*FAN SUBMISSION by Bobby Vernon of Miami, FL. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyVernon.*
Courtesy: Sporting News
NCAA Football’s popularity has never been greater than it is today. According to a study by Scarborough Research, 92.6 million, or 39% of adults, watched, attended or listened to a college football game during the 2011/2012 season, ranking the sport just behind Major League Baseball as the third most popular in America. Yet despite this tremendous rise and growth in popularity, the sport is under attack.
A number of books and articles have been written in recent years taking aim at the institution of college football, describing it as a corrupt, scandal-ridden system which takes advantage of unpaid and uneducated athletes; all for the purposes of lining the pockets of a small minority in charge. This article proposes to identify the real issue facing the sport today and offer a relatively simple solution which if implemented will provide the student athletes what they deserve, improve educational standards, and go a long way to repair college football’s damaged reputation.
The subject of inequality and exploitation of college football athletes is a much discussed and serious problem that needs to be addressed. The players receive no financial compensation and yet universities, administrators, coaches, broadcasters, merchandisers, networks, and a whole host of other businesses enjoy extremely large financial benefits and paydays. In November 2012, the USA Today reported that average head coaching salaries at major college football programs topped $1.6 million. According to university financial disclosures and summarized by ESPN, expenditures by the top 50 universities are in excess of $50 million annually, with the largest of schools spending in excess of $100 million each year on their athletic programs.
The common approach written and spoken about to address the exploitation of college football players has been to pay players for their talents, allowing them to share in some of the financial benefits generated from the sport. In fact the Chicago office of the National Labor Relations Board has recently ruled that Northwestern University football players meet the standards under federal guidelines to form a union. This gives Northwestern football players the legal right to form a union and begin negotiating for wages. The pay for play proposition as well as this recent ruling poses a much larger threat to college football than the current status quo and any true fan should oppose it.
Paying the players would cause irreversible damage to the sport whose popularity is largely based on its “amateur” status. Additionally, changing the athletes’ status from amateur to professional won’t actually solve the issue of exploitation, and may actually do more harm than good.
College football’s popularity is what it is because it is played by amateur student athletes who choose their schools based on a variety of criteria: school location, family legacy, academic considerations, relationships with coaches, players, rivalries, traditions, etc. If players are paid, money will become the number one, if not the only factor in determining which school they will attend and will undoubtedly trump these other considerations.
Courtesy: NY Times
Ohio State vs. Michigan, Miami vs. Florida State, Alabama vs. Auburn and the traditional rivalries and history of these matchups and many others will be changed completely. The passion which draws over 100,000 Buckeye fans to the games each week won’t be the same. Why? Because those fans won’t be rooting for student athletes who bleed scarlet and gray but rather professional athletes who play for the money. Games will lose meaning, passion, and eventually the fans.
In a January 2014 article CNN’s headline read “Some college athletes play like adults, read like 5th graders”. The article highlights the sad truth that many college football and basketball players enter college lacking necessary academic skills and leave the university without ever attaining an acceptable college-level education. The article referenced research conducted by CNN, which found that between 7% and 18% of revenue-sport athletes were reading at an elementary school level.
In the same article Billy Hawkins, an associate professor at the University of Georgia was quoted, “They’re graduating them. University of Georgia is graduating No. 2 in the SEC so they’re able to graduate athletes but have they learned anything? Are they productive citizens now? To get a degree is one thing, to be functional with that degree is totally different.”
It is stories like these which provide critics of college football, who question its place within American Universities, heavy ammunition and credibility. Scholarships are awarded to these student athletes and are defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a grant or payment made to support a student’s education, awarded on the basis of academic or other achievement.” Yet it is very well documented that far too many college football players are not provided what they were promised. They are used up on the football field and then cast out of the university with a worthless degree or no degree at all.
So why is this happening? Who is to blame? Many will point to coaches and administrators who selfishly demand the players forgo their education in pursuit of football greatness enhancing their own win/loss record and financial rewards. While it is true that coaches are demanding, the reality is that to be competitive today, players and coaches alike must dedicate most if not all of their waking hours to the game. Thus the real reason why college football players are not receiving the education they are promised is very simple….. Time. There isn’t enough of it.
According to a 2008 article by Brad Wolverton who writes for The Chronicle of Higher Education, an NCAA study found that college football players spend on average 44.8 hours per week on their sport. This includes film study, training room time, and “voluntary” workouts. Beyond training, the amount of study a player must do in today’s football schemes is enormous. An offensive or defensive playbook is typically longer than 300 pages and each week a scouting report on the opposing team is developed which can easily encompass another 50-100 pages.
Courtesy: Business Insider
Since there are twelve regular season games and as many scouting reports, a player can expect to study well over 1,000 pages of material each season and that doesn’t include film study. Some of the most feared classes in all of higher education like Organic Chemistry don’t have textbooks even half that size. How can we possibly expect these players to be able to perform their duties on the field while getting a proper education in the classroom at the same time? We shouldn’t!
So what needs to be done? Understanding the tremendous time demands on football players, the NCAA should allow and universities should gladly offer its football players an additional 2 years of full scholarship (tuition, room, board, fees, healthcare, tutoring, etc.) to be used exclusively for academic study. By doing this the NCAA and the universities accomplish several things. Firstly, the argument that players are exploited is diminished greatly as the athlete now has every opportunity to secure a meaningful college degree which will serve that student athlete for his entire life.
Secondly, this will go a long way to silence those who propose paying players which provides only a limited, short-term financial benefit and threatens the “amateurism” of the sport which is central to its popularity.
Thirdly, it answers critics who point to low academic achievement among college football players and therefore question football’s place in institutions of higher learning. Lastly, with enough time to secure a meaningful education, regulation on academic achievement and graduation rates will mean something and can be better measured and enforced.
With an additional two years of academic study, players and their parents will naturally want to know what they will receive from an academic perspective once their football playing days are over. No longer will tongue in cheek sales pitches about the prospects for an NFL career be the only thing recruits and their parents will focus on as there truly will be a dual reason for attending the school; that is playing football and securing a useful degree.
All programs will need to improve and showcase their academic credentials if they want to compete for the very best talent. And they will. Rest assured as soon as Alabama loses a prized recruit or two to Vanderbilt, Texas, or Duke because of academic reasons, you will quickly hear ground breaking on a new academic wing exclusively for players.
It is hard not to be a fan of college football. The rivalries and traditions that exist in so many games played around the country make for fantastic competitions and are a source of extreme delight for everyone involved, from players, to fans, to even the casual television viewer. The quality of college football games is tremendous thanks to extremely hard working and dedicated players, coaches, and administrators.
The players however do not share in the financial benefits produced by the sport as do the coaches and the administrators. Players are however promised an education in exchange for their time and effort and it is time the universities, the NCAA, and we as a nation acknowledge the injustice of the current system and ensure that these players are provided what they have fairly earned, a useful college education. The players simply need more time to achieve it. Give it to them and solve college football’s real problem. The players deserve it!
