The topic of paying college athletes has been coming up a lot lately. Currently, it is illegal to pay college players except for small stipends worth around a few thousand dollars. Of course, this does not include the tens of thousands of dollars that scholarship athletes receive. In reality, the schools are already paying them a lot of money.
Lets use a nearby university for our example. Duke University’s average GPA is 4.17, yet the requirements for student athletes are much lower. A great football player can get into Duke with a 3.3 GPA, which gives the athletic student an unfair advantage. If it weren’t for football, that kid would never get into Duke. It doesn’t mean he is dumb, he just would not get into Duke like 99 percent of the rest of the U.S. population.
Am I arguing against full ride scholarships to athletes? Absolutely not. These kids bring a lot of money to the university and should get a reward. Free education, free tutoring, free food, free boarding while travelling, free travel and much more seems enough to me.
Let’s break this down by cost. If you average out the costs to attend private, in state public and out of state public universities, it would be around $22,000. In Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football, each team is allowed 85 full ride scholarships to give up (partial scholarships are not allowed in football). Give 85 players $22,000 in scholarships, and you have spent $1.7 million. In 2010, a study found that FBS schools would spend $92,000 on each of their players. That’s a lot compared to just $13,600 on students. Take away the $22,000 from the 20 non-scholarships, and you have spent $1.4 million on them alone. Then add the 85 other players to the mix, which comes to around $7.8 million, giving you a grand total of $9.2 million. Of course, these are averages, so some teams spend less, and some spend more.
Now that was just football, which brings us to our next problem: how would you differentiate between sports? Alabama’s rowing team is not going to bring in the $120 million that the football team does. Those rowers can get partial scholarships, making their education less expensive. Do universities really need to pay extra to the rowers?
If a college paid only the players from the most profitable team, then all the other athletes would complain about not getting money. Then, colleges would have to have a system where players would get percentages based off how much money the team they played for brought in. Then, what if a college’s football team brought in the most money but couldn’t win any games? The undefeated squash team would then want more money based on how good they are. There are just too many variables to pay college athletes, therefore it should just be left the way it is now.
– By Tanner Althoff