College sports: Compensation

By Ed Piper

Count me for college athletes being allowed to receive compensation for the use of their images and from other sources.

Exhibit A: College sports are multi-billion-dollar enterprises. The greed and corruption among college administrators, athletic programs, and coaches are well-known and well-documented. To pretend that we are still back in the age of Jim Thorpe during which athletes played just for the love of the game is pretty unrealistic.

The greed doesn't justify the income by athletes. It only points out the imbalance.

Exhibit B: Years ago, a newspaper carried a story on a USC football player who was only eating one meal a day in the offseason, because he didn't have any money to buy more food.

If I hand athlete X a submarine sandwich, under present NCAA rules, I am in violation of regulations that originated a century ago and no longer make sense.

Yet, if a college student isn't on an NCAA team, he or she can work in some other activity during their school years and receive compensation. This doesn't make any sense.

Dabo Swinney, coach of Clemson's national champion football team, makes $9.3 million. Think of it. Nine-point-three million dollars. But he is vocal in opposing athletes receiving compensation for the use of their images (in video games, from autographs, etc.). How can this be?

The NCAA was extremely vociferous in its opposition to the California bill that was just signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. Swinney and NCAA moguls claim this will create "chaos". There already is chaos in college sports. Money is already being exchanged, millions are being donated, raised, received.

College sports leaders have long been feathering their nests with thousands, millions, now billions of dollars. This is big business. Thank goodness for things--at least in California--being brought more into line with this reality.

Student athletes are employed as servants. Slaves? I'm not going to claim that. The fruit of their labor goes to the colleges they play for.

I'm not for unionization of the athletes, as student athletes at Northwestern tried to do a couple of years ago.

But to cry wolf that this will mean the end of college sports as we know them? Please.

There are many reasoned voices that advocate for and favor college athlete compensation. I join them. I have thought this was the right thing for several years.