This year, the Louisville Cardinals emerged as victors from the sixty-eight team field that comprised the NCAA men’s Division I basketball tournament, defeating the Michigan Wolverines in the final by a score of 82-76. However, the most striking moment of the tournament didn’t come during the final, but two rounds earlier, when the Cardinals played Duke in the round of the Elite Eight. In a gruesome clip that made headlines across the country, Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware went up to block a shot only to come down awkwardly on his right leg, suffering a compound fracture so violent that the snapped bone jutted out from his skin. Ware was immediately brought into surgery, and while his future remains unclear, the team physician asserted that the operation was successful and Ware would play again.
Ware’s situation, however, illustrates the perils of being a Division I student-athlete under current NCAA regulations. The only compensation Ware receives for his efforts on the basketball court comes in the form of a scholarship to the University of Louisville—but if his injury proves career-ending, his coach can choose to drop him from the scholarship. This would leave Ware to pay his own way through an education that costs $11,475 per semester. In addition, although the university covers Ware’s surgery as long as he is on scholarship, any medical bills accrued while not on scholarship would be the responsibility of his family, since student-athletes are not covered by workers’ compensation. A chilling example of this occurred in the 1991 case Waldrep v. Texas Employers Insurance Association: Running back Kent Waldrep, paralyzed from the neck down during a 1974 football game, was denied workers’ compensation on the grounds that he was not considered to be a full employee of Texas Christian University.
The reward for surviving such a brutal system? A grueling life that often consists of 6 a.m. workouts, a highly limited ability to enjoy a school’s academic resources, and consistent pressure to meet both academic and athletic standards. The designation of “student-athlete” seems insufficient considering the immense demands placed on these individuals. These are college students, facing all the adversity that normal collegiate life entails, who also work an intense, physical job that requires tremendous sacrifice and devotion. The greatest tangible reward that student-athletes can hope for would be four years of balancing these dual commitments with a potential shot at professional athletics after graduation. However, even the chances of the latter are slim, as 99.5% of college athletes don’t ultimately make their living by playing professional athletics. This is not to say that students participating in collegiate athletics don’t enjoy their sport, train hard, and have excellent and rewarding athletic experiences. However, the average student-athlete is placed under heavy demands, has little to no realistic expectation of being able to play professionally, and can lose their only form of compensation at the drop of a hat or the crack of a bone. Athletes such as Ware sacrifice hours a day training for a sport, which creates an industry that generates billions of dollars of which the athletes see no money. In fairness to student-athletes, we need to enact legislation that either justly compensates them for their athletic efforts or tones back the demands placed upon them.
In big-money sports such as football or basketball, student-athletes provide significant monetary value to their schools—and so should be paid accordingly. While the majority of athletic programs depend on subsidies from the school, student fees, or their state, billions of dollars are generated by income streams like fan attendance and commercial endorsements. College football and men’s basketball combined produce over six billion dollars in annual revenue of which athletes don’t see a dime. Even though the estimated market share of a Louisville basketball player such as Kevin Ware is said to be a few thousand dollars short of $1 million, student-athletes are denied appropriate payment from the colleges that make hundreds of thousands from their play. Additionally, they are prohibited from taking any gifts or monies from outside parties, precluding them from the lucrative commercial endorsements that already use their image.
To declare these capital-generating athletes ‘amateurs’, as the NCAA does, implies the collegiate athletics system is little more than indentured servitude that exploits the talents and physical capabilities of young, hard-working men and women. Student-athletes are essentially working a full job in addition to their academic studies, and deserve to be paid in accordance with the income they generate for colleges and universities around the country. However, the notion of paying student-athletes opens a complicated can of worms for universities. The NCAA has long maintained the tradition of amateurism, and the notion of paying student-athletes would seem a complicated and potentially problematic proposal.
However, a comparable transformation from amateurism to professionalism has actually occurred in the recent past. In one of the most compelling articles in favor of paying student-athletes, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch notes that the Olympics didn’t permit professional athletes to compete until 1978, and the sporting games have not suffered from this change. The athletes who participate are simply allowed to accept commercial endorsements and outside prize monies without endangering their eligibility. In the fall of 2012, Olympian track and field competitors from around the globe even began a movement to unionize in order to allow greater representation of athletes in the International Olympic Committee. The analogy isn’t perfect, but the example of the Olympics shows how a shift from pure amateurism doesn’t have to be damaging. Olympians are now given due recompense for their efforts and they have the ability to mobilize in order to have a voice in matters that most directly affect them. The same rights should not be denied to the premier young athletes in the nation.
But what of athletes that participate in sports that don’t produce revenue for their athletic departments? It does seem unfair to ask universities to pay participants in an athletic program that actually costs the school to keep viable. However, the legal definition of employee rests upon the working status of an individual, not how much income he or she produces—in other words, to declare one student-athlete an employee under the current system would be to declare every student-athlete an employee. One possible alternative for athletes in these non-revenue producing sports lies in the model currently employed at Division III institutions–which do not offer financial scholarships or monetary compensation for athletes. It is a modified version of that which is offered at some Division I schools, like Brown, which don’t give merit-based aid. which do not offer financial scholarships or any especial monetary compensation. At Division III schools, the number of practice hours and competitions is also heavily limitedAt these schools, the number of practice hours and competitions is heavily limited. Therefore, student-athletes experience a far less rigorous training schedule and endure less pressure to meet athletic expectations, as they aren’t competing for scholarship money. These athletes participate for sheer enjoyment of their sport, which should be the true meaning of collegiate amateur athletics. By sharply rolling back the athletic requirements placed on these athletic programs, the participating athletes would be clearly designated as amateurs, as opposed to the professional collegiate athletes who participate in sports that generate income.
At first glance, the utilization of this system would seem to conflict with Title IX, of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in any federally funded program. By paying only athletes that generate revenue in their sport, possible gender discrimination could occur, as men’s basketball and football programs are the main programs which produce net income. However, revenue-producing sports have a possible exemption; after all, if certain programs can create a profit, they would not be needing federal funds and so would not be forced to comply. The 1974 Tower Amendment was proposed as one such addendum to Title IX, excluding revenue-producing sports from Title IX regulations, but was rejected in committee. Reevaluation of it or a similar motion would allow athletes who create such billion-dollar enterprises such as the NCAA basketball tournament to profit from the fruits of their labor. This proposed remedy has been continually promoted by legal scholars, though reform attempts in this vein have proved unsuccessful.
The system proposed above would treat student-athletes in big-name sports as employees, and rightly so, for they contribute heavily to a system that generates massive revenue. Other athletes, in sports that are federally subsidized or cost the school money to keep viable, would have significantly decreased athletic requirements, allowing them to truly fulfill the status of an amateur. This dual system would recognize the major college sports for the professional programs that they are, while removing many of the major athletic demands on those who participate in smaller-name sports. This is not to say that these athletes lack the right to take their sport seriously or practice as they see fit; it simply removes many of the mandates and restrictions they have to abide by. Ultimately, considerations pertaining to collegiate athletics have to place the athlete first and foremost. After all, the entire system exists both for and because of their efforts.