#SHOULD COLLEGE ATHLETES BE PAID PROFESSIONAL#
The NCAA has always held amateurism up as a lofty ideal which is what differentiates college athletics from professional sports.
NCAA is decided in Jenkins’ favor, the fundamental spirit of college sports will change. If paying student-athletes becomes legal, which would occur if Jenkins vs. The debate surrounding pay-for-play in college athletes and the legal challenges therein lead many to wonder about the future of collegiate athletics. In addition, universities would be liable for student-athletes’ conduct as well as for benefits and workmen’s compensation. Many, however, disagree with this perspective and question if universities can afford to pay student athletes in the first place, since most of their profits are reinvested into the athletic program itself, and that such revenues would be open to taxation. They, however, acknowledge this to be a perhaps unpopular opinion and is also not supported by current law. Robert McCormick, who was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board under Jimmy Carter, says “There are more demands put on these young men than any employee of the university,” and “These young men are laboring under very strict and arduous conditions, so they really are laborers in terms of the physical demands on them while they’re also trying to go to school and being required to go to school.” According to him and his wife, both now law professors at Michigan State University, these long and arduous practices should allow Division I student-athletes to unionize and negotiate their own hours, compensation, and working conditions. Many legal experts and advocates see this as potential for a positive change. NCAA, led by renowned sports attorney Jeffrey Kessler, will challenge limits placed on compensation for student athletes, and, if successful, has the potential to fundamentally reshape collegiate athletics by removing the amateurism that, rightly or wrongly, defines the industry. Two Ninth Circuit judges wrote that “The difference between offering student-athletes education-related compensation and offering them cash sums untethered to educational expenses is not minor it is a quantum leap.”
#SHOULD COLLEGE ATHLETES BE PAID FULL#
The NCAA appealed this decision to the Ninth Circuit Court, which maintained that student-athletes are entitled to a scholarship covering the full cost of attendance, but rejected the ruling that athletes are also entitled to payment outside of educational expenses. She stated that universities would now be able to provide a full scholarship including cost of living expenses, meals, and housing to athletes, as well as pay them up to 5,000 a year for the use of their likenesses. In 2014, District Judge Claudia Wilkes ruled in favor of O’Bannon, and that the NCAA’s stance on not paying student-athletes violates anti-trust laws and constitutes an unreasonable restraint on fair trade and competition. In 2009, Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA star basketball player, filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA in order to secure payment for the use of athletes’ names, images, and likenesses (NIL). The legal challenges to the NCAA are still underway in recent times as well. Indeed, according to the NCAA bylaws, the student-athlete is “one who engaged in athletics for the education, physical, mental, and social benefits he derives therefrom, and to whom athletics is an avocation.” A central component to this viewpoint is that student-athletes are amateurs, which is what differentiates college sports from professional leagues. According to the Aspen Institute, this classification was created for self-serving reasons on the part of the NCAA: if athletes performing at a high level were considered students first and athletes second, the payment of workmen’s compensation benefits could be avoided. This ruling was influenced by the creation of the term “student-athlete” by Walter Byers, the NCAA’s first executive director, in the 1950s. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Dennison’s college was “not in the football business” and as such, was not required to pay. The debate over compensation for student-athletes began in 1955 when the widow of Ray Dennison, who died of a head injury while playing football for Fort Lewis A&M, filed for workmen’s compensation death benefits. Indeed, the time athletes put in often resembles a full-time job, with grueling conditioning that many argue interferes with their studies. As national collegiate sports becomes an ever larger and more lucrative industry, a debate has been brewing over whether the athletes that compete at the highest levels should be paid for their time and the revenue they provide for their universities.