Should Athletes Be Paid to Play in College?

Intercollegiate athletics is an excellent public relations and fund raising arm for colleges, while providing education and training to future professional athletes. College football is one of the main fund raising arms and it helps to fund all athletic programs. At major conferences like the Big 12, Big 10, and SEC (South Eastern Conference), college football programs can bring in millions of dollars yearly. However, for some reason there are people that think collegiate athletes are considered amateurs and therefore, should not be compensated.

"Even if born of the best of intentions, pay for play is the worst of ideas, ranking right up there with the Edsel, Enron accounting and the notorious Vietnam rationale, 'We must destroy the village to save it.' ... If we begin to equate a student-athlete's play with the recompense pocketed every month, we have skidded to the bottom of a very slippery slope."

Robert Hemenway is just one of many that think paying a player is bad idea, but at the time he made his statement Mr. Hemenway was the highest paid university chief executive in the regents system. Division 1 college football does not have a playoff system like most major and minor sports; instead the champion is crowned by a combination of computer rankings and human voters. This system is called the BCS (Bowl Championship System). In this system there are a total of five major bowls. There is the Orange Bowl in Florida, the Sugar Bowl in Louisiana, the Rose Bowl in California, and the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona. The fifth bowl is the championship game which rotates between these four bowls and is played one week after the traditional game. In the current system there are six big conferences, SEC, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big East, Big 12, and the Pacific (PAC) 10. There are the non-big six conferences, Mountain West Conference (MWC), Western Athletic Conference (WAC), Conference USA, Mid-American, and the Sun Belt. There are also three teams that are not associated with any conference and they are called Independents, Notre Dame, Army, and the Naval Academy. The BCS simplistic design is that the big six conferences have the best chance of playing in the BCS bowl games, which causes a dispute because of the huge difference in the payout between the big-six and non-big six conferences. In 2010, the BCS paid out $142.5 million of revenue from the 5 major bowls. Here is the breakdown of the pay-outs:

2010 BCS Payouts

Big Six conferences

SEC $22.2 million

Big Ten $22.2 million

ACC $17.7 million

Big East $17.7 million

Big 12 $17.7 million

Pac-10 $17.7 million

Total $115.2 million

Non-Big Six conferences

Mountain West $9.8 million

Western Athletic $7.8 million

Conference USA $2.8 million

Mid-American $2.1 million

Sun Belt $1.5 million

Total $24 million

Other recipients

FCS conferences $1.8 million

Notre Dame $1.3 million

Army $100,000

Navy $100,000

Total revenue distribution $142.5 million

The players receive none of that money, but the University Presidents, Athletic Directors, and Coaches are paid in the millions. Sports writer Bill Plaschke wrote "Colleges should not play players. Colleges cannot pay players. To do so would hurt the very athletes supposedly being helped, devaluing intercollegiate sports until they're not worth the paper that a freshman linebacker's contract is printed upon." In his summation, college football players would sign contracts like a professional player and be subject to negotiations and lawyers. However, a full scholarship that is offered