College Athletes Treated Unfairly by NCAA

College athletes are strictly prohibited from receiving any sort of payment. College athletes effectively play for free even if they don’t have money for basic necessities. And the coaches are supposed to police its own players and make sure they don’t get any money at all, regardless of their financial means.

This is huge problem because of conflict and the inability of college atheletes to work, go to college, study and practice with the team. Its nearly impossible to do all three, so work is cut and so are the athletes finances.

College sports, and football in OSU particular, are massive, revenue-generating businesses. The Big Ten conference that OSU is a member of recently signed a $770 million television deal. Yet the school is unable to help its own student athletes at all!

Former Ohio State player Robert Rose, who’s been implicated in the scandal, summed up the players’ perspective, saying that he had no regrets about receiving extra benefits on the side. Rose told Sports Illustrated:

“I knew how much money that the school was making,” he says. “I always heard about how Ohio State had the biggest Nike budget. I was struggling, my mom was struggling. … It was just something that I had to do. I was in a hard spot. … [Other] guys were doing it for the same reasons. The university doesn’t really help. Technically we knew it was wrong, but a lot of those guys are from the inner city and we didn’t have much, and we had to go on the best we could. I couldn’t call home to ask my mom to help me out.” Source: http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/06/should_college_athletes_be_paid.html

Dave Zirin writes about the student financial issue here: http://www.thenation.com/blog/161042/ncaa-and-jim-tressel-giving-eric-cartman-moral-high-ground. He says that we need to be asking ourselves whether a system is “insane in which players trade the rings off their fingers or the shirts off their back to get college-age amenities most students take for granted.” He also quotes Ohio State English Professor Pranav Jani, who says:

Why should universities facing steep budget cuts pay, oh, about $3.5 million a year or so for top coaches? What if student athletes, who create so much revenue by their play, were actually paid for it—and didn’t feel like they had to sell merchandise to find deals on cars? It’s easy, and even entertaining, to point to the hypocrisy of someone like Tressel, who lied through his teeth while writing books to teach people about responsibility and ethics. But the rot is much deeper than this. Tressel is the symptom, not the disease.

And, to add to what randy sue said........I am a believer in seeing the fan, for their role in sports, receive pay from the Bengals for having the courage to show up and the patience to sit through their games as bad as they play each year. Right Hermes?

The college stadiums hold more people than the professional ones could ever dream of filling for a game. 100k+ at OSU and that state to the north. Paul Brown only holds about 65k.