J. Andrew Lockwood
Senior Editor / Columnist
Getting through college with a few bucks in your pocket is tough. It’s the only time in your life when you’re expected to pay someone to work for them. Think about it. You’re out $40,000 every year because you choose to go to Mercer. If you worked harder or were lucky enough, you’re in Macon on a scholarship. But what if you’re a college athlete? Your jersey represents the school and each and every time you give it your all on the court/field, you’re merely paying for your stay.
While athletes at Mercer are a different breed than the ones at say, Georgia or Florida, they still bring in revenues to the school. The men’s basketball team is compensated tens of thousands of dollars when they play big time opponents on the road. You think Coach Hoffman wants his team to get shellacked by UCLA or Kansas every year? No way, but it sure does help pay the bills and keep the lights in the arena.
Specifically, I’m talking about the big schools in the larger conferences in the NCAA. It’s the Florida States, Oklahomas, and the Michigans, the schools that rake in the dough with championship after championship. Take for example the 2009 FedEx BCS National Championship Football game between Florida and Oklahoma. Both teams saw a projected payout of $17.5 million dollars to their respective conferences, the SEC and Big 12. That money, in turn, is funneled down and split between the schools in the conferences. Once the schools get the money, they can pay the hefty salaries of their big time coaches and reinvest the money in their teams via recruiting.
$17.5 million is big money for one game, but how about the new 15-year television deal the SEC conference has with ESPN. The historic deal is worth $2 billion, making it one of the biggest, if not the largest television contract in sports history. And while the huge contract means more accessibility for SEC fans through the ESPN networks, it also means that the conference and the schools make a pretty penny off of their sports programs.
With all of this money being thrown around college sports, where do the athletes come in? What kind of profits do the star quarterbacks and point guards see? None. After all, they’re student athletes…they’re supposed to just get through school and be happy.
In 2009, 69 NCAA head football coaches are making more than $1 million a year (with USC’s Pete Carroll at the top of the list at $4.4 million). Even if you coach an awful team, it seems you’re still well compensated (i.e. San Jose State’s Dick Tomey makes $460,000 a year…91st on the list). However, do coaches win ballgames? Of course they stand on the sideline and coach, encouraging their players to execute the right plays, but when it has always been up to the players, the student-athletes, to win games.
My point is not that players need to be necessarily compensated, but that the NCAA recognize who is funding the college athletics cash cow of the 21st century. The watchdog institution wants to hammer down any athlete or school that makes the slightest mistake or that infracts one of their imposed rules.
Take for example the Alabama football textbook debacle this summer. Football players were signing up for more classes than they actually took, dropping the class, and then selling the textbooks for money. The only issue was that the textbooks came from Alabama’s athletic department for free. These athletes were on scholarship and while they may have found a loophole in the system, who can really blame them for exploiting it? After all, what person wants to be poor while they’re at the pinnacle of their athletic career? Instead, the NCAA wanted to do a complete investigation to implicate all those found guilty of ‘textbook fraud.’
Was it the right thing for Alabama players to do? Probably not. While the morality of the situation is another discussion, it is easy to see that things are somewhat backwards in this age of college athletics.
Just this past week Oklahoma State’s Dez Bryant was the subject of a NCAA investigation for improper contact with Deion Sanders. Improper contact? Even if Sanders was trying to set up Bryant with one of his agents for the wide receivers future days in the NFL, why should the NCAA really care? They’re the ones making money from college football ultimately.
For an analogy’s sake, take governments within the past several hundred years. The leaders with tight control of their countries usually saw their rule collapse when they hoarded the countries resources. I’m not saying the NCAA is the next Hugo Chavez, but it’s a question that should be addressed. Where should this money, these huge revenues, ultimately end up? Jerseys, license plates, TV deals and t-shirts will continue to be sold, but if you knew where the money was really going…would you still buy it?
J. Andrew’s Bold College Football Predictions
Thursday, Oct. 22
FSU 24, North Carolina 21
Friday, Oct. 23
Rutgers 21, Army 34
Saturday, Oct. 24
Texas 20, Missouri 6
Clemson 21, Miami 41
Oklahoma 32, Kansas 27
Georgia Tech 35, Virginia 9
Oregon 16, Washington 17
Tennessee 17, Alabama 38
Air Force 33, Utah 31
TCU 12, BYU 17
Penn State 23, Michigan 25
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