Why?: The NCAA Handles Their Student Athletes Fair…Somewhat

Due to March Madness, the Why series was on a little bit of a hiatus, but has returned as we take a look at a sports politics topic that is paying student athletes.

Previously, we took a look at Why Houston was considered underrated and how they weren’t getting the attention they deserved. Make sure and check out that article as well as our Instagram page @redcupcollegesports.

Before you come at me with pitchforks and telling me how wrong I am in every single way, hear me out. Especially over the past couple of months, paying athletes have become the talk of the College Sports community.

Whether it be due to the March Madness or a big time bowl game, tons of people go to the keyboards and rage about how athletes that spend over hundreds of thousands of hours of perfecting their craft aren’t getting rewarded through cash.

Personally, I think the NCAA outside of one thing are doing it the right way. but both sides of the story have valid counterarguments. Since that is the case, we’ll look at the situation from both perspective and give the audience an opinion.

NCAA’s Access of Money & Denial Of Player Endorsements

The NCAA is technically set out a database for if they were to pay players, there would be a cap hold. Similar to NBA, Teams couldn’t go over their cap hold and they would vary depending on the sport. This system would have the CFB cap hold at $3.7 Million and CBB would be somewhere in the range of half a million dollars.

But the NCAA made $11 Billion dollars over the past year. That’s the first place where pro-pay athletes go to in saying that the NCAA is a corrupt business (which is a fair assessment). The NCAA also has to use that money towards marketing and buying out buildings to play their events in and millions and millions of dollars of investments.

Another thing that came into the news that shook the College world not too long ago was Donald De La Haye. Donald was a kicker for UCF and was ruled ineligible after refusing to demonetize his videos on his YouTube Channel. He was making profit off the videos and for that, the NCAA went out for him.

I personally don’t agree with this decision and think that if the players can get money off their personal brand and not from the University, then it should be allowed.

Student-Athletes Technically Already Get Paid.

With full ride scholarships, Student-Athletes already get paid in that from café food to books and dorms (apartments), student athletes get funds. Especially for kids that have better GPA’s and are smarter in general that still have to pay for their ride (without scholarships).

When you sign that letter of intent to accept the scholarship and go to that school, you are essentially signing up to give a ton of your time into that sport and spending 70-75% of your free time on training to not get extra compensation.

Not all student-athletes get full ride scholarships, so this doesn’t apply to necessarily everyone, but it is a luxury that the full ride players get. Also, if you ever have, go check out a College Football player’s Instagram page and see what kind of vehicle they are driving.

Based off of that alone, I think it’s already happening, but to a selected few from each university and the ones that aren’t getting that compensation are firing back and are the leaders of this charge.

Brands Are Getting Involved

This was apparent during College Basketball last year. On September 27, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation the and the office of the United State Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrest of 10 people, including assistant coaches Anthony Bland, Chuck Pearson, Emmanuel RIchardson and Lamont Evans and Adidas executive James Gatto.

They were all charged for fraud including bribery, money laundering and wire fraud. The schools implicated in the initial announcement were Arizona, Auburn, Louisville, Miami, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, and Southern California.

Ever since it’s happened, it’s been kind of swept under the rug and something Adidas doesn’t want to talk about. The big ones were Arizona’s Deandre Ayton getting paid $100,000 to facilitate Ayton’s commitment, as well as North Carolina State’s Dennis Smith Jr. receiving $43,500 from ASM Sports.

In the end, I personally think the players shouldn’t get paid as getting a free education and are set up for the rest of your life is the ultimate prize. I do hesitate in that I do believe that players should be given the ability to create a brand for themselves and should get compensation from their fans or a Youtube channel income.

If Zion was able to run a Youtube channel, he would already have millions of subscribers and would be set before he even stepped on a NBA court. It will be years until the NCAA will either take it into serious consideration or give an answer.

I do not think they will change anything right now and the furthest I think they go is giving players the chance to make their own brand and make money off of that. Make sure and leave your thoughts down below and check back next week for the next edition of the “Why?” series.

Image Credit: http://www.sportingnews.com/us/ncaa-basketball/news/2016-ncaa-tournament-final-four-schedule-teams-tv-date-time-championship-game-location/p1rk3xia73oq1no592nqq97mr

---