I heard Dan LeBatard, who hosts a radio show on ESPN Radio from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. local time talking about this situation of whether or not college athletes should get paid. He’s right,college athlete’s get exploited because they put in as much time as the pros, plus go to class and do not see one penny for their efforts, while at the division I level coaches and TV execs make millions off of these 18-23 year old kids. That’s wrong, but the alternative to that is much worse.
If you start paying these players (legally) it is basically going to turn into whoever is the highest bidder is where the player will go. Arkansas State football already has no chance to compete with Alabama, do you really think that gap should be wider? Here’s another way to look at it, the “parody in college athletics is at a premium right now, anybody can beat anybody with a few exceptions and that is because big schools don’t go after certain players because of their size or they don’t think that player is athletic enough. What if a division I school saw a division II player they really liked but they didn’t recruit him out of high school because of his size. In theory, division I schools would have more money to offer than division II’s so they could pluck division II’s clean. It would be a dog-eat-dog world and smaller schools wouldn’t stand a chance.”
If you would start to pay players for their services, much like pro sports, salaries would just continue to rise and then all of the things we love about college athletics, the pageantry and the tradition of programs wouldn’t mean anything and would be all about who has the most money, do you really want college athletes making millions, while other students are broke?
Making college athletes essentially be professionals and go to class without getting paid a cent is unethical and wrong. But, it is indeed what’s best for business.