By Nancy Alexandra — Staff Writer
San Jose State Athletics has a $28 million budget for the 2018-19 season.
Since 2010, the football program has brought in $9.4 million in revenue games according to reports from the San Francisco Chronicle. A revenue game is when a lower-level athletic program receives a large payment in return for taking a severe loss and beating on the field.
The debate of whether athletes should be monetarily compensated for their athletic contributions has become a hot topic and the simple answer is no, they should not.
Student-athletes bring in a large amount of revenue to a university’s campus. Although athletes have played and earned money for their school, they should not be concerned about receiving a paycheck.
According to the NCAA, student-athletes receive many benefits to support their success. Listed resources include a college education, scholarships, student assistance funds, academic and support systems, medical care and healthy living.
On San Jose State’s athletic website under the category of financial aid, students who are granted full athletics grant-in-aid will receive paid tuition, room and board, required textbooks and supplies.
On average, that aid comes out to $25,263 — the cost to attend and live at SJSU. This reported financial support does not include other benefits like priority registration, meal plans, game day meal vouchers, school tutors and assistance funds.
Eighty-one percent of athletes graduate from SJSU, and of 427 student-athletes, that equals to 80 who will not graduate. These numbers and percentages can be found on the SJSU athletics website.
Student-athletes receive plenty of financial and academic resources and after four to five years of competing athletically, the ultimate reward of persistence is a bachelor’s degree and for some it is going pro.
Only around two percent of Division I NCAA athletes make it to the professional level.
With such a slim margin, the focus of student-athletes should be focused on earning their degree instead of being devoted to solely making it into the professional sports world.
Any athlete drafted before finishing their degree could potentially waste $25,000-$75,000 of resources, which could have been used for students whose main focus of attending college is to earn their Bachelor’s.
With that much money wasted on an athlete, if they were compensated for their athletic contributions, not only would they have wasted precious college resources, but they would get paid to do it.
SJSU’s football team played Oregon in the fall and made $1 million in revenue. If equally divided with all 103 football players, each player would be paid $10,000 despite playing or being benched.
This is only one example of how the amount of money athletes could hypothetically be paid could be better allocated elsewhere.
If the primary goal of a student-athlete is to get paid, they should look into playing for minor leagues or going overseas.
In baseball, the majority of big leaguers go straight to the minors looking to be recruited to the pros.
Basketball’s G League is where potential recruits only need to be 18, compared with the NBA where athletes have to be at least 19.
Another alternative to this minor league is playing basketball overseas. These are both popular leagues in which the NBA recruits athletes.
If college athletes want to be paid the big bucks for playing a sport, they should look into these alternatives instead of wasting resources and taking a free college degree for granted.
Students receive all the tools they need to be successful and do not need further compensation.
Follow Nancy on Twitter @NancyAlexandra_