The slow, inevitable march toward paying NCAA athletes their market worth took a couple small steps forward: a settlement in a lawsuit brought by players against video-game players for using their likenesses, and the SEC's threat to form its own division with the other so-called Big 5 conference schools in large part so they can throw a few more dollars to athletes.
There are no good arguments against paying players their market worth but here are the five dumbest I've heard:
1. Players are already paid plenty
This is the one where deep thinkers tout the "free" education for athletes as well as other perks including food, boarding, travel, athletic training, medical care, etc. It also tends to include some self-pitying lament about how the average student takes on a bunch of loan debt so the athletes should feel "lucky" to get what they have and shut up. (That dumb argument is even offered up by a college administrator who makes $900,000 a year.)
The stupidity of this line of thinking is staggering because obviously athletes don't receive a scholarship or anything else from the school for "free." Athletes receive those things in exchange for their labor—and in the case of top-division basketball and football athletes that labor helps generate enormous revenues. The athletes are paid but NCAA schools conspire to artificially limit that compensation (so far with the blessing of corporate-friendly courts).
As soon as the athletes can’t provide that labor the “free” stuff suddenly disappears. No more tuition money, training, medical care, or travel (that last one is especially ridiculous as an example of athlete "perks," as if the teams are sending players on exotic vacations instead of taking them places so they can work). It almost sounds as if the players are employees, huh?
As for your student loans, unless you generated revenue or some other value for the school beyond what it costs the school to educate you, then you are unlike the athletes who played major college football and basketball. If you did make your school money and still ended up with student loans, then you got screwed, too.
2. The schools don’t have the money to pay salaries to athletes
When it comes to the big-time college and football programs (and that’s really who we are talking about in this whole debate) this claim is laughable on its face.
How can anyone make this argument at the same time as costs associated with big-time athletics continue to soar? Somehow athletic departments have the money to spend on increasing salaries for coaches and administrators, facilities, recruiting budgets, etc., but no money to spend on more compensation for athletes?
If it comes to pass that athletes are allowed to seek compensation on a free market, then it won’t mean increased costs for schools (unless they chose to spend more); it will mean shifted costs. Basic economics dictates that the total expenditures will stay the same but the distributions will change.
In other words, paying athletes their market worth will mean less money for management (coaches and administrators), facilities, recruiting, etc. and more money for athletes. That explains why coaches and administrators don't want to pay athletes their true worth.
3. There is no way to figure out how much to pay athletes
Yeah, because how in the heck does anyone in this country figure out how much to pay workers? Oh, that’s right, it’s called free-market economics.
Again, athletes aren’t allowed to participate in that market because NCAA schools collude to artificially limit their compensation. End that exploitive system and athletes will be paid in the same way as nearly all other Americans: whatever the market will bear.
For some athletes, a full scholarship (or less) will be enough. The better athletes will command much more beyond that. The schools will have to decide if they want to collectively bargain with the athletes and seek some kind of salary restrictions in exchange for minimum compensation and other benefits and protections.
This is how it works in the real world.
4. Paying players will increase the gap between the haves and have-not programs
Sure it will, but so what? That’s already happening because of the costs mentioned above. Also, the vast majority of the top players already sign with those handful of schools who provide the best chance to
But the main reason there’s a gap between the so-called Big 5 conferences and the also-ran leagues is money. The Big 5 teams can spend more on costs than the others because they make more revenue, with TV contracts representing the biggest difference.
If the lesser Division I teams are not able to get in the Big 5 club (they aren't) and can’t afford the costs to compete at the highest level (they can't) then they will have to compete in a lower division. Or they could sue the Big 5 conferences on antitrust grounds.
5. The unions will ruin everything
It's easy to figure why the NCAA doesn't want its players to unionize. Its member schools are just fine with the status quo. Administrators, coaches and staff get as big of a piece of the pie as they can negotiate while the athletes who are largely responsible for the size of that pie have their portions limited by the cartel-enforced rules.
But this argument also is offered up by low-information reactionaries who have been trained to respond like Pavlov's dog at the mere mention of certain words and "union" is one of them. They hear that Northwestern players have linked up with the United Steelworkers (in Chicago!) and giddily predict that the players will end up destitute while the union bosses and lawyers make out like bandits because, socialism!
This argument isn’t worth many words to dismiss. Just note that the players in all of the major professional leagues are unionized and none of them appear to be worse off because of their memberships. They also seem to be committed capitalists.
