This school year, the NCAA will allow athletes to earn money from their likeness. That’s a good, positive change that will reward top athletes for their hard work while promoting their respective sports and teams.
However, some have advocated for NCAA teams to pay the players directly. That includes former Sports Illustrated journalist Jeff Pearlman, former New York Times opinion columnist Joe Nocera, former Slam magazine editor Russ Bengtson, and the Mountain Party of West Virginia (a Green Party-affiliated group), among many others.
it’s cool seeing college athletes sign deals and I’m happy they can finally make money but this ain’t over until the colleges themselves—who make the most money off them—have to pay too
— Russ Bengtson (@russbengtson) July 1, 2021
✅ Reduce class sizes and caseloads.
✅ Require pay for college athletes.#InternationalYouthDay (9/10)— Mountain Party of West Virginia (@mountainpartywv) August 12, 2021
Unfortunately, paying college athletes is a terrible idea.
Most college sports programs don’t make money. Rather, they lose millions of dollars per year. So if schools decided to pay college athletes, they would lose even more money. If a college football team spends, say, $3 million on 100 players, $30,000 apiece, that money has to come from somewhere. The typical NCAA Division 1 athletic program with a football team lost about $14.4 million in 2016. The only college sports for which revenue can outweigh costs are Division 1 men’s basketball and football, but those athletic programs still tend to lose a ton of money overall.
That said, it makes no sense for schools to throw even more money at these athletic programs. They’d have to hike student fees and tuition to make up the difference, and at public colleges and universities taxpayers may end up taking on some of that added burden. When one thinks of the functions of government, funding college field hockey and swimming teams doesn’t come to mind. That doesn’t exactly fall in the same category as police, military, and roads.
If anything, schools should look at either cutting athletic programs or, at a minimum, moving down conferences and saving money. It worked for the University of Hartford. The school will save about $10 million per year because it went from Division 1 to Division 3. There are about 7,000 students at that school, so if the school were to pass those savings on to the students, it would save them about $1,400 per year. That’s more than $5,000 over four years.
If any proposals to pay college athletes a direct salary come up, fiscally responsible politicians need to oppose them. The country should have fewer college athletic teams, not incentives for more.
If the talent college athletes have is worthy of a salary, allow the market to take care of it through paid sponsorships. And if there is a market for a profitable professional sports league that can pay college-aged athletes, that’s great. If not, nothing needs to change.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
