The Collegiate Indentured Servant

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, an indentured servant is a person who signs and is bound by indentures to work for another for a specified time especially in return for payment of travel expenses and maintenance.

When a student signs his agreement to attend college under having a scholarship for playing sports, it is on a yearly basis. This is a contract that states that the student attending will keep his scholarship if he agrees to the terms of the NCAA’s, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, policies of an amateur athlete. The NCAA states that student athletes are in fact amateur sports athletes. As amateur athletic players, the college athlete can not accept pay for playing and cannot attain any monetary value for their services on and off the field through their college career. This restriction also includes players not being able to get jobs while under scholarship or take handouts such as food from their coaches. If players violate the contract signed, they can be released from school and the program.
Is it fair that these athletes that compete in college sports, particularly in division-1 basketball and football, not get paid for playing for their school? Most would say that a student athlete is given the greatest gift of all….Knowledge. Getting a scholarship to go to school is great, but at the same time, these students are living on Ramen noodles because of the lack of funds to even get a bite to eat at McDonald’s with their fellow classmates. And let us not forget to mention, most players will not play their entire college career at one school or even finish college. You start to ask yourself if a scholarship for these students to go to school is all an amateur athlete needs?
Universities generate millions of dollars in revenue along with the NCAA from their student athletes; division-1 football and basketball in particular draw in the most money. Tyson Hartnet from the Huffington Post tells us “Recently, the NCAA and CBS signed a $10.8 billion television agreement over 14 years. The NCAA is also considered a non-profit company”(Hartnet). That is, colleges are able to make media contracts and endorsements that fund the college to pay their coaches, to buy equipment, and to fund other programs other than sports within the universities. Even though colleges pull in millions of dollars, like the NCAA, they are still a non-profit organization. What money they take in from athletics is equally spent at the institution. In the book Varsity Green, Mark Yost explains many ways of how money is being spent by organizations related to the NCAA. Non-revenue generating sports such as golf or swimming rely heavily on basketball and football to draw in the big money that it takes to keep other athletics available to colleges around the country. Some of the money generated by athletics go to building lavish training facilities, stadiums, and equipment which are very expensive, but are able to be available to student athletes because of their performance in the sport in which they represent their university. The NCAA has made colleges a brand name. They have done this by selling the rights to film sporting events to media giants, endorsements, licensing, etc.
As children playing sports in the backyard, many athletes grow up yearning to play in the NFL, NBA, MLB or any other professional league. However, the NCAA has made going professional in a sport almost inaccessible unless those athletes go thru the NCAA. To play in the NFL, athletes must be out of high school for at least three years or have gone to college. As for basketball there is a “one and done rule”. This means you have to be nineteen or out of high school for at least a year before you can enter the NBA. The question is, is a scholarship all that a college athlete should receive? Most of the top high school players are still highly sought after and recruited just to come into an organization and get a win. These coaches know there is a good chance their top high school recruits will probably leave after a year of playing, but that’s how you win championships right? But is this right?
If a child growing up playing football wishes to play for a professional team, then he must go to college. College is similar to a farm league through which players can showcase their talents, and they must go up the ladder to make the huge money professional sports have to offer. However, according to Tony Manfred,“Only one sport (baseball) had more than 2% of NCAA players go pro”(Manfred). This means that less than 2% of athletes in any other sport go on to play professional ball. Since 98% of student athletes must find a job after graduation, making going professional not a priority to most athletes, is why a college education is invaluable and more important in the eyes of the NCAA than giving monetary payments to the athletes. But what if the player doesn’t make the roster the next season or is released from the team? Is his or her education still the only payment that the student needs now that he is without a school?
Now the argument is that instead of being paid in money, the athletes are paid by getting a college education and a place to show off their skills as an athlete with aspirations of making it into the professional game that the individual player loves. But while attending the university that they have chosen, the athletes must live by the NCAA rules and by their schools’ athletic code of conduct. So, because of the strict NCAA restrictions listed above, some students end up not being able to eat or go out and enjoy their college experience, because they don’t have the money to enjoy the extras of being a college student amongst their peers. For example, Arian Foster, a superstar for the Houston Texans in the NFL and former University of Tennessee running back, stated in an interview for the documentary called Schooled: The price of playing college sports, "I called my coach and I said, 'Coach, we don't have no food. We don't have no money. We're hungry. Either you give us some food, or I'm gonna go do something stupid.' He came down and he brought like 50 tacos for like four or five of us. Which is an NCAA violation. But then, I walk up to the facility and I see my coach pull up in a brand new Lexus"(Foster).” Seeing their coach pull up in such a nice vehicle is almost like a slap in the face to these young athletes that work so hard. When the players go out with friends they have to watch what they do and what they say, because they are held to a higher standards than their peers they attend class with. They represent their school and have to act in a way that reflects that responsibility on and off the playing field. Being an amateur athlete is a full time job. Most student athletes go to early morning workout sessions. They then go to class until around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. After class, the athletes attend tutoring sessions in the afternoon, and up until 10 pm when it’s time to wind down and go to sleep, the students eat dinner and attend mandatory team meetings. In the eyes of most people, this makes up more time than most full time plus jobs. These students do so much and end up having to scrape up pocket change to do even the smallest things like eating something other than noodles. The fear of losing the opportunity to showcase their skills and remain in school is incentive enough to not make an issue of the situation at hand. You begin to ask yourself if the students are being exploited by the NCAA.
Some students who are recruited are not recruited for their performance in the class room, but only for their abilities on the court. Take for example, the U of NC. North Carolina has recently been investigated for the issue of “paper classes”. These are classes in which students do not have to attend class and turn in one paper that would equal to a page or a little more and receive their “A” for the class. These classes are made to keep players eligible to play, but this takes away from the college education that is supposed to be invaluable for the student and better than a pay check.
Not only do schools have “paper classes”, but also have majors that require far less study time with no real option of earning a high paying salary if the students do choose to graduate with their degree. When the NCAA was questioned about the scandal that has recently made huge headlines Sara Ganim writes, “The NCAA declined to sanction the university, saying the scandal was academic in nature, not athletic”(Ganim).For the organization to turn their head and put the blame on the academic side is a way of showing guilt for their actions in many people’s eyes. These classes that have existed are in the interest of the organization for generating revenue and not in the best interest of the student athlete. These kinds of classes are hurting our youth and future leaders by giving them an easy way to coast through college and play the sport they love with no way of truly getting a quality education. Mark Yost writes in his book Varsity Green ,”He found that freshmen football players had nearly four times as many D’s and F’s as A’s and B’s as the average student”(36). These are horrible statistics when the NCAA says that their students’ age getting a college education and that is more valuable than any dollar that could be earned. How is that possible when the students are not actually getting a quality education? The model that the NCAA has in place is being questioned by many and now are questioning if the athletes should be paid for their abilities on the field of play.
Northwester has started a players’ union to help to protect the rights of its amateur athletic programs. The APU or “All Players United” movement was created during the 2013 football season. Northwester, Georgia, and Georgia Tech displayed the hash tagged APU on their jerseys in support of the movement that is now taking place in schools to advocate for the rights of college amateur athletes. The group is not just speaking up for monetary means but also the union being formed by the students of Northwestern is going to give them a voice that provides improved conditions and contracts for the best interest of college athletes. NCPAnow.org states that the group has eleven major goals that include the following.

