their funding, and perhaps many of the fans would be lost as well. One of the biggest issues would be that alumni donations would no longer be tax deductible because instead of going to an institution of higher learning, they would be going to a business. Other possibilities include the need for a draft, new eligibility concerns, age limits, and perhaps more scandals and increased pressure on athletes.
It seems clear that it would be impossible to implement a system where college athletes are paid like professionals because it would cease to be a college sport. Changing the entire way the league operates would most likely not be the best solution to this issue. Instead I propose that the NCAA makes changes as to what defines a football scholarship. Instead of providing only tuition, academic expenses, and room and board, schools ought to have the opportunity to provide players with an additional stipend for entertainment and consumer goods. Each scholarship athlete on the team would get the same amount of money either in installments or a lump sum. I propose that this would not be a huge amount, but equivalent to what a non-student athlete could make at a part time job in the area. Because players have little time to work and they are nearly professionals anyways, nothing much would really be changed. Football players would still maintain ‘amateur’ status according to NCAA and they would continue to be student-athletes, but they would finally be compensated for what they deserve. This potential change would cut down on money scandals; it also has the potential for fining, or reducing the stipend, for dangerous play or even perhaps other misconduct off the field. It would compensate, at least in part, for the many serious health risks taken while playing.
This system is not perfect, but it may be an improvement on the current state. It may hurt smaller conferences, but as TV contracts become more and more popular, most football programs are finding more available funding. It would be difficult to implement into the budget in the early years but could certainly be done over time. Also one may argue that this would spin out of control with the amount of money increasing year after year, but the NCAA could set it up in a way to avoid that, the same way that they carefully control many other factors. A change of this sort would take a lot of work and planning but it would be beneficial to the athletes who are playing Division I FBS football and entertaining to so many people around the world.
