Pay for Play

So I just had a Q and A with Dr. James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan. Let me start by saying he is a very interesting speaker. His ultimate demise was his outspoken opposition to big-time college athletics. In his book, he presented 3 types of proposals to solving the problems in the current athletic systems. I began thinking of my own possible solutions.

One of the main problems with revenue sports is how the student part of "student-athletes" takes back seat to the athlete. Less then 1% of college athletes will go pro. This presents the need for athletes to earn a degree and life skills during college that will help them in the real-world. Even if a student wants to study to become a businessman, doctor, lawyer, ect, they are forced to make a choice between athletics and school. They lose the freedom to choose classes because they are forced to pick around work-out schedules and other things. They are also forced into easy classes because they don't have the time to spend working on hard classes. This results in these athletes graduating with degrees in general studies, widely looked on as a useless degree. They are not taught life skills and in many cases don't even graduate. College athletics have become a year round commitment and more like a full-time job.

This brings me to my proposed solution(s). To look at college athletics, specifically football and basketball, as anything other then a business is ignorant. College football and basketball generates billions of dollars and the athletes gain zero benefit from this commercialism. My solution would be to set aside a percentage of the profits for the athletes for each year. Let me say, I do not think college athletes should be paid while they are in school. This money would be paid into a trust that would be available post graduation. With this trust fund, certain stipulations could be attached. One such stipulation could be that to earn the trust fund, you must graduate. Another stipulation could be a certain gpa, higher then that of the current NCAA minimum. With this trust, Duderstadt suggests in his book, athletes could also be allowed to endorse products and the wages would be paid into the trust. In order to maintain the sanctity of a college student as an athlete, many more stipulations could be included as designed by the university or a board of directors. The board of directors would also be in charge of determining what percentage, of the athletes share, each athlete would get paid into their specific trust fund. An injury may result in a higher percentage because of the additional cost over time that the injury would generate. Rewards could be included for exceptional performance in areas other then sports.

Other possible solutions that Duderstadt spoke of include privatizing college football and basketball programs. I will go less into this one but how I believe it would be would be a creation of a college football club, separate from the university. It would still be associated with the school but it would be funded privately. The club could also be funded through shareholders (club members) and run by a board of directors. The governing body for this could determine all the rules for this league but it would basically be a semi-pro system like a minor league. It would be similar to how soccer is run in Europe.