The Junkyard Blawg has moved!
Along with the other ajc.com blogs, the Junkyard Blawg has moved over to WordPress, where the blogging and commenting experience promises to be better. Join us over at the new WordPress version of the Junkyard Blawg by clicking on the link below.
AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2006 > May > 03
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Play for pay?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In today’s AJC, NCAA President Myles Brand addressed the issue of paying stipends to student-athletes by saying he supports making scholarships cover the full cost of a college education but not “paying” college players.
Currently, he noted, the average athletic scholarship falls a couple of thousand dollars short of covering that “full cost.” As he put it, “supplying the support that’s necessary to be a successful student is very different from paying student-athletes.”
I can understand the reasoning behind the stipend argument — after all, college athletics is literally making millions of dollars off the backs off players in the revenue-producing sports (football and basketball), but the players don’t get a share.
On the other hand, making money is not supposed to be what the athletes are there for. Sure, some of the more talented ones see college sports as a training way station on the road to a career as a professional athlete, but these are still schools, not minor leagues. Students are there to get an education that’s being paid for by the school in exchange for their athletic talents.
Of course, a stipend of even just a few thousand wouldn’t be the same as a salary, the argument goes. It would just help student-athletes make ends meet.
But as Brand noted, the idea that student-athletes can’t afford to “buy a pizza or you can’t buy a winter coat, it’s just false.”
We all know what’s going to happen if you pay them a lump-sum stipend to spend as they see fit. While some kids will use it the way it’s intended, others will spend it on fancier wheels or jewelry or even something illegal. And maybe get themselves and the program in trouble. Heck, you give ‘em a championship ring and some of them turn around and sell them on eBay.
I’m all for making sure a full-ride scholarship really covers a full ride. Just not in a BMW!
What do you think?
BULLDOG BITES: Wow, Perno’s Pooches really turned things around in the past week. After losing two of three to Tennessee and then another to Western Carolina (a team they’d whomped earlier in the season), they upset the nationally ranked Insects from North Avenue and then went down to Gainesville and swept the Gators! Georgia, ranked 25th in the latest USA Today/ESPN coaches poll, is back home at Foley Field this weekend for three games against the division co-leader Gamecocks — 7 p.m. Friday, 4:06 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free for UGA students, and it sure would be great to see a packed house. So far this season, the Dogs have been a lot stronger on the road in the SEC than at home. This is a good time to change that… . I know Georgia fans’ thoughts and prayers are with ace water girl (and head coach’s wife) Katharyn Richt after her recent surgery for cervical cancer. The prognosis is for full recovery, the coach says. Hope to see her on the sideline again come September!
