By Alex Valle — Staff Writer
The NCAA reached a milestone after the completion of the 2016-2017 school year.
According to ESPN, the NCAA made over $1 billion in revenue for the first time ever. However, many athletes that contribute to this now billion-dollar industry will never see any compensation for their extremely hard work.
In an article released by CBS News in 2013, it was reported that most athletes sacrifice on average 35-40+ hours a week to their selected sport.
This amount of time is typically allocated for work for the normal college student, but being an athlete eliminates any opportunity for student-athletes to work a normal job.
These students have no extra time to make money to support themselves. They are put under tremendous pressure to perform in the classroom and during game time.
The downside to this is that there is no system set up by the NCAA to pay these athletes for their time.
They are profitable, yet monetarily struggling every day.
All athletes should be paid for their work, but the system should work similarly to professional sports. They should be paid based on the amount of money that they bring in.
There should be a minimum that all athletes are required to get paid because they are being used as profit for the NCAA, but not all athletes should be paid equally.
For example, the University of Alabama made over $47 million in profit after the 2016 football season. In contrast, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Jose State brought in roughly $1.5 million from top football programs in 2018.
SJSU gets paid a certain amount of money from top-college programs to play them in these revenue games. Over the years, this has helped the football program tremendously financially and with exposure.
Football players from SJSU should not be paid the same as players at Alabama, but all players should receive at least the same base pay for their work.
On the other hand, if there are rules set up for these athletes to not go directly from high school to the pros, then they shouldn’t be able to make the same amount of money as professional athletes.
One big example of this is Duke’s basketball superstar freshman Zion Williamson.
The NBA has a rule that requires players out of high school to attend at least one year of college or to gain experience from an overseas team for a year before entering the draft.
Williamson is an outstanding basketball player and one of the most exciting prospects since Lebron James. He could have easily made millions of dollars in endorsements during his freshman year at Duke.
Since these rules are in place, there should be a salary cap for the amount of money that is paid to these athletes.
There shouldn’t be people who are making millions of dollars off of their schools’ athletic program because it will undermine the experience of receiving an education.
Although there is a range of salary that should be established for these athletes, the NCAA should start to pay them.
Each athlete is putting in close to the same work as any other athlete, regardless of the school they attend.
They should be paid for creating such a profitable product.
Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexValleSpear