Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG
As a Buckeye Fan, the last 9 months have been rough and I’ve got plenty to say about that. Interestingly enough however, Ohio State was joined by a dozen other schools around the country for players allegedly receiving improper benefits. These allegations put the “pay-for-play” discussion into the spotlight for most of the off-season.
I look at the “pay for play” discussion and college football and see two schools of thought. School #1 revolves around supplementing athletes income by providing them a modest payment to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars a semester. School #2 involves giving the athletes a piece of the money-pie served up (mostly) among the BCS conferences. I can summarize both schools using Obama 2012 campaign slogan’s initial acronym ‘WTF’ but I feel they are worth discussing. Each school brings to light another issue that will need to be resolved should college football - hell, college athletics - continue to exist. As a result, I’ve broken up the “pay-for-play” discussion into 3 posts:
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG” 9/11
“I’m Not Telling The Pistol Team Their Sport Is Useless” 9/18
“Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not” 9/25
“Fiscal Responsibility - Not Just For AIG”
Supplemental income of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars is not a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things but a college student can stretch that a lonngggggg ways. And for student athletes supplemental income is talking about $2500 spread out over the course of 15-18 weeks. You know how most students gather $2500 over the course of 15-18 weeks?
They get a j-o-b.
Pre-season and in-season responsibilities are a full-time commitment above and beyond classroom duties for student athletes. As many of these students are on a scholarship for their respective sport, I fully support dedication of 100% of their effort to their studies and athletic commitments during this time. Once the season is over their athletic commitments drop to a part-time job, or drop completely or at least should (more on this last point in a minute). This would be a great time to get a job and earn “a modest sum of money to cover living expenses - in the neighborhood of a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars”.
As an added bonus, unlike nearly all of their classmates, most of student athletes’ educational expenses are already covered. Cash from that part-time job need only be used to directly supplement their living expenses. While they’re at it, squirrel a little away for preseason and season commitments. Viola! Living expenses covered! As a matter of fact, I watched my roommate in college (Women’s Soccer @ OSU) and her teammates do exactly that. I call that fiscal responsibility and I doubt I’m the only one.
I’m am also sure I am not the only one whose heard the rumor that athletic commitments at high-profile institutions in revenue-generating sports are a year-round commitment. Sure the NCAA limits the official number of practices but there’s plenty of “volunteer” activities, practices, lifts, etc that make the commitment year-round. I agree that this would make it difficult, but not impossible, to get that job to supplement your income. (Some of us regular folk worked 40 hours a week year-round to pay for their school and didn’t bitch about not having enough money but I digress). However I am willing to find some semblance of sympathy if that commitment is so great that finding part-time work to supplement your living expenses is that restricted.
The NCAA and host institutions should work to limit the amount of off-season commitments instead of finding ways to pay all their athletes. I think a little extra monitoring may have additional benefits (see ESPN for a list of NCAA programs on the “you should have monitored your program more” shit list). And ya know what? I suspect this is the reason, this year-round commitment, the whole pay for play discussion has come about. You don’t hear about the men’s gymnastic team complaining about pay for play. You don’t read about the lacrosse team asking for a supplemental income. Quite frankly, 99.9% of student athletes are doing what is necessary to play the sport they love, go to their classes and live the college lifestyle. It’s the 0.1% of student athletes playing high-profile sports at the highest-profile institutions that are involved in this pay-for-play debacle.
Limiting off-season commitments also represents a sustainable path forward to supplement athletes income. Most athletic departments lose money each year, only a very select few make money. Where in budgets that lose money year in and year out do you expect to find a couple thousand dollars for the hundreds of athletes ? How do you expect to make a case to tax-payers for those state-institutions to supplement income when their poster children are buying tattoos? How do you keep an amateur-level playing field internally between sports and externally between institutions? Most academic institutions are already providing enough benefits to their student athletes above and beyond paying for the entirety of their education (see food, clothing, travel expenses, etc) - paying them more money should not be their burden.
All sports however can determine maximum commitments between pre-season, season and off-season regardless of sport - and can enforce them with a little help from the NCAA. If you ensure student athletes have the opportunity to supplement their income like everyone else, the pay-for-play discussion is over for 90% of that 0.1% of student athletes that give this article its purpose. And while you’re at it, you teach the student athletes a lesson in fiscal responsibility - lord knows we need as much of that among my generation as we can get. The remaining 0.01% of student athletes need an article all of themselves and I’ll talk about them in “Life, Liberty And The Pursuit of Happiness May Be Inalienable Rights - A College Scholarship Is Not”.
