Discussion
There was a time when playing college football or other sports was something young people did because it was fun and because it took some skill to make the teams. A person on the football team was important, a sort of hero to his classmates. Over time, of course, professional sports became a huge industry, and college sports started to become big business as well. Bets were placed and large amounts of money changed hands at college bowl games; universities and colleges were known for their teams rather than their academics, and endowments sometimes came the way of those institutions whose teams won regularly. Colleges made a lot of money from sports, but the athletes themselves saw little or none of it. The situation is infuriating to athletes and one is doing something about it. Ramogi Huma is a former linebacker for UCLA who has organized a group called Collegiate Athletes Coalition (Davis 46). It is the aim of the CAC to get the NCAA to “treat them like the highly skilled workers they say they are” (Davis 46). Davis notes that this is going to be an uphill battle, since the NCAA controls every aspect of college sports, and his group is a relatively small one. But he points out that college athletics today are brutally unfair to those who play the sports. He and his group are demanding “stronger safety guidelines for practices, health coverage for all sports-related injuries, better life insurance benefits, and looser restrictions on outside employment” (Davis 46). Huma says that many people resent the athletes’ complaints, saying they got their education paid for and have no right to complain (Davis 46). But Huma says these people don’t understand that “big-time college sports is a competitive, full-time job. Under the current system we don 't have any say in what happens to us" (Davis 46). Under the current guidelines for awarding Division I scholarships, the only things covered are “room, board, and tuition, which still leaves expenses estimated at $2,000 a year” (Davis 46). In the meantime, student athletes are “expected to carry a full class load while devoting 20 hours a week to their sport--a rule that everyone agrees is flagrantly, and widely, flouted” (Davis 46). The trade off for playing sports is “supposed to be a diploma, or even a professional career,” but few college athletes go on to play professionally, and few graduate with any kind of degree (Davis). David Meggyesy, who played football in college and did go on to the pros, calls the system “terribly unfair,” noting that college athletes are “used to generate huge sums of money, and all they get in return is a degree in basket weaving. I can 't think of any industry whose workers are as exploited" (Davis 46). The greatest problem of course is the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) itself, which is virtually unregulated and which “now controls every facet of college sports and governs players ' lives from recruitment to graduation” (Davis 46). It also acts as both “sheriff and judge,” enforcing regulations and levying penalties with no oversight (Davis 46). It operates from a “plush headquarters” that the State of Indiana built for it, and it makes “about $357 million in annual revenues, largely from televisions …show more content…
If someone wants to give their son or daughter a car, take them out for a meal, or give them some money for expenses; that’s fine (Looney). But if the student is an athlete, he cannot accept any of these gifts—despite the fact that, as noted above, his scholarship, if he has one, leaves him $1500-$2500 per year short of money for living expenses (Looney). The idea of college athletes being innocent young people playing for love of the game is an archaic way of thinking; it’s no longer the 1940s, and with the entrance of big money into sports, that innocence was lost (Looney). Now, since they work so hard and have none of the privileges of the other students, it’s time to pay these athletes