1. Minimize college athletes' brain trauma risks.
2. Raise the scholarship amount.
3. Prevent players from being stuck paying sports-related medical expenses.
4. Increase graduation rates.
5. Protect educational opportunities for student-athletes in good standing.
6. Prohibit universities from using a permanent injury suffered during athletics as a reason to reduce/eliminate a scholarship.
7. Establish and enforce uniform safety guidelines in all sports to help prevent serious injuries and avoidable deaths.
8. Eliminate restrictions on legitimate employment and players ability to directly benefit from commercial opportunities.
9. Prohibit the punishment of college athletes that have not committed a violation.
10. Guarantee that college athletes are granted an athletic release from their university if they wish to transfer schools.
11. Allow college athletes of all sports the ability to transfer schools one time without punishment.
    The NCAA is a nonprofit tax-exempt institution that draws in billions of dollars. The NCAA’s biggest money making event is the NCAA basketball tournament. Christine Romans from CNN According to ESPN.com’s Brian Bennett writes,”’The institution itself that's based in Indianapolis, makes money primarily through television rights to the March Madness basketball tournament. They get somewhere in the neighborhood of $770 million dollars a year. That constitutes around 90% of all of the revenue that goes to the NCAA,’ said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College”(Bennett). Alabama generated $123,796,841 in revenue and 123,370,004 in expenses in 2008. The money generated in revenue came from tickets, donations, the university, media rights, and branding. In return, the University of Alabama spent just as much on tuition, coaches, visitors, recruiting, team travel, games and marketing. All the money generated and spent goes untaxed since colleges are non-profit organizations. This kind of revenue would not be possible without the players. Media is a huge reason that institutions and coaches rely heavily on and forming a great sports program. Most funding in the majority of your Division-1 athletic programs comes from their basketball and football programs. Without a well oiled program, the schools would not have near the funding they receive for their institutions. So again I ask…Should college amateur athletes receive monetary compensation for their skills they provide on the playing field?
    Coaches are making millions from some institutions and their reason for such high pay is that there are only a handful of coaches that can make an elite program that can earn championships. You could look at the student athlete almost the same way. There are thousands that can play the game, but only a handful that can win championships. These athletes that are standout players that can change the dimension of the program should be seriously considered to get help through specific scholarships or should be paid in some way.
    In conclusion, the NCAA says they have the best interest at hand for the general well being of their athletes. But from much research it seems that the NCAA is in it for them. Our student athletes are receiving a college education, but if they are not going to attain a degree in a field in which they can apply and receive a career with, what’s the point? Students who put so much into their education and team sport and then are made to feel like they are exploited because they cannot earn compensation while on the field to enjoy their college experience or even eat, rubs many sports and college enthusiast wrong. It really comes down to, is it ethical to treat the players in the means at which the NCAA code of conduct is written?