By Clay Weas | University of Iowa
What if I told you there was a company that makes nearly a billion dollars a year, $989 million to be exact, pretty much all off of free labor. That company exists and it is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). College sports is a big business, however, the athletes who are making the business so successful don’t see any of the money they are making for their schools. It seems unfair, so why doesn’t the NCAA do anything about it?
Coming to Iowa I knew sports were a huge thing and the people here treat our athletes like superstars. However, I didn’t think within my first year here I would have classes with the likes of Peter Jok and Anthony Clemmons from the basketball team and CJ Beathard from football. Being a Sports and Recreational Management major has given me the opportunity to meet a few of these players and get an inside look at what it would be like to manage being a student-athlete. Just managing classes is hard enough for a 19-year-old. Add practice and traveling for the sport, and it seems almost impossible. Student-athletes realistically spend about 40 hours per week doing sport-related activities, which leaves very little time to hold up their student part of the bargain. These kids are working harder than most adults without any of the payment that they deserve. I understand that it isn’t as simple as just paying the athletes, but something needs to be done in order to fairly compensate these athletes for putting in a tremendous amount of work in their athletic fields and still coming to class and putting work in the classroom as well.
College athletes have never been paid and many people think that it should stay that. Some people think that giving them a scholarship and an opportunity to go to school for free is a fair compensation. I use to agree with this, however after seeing these athletes in class I no longer think it is enough. The second semester of my freshman year I had a class with two basketball players. During their season, they missed class on multiple occasions due to their away games. It’s not fair to compensate them with free tuition when they don’t even get to take full advantage of it because of their busy schedule.
All of the Division 1 athletes I have talked to think that they deserve to be paid for their contributions and hard work. My older brother, Connor Wease, was a walk-on for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) basketball team. I talked to a few of his teammates about this subject and they all think it’s about time that college athletes get paid, because of the work they put in, on and off the court. In addition, Connor said, “Why is it fair that students can major in Dance or Music, but athletes cant major in their sport.” This is an intriguing idea: give credits to student-athletes for participating in their sport. This doesn’t fix the problem completely, but it could be a compromise for over-working these student-athletes.
Paying college athletes is a very controversial issue in today’s society. I use to be against the idea of paying student-athletes, but within the last year my opinion has changed dramatically. Hearing stories first hand from my brother, as well as witnessing the struggle of an athlete trying to balance their school work and their sports obligations helped shape my opinion. My wish is that most of the naysayers could experience what I have.