Mark Prine
Guest
“I don’t know if this is going to throw us into an NCAA investigation, but my senior year I was getting paid on the side”
Mark Prine via our good friends at Men of the Scarlet and Gray
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
In the second part of this “Show me the money” series we will take a look at college life in the eyes of the college athlete and the question “should student athletes be paid?” from the player’s perspective.
“I don’t know if this is going to throw us into an NCAA investigation, but during my senior year, I was getting paid on the side”
said Houston Texans superstar and former University of Tennessee runningback, Arian Foster. Foster said that it was a tough pill to swallow to know that he would go out and play on Saturdays in front of a sold out crowd of 107,000 people and have a “good game” as he says “running for over a hundred yards or whatever, then staying to take pictures and sign autographs; Then walk back to my dorm and reality would set in. I’d open my fridge and there was no food.” Foster went on to say that kids don’t say anything because “if you say anything, you’re hurting your chances of getting to the next level. Its a beautifully designed evil scheme to keep kids quiet.” Former UCLA tailback, Johnathan Kennedy says a typical day for a UCLA football player is as follows:
5:30am – wake up
6:00-9:00am – work out
10:00am-1:00pm – class
2:00-3:15pm – meetings
4:00-6:00pm – practice
7:00-9:00pm – tutoring
10:00-11:00pm – homework
The point that Kennedy and Foster were trying to make is that Universities and the NCAA shouldn’t profit billions annually, while the athletes who put in the manual labor are called amateurs when they should be treated like employees.
So how many billions is the NCAA making a year? 12.1 billion to be exact, and that number is only growing.The money they are making is being produced by ticket sales, donations, television contracts, sponsorships and royalties from licensing and merchandise, and it’s all tax free. That’s $12.1 billion tax free and the players get sanctioned for trying to capitalize on their own talents.
So Why is it wrong for college athletes to be paid? Why is it taboo? To quote Michael Rosenthal from SportsIllustrated,
“Suppose you had a really talented math student without a lot of money but he had excellent math skills and he wanted to get paid for his math skills and then turn around and give that money to his dad for his church, there would be beautiful stories written about what a great kid this is; but when that was what Cam Newton supposedly did, and the skill was football, it was big scandal.”
I’ll leave you with this. I don’t see the current model of how college athletes are treated with respect to amateurism, lasting much longer. Hidering people from benefiting from potential endorsements is wrong. Capitalizing billions from the hard work of young men and women who spend most of their waking lives working on their craft, without allowing them to benefit monetarily, simply because you don’t want to lose the money it would take to pay them, is wrong.
Continue reading...
Mark Prine via our good friends at Men of the Scarlet and Gray
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
In the second part of this “Show me the money” series we will take a look at college life in the eyes of the college athlete and the question “should student athletes be paid?” from the player’s perspective.
“I don’t know if this is going to throw us into an NCAA investigation, but during my senior year, I was getting paid on the side”
said Houston Texans superstar and former University of Tennessee runningback, Arian Foster. Foster said that it was a tough pill to swallow to know that he would go out and play on Saturdays in front of a sold out crowd of 107,000 people and have a “good game” as he says “running for over a hundred yards or whatever, then staying to take pictures and sign autographs; Then walk back to my dorm and reality would set in. I’d open my fridge and there was no food.” Foster went on to say that kids don’t say anything because “if you say anything, you’re hurting your chances of getting to the next level. Its a beautifully designed evil scheme to keep kids quiet.” Former UCLA tailback, Johnathan Kennedy says a typical day for a UCLA football player is as follows:
5:30am – wake up
6:00-9:00am – work out
10:00am-1:00pm – class
2:00-3:15pm – meetings
4:00-6:00pm – practice
7:00-9:00pm – tutoring
10:00-11:00pm – homework
The point that Kennedy and Foster were trying to make is that Universities and the NCAA shouldn’t profit billions annually, while the athletes who put in the manual labor are called amateurs when they should be treated like employees.
So how many billions is the NCAA making a year? 12.1 billion to be exact, and that number is only growing.The money they are making is being produced by ticket sales, donations, television contracts, sponsorships and royalties from licensing and merchandise, and it’s all tax free. That’s $12.1 billion tax free and the players get sanctioned for trying to capitalize on their own talents.
So Why is it wrong for college athletes to be paid? Why is it taboo? To quote Michael Rosenthal from SportsIllustrated,
“Suppose you had a really talented math student without a lot of money but he had excellent math skills and he wanted to get paid for his math skills and then turn around and give that money to his dad for his church, there would be beautiful stories written about what a great kid this is; but when that was what Cam Newton supposedly did, and the skill was football, it was big scandal.”
I’ll leave you with this. I don’t see the current model of how college athletes are treated with respect to amateurism, lasting much longer. Hidering people from benefiting from potential endorsements is wrong. Capitalizing billions from the hard work of young men and women who spend most of their waking lives working on their craft, without allowing them to benefit monetarily, simply because you don’t want to lose the money it would take to pay them, is wrong.
Continue reading...