Posted on 01/10/2011 6:39:07 AM PST by Celtic Cross
(CNN) -- On Monday night, with millions of fans watching every play, Auburn will take on Oregon for the national championship of college football.
If you're viewing at home, you may notice the same thing you can observe each season at every massive college football stadium or glistening big-time college basketball arena:
Everyone working in the place is being paid: the hot dog vendors, the television broadcasters, the guy peddling game-day programs, the person who manufactured the university-logo jerseys and caps that are for sale at the souvenir stands, the employees changing lightbulbs in the tunnels. ...
Everyone except the people who are most responsible for putting the fans in the seats and in front of the TV screens at home: everyone except the players on the field.
(Yes, most if not all of them are the recipients of university scholarships. We'll get to that in a few moments.)
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I looked at this a bit further and found that the student scholarship athletes can earn up to $2K a year. That isn’t a whole lot when you think about it.
I agree. Most come from families with little financial means. The practice and workout schedules are such that they do not have much free time for part-time jobs. Free time would better be used for studying. Part time jobs are under a microscope from the NCAA Gestapo. And the good programs are making millions on them. You better believe, at least at the more successful programs, it is effectively a sweatshop.
My son got recruited some a few years ago. The dirty little secret is that players from poor families usually get the preference on athletic scholarships because they can use Federal government grant money to the student to offset costs to the scholarship funds. That is the REAL reason the disparity is so large in the number of blacks vs. whites on team rosters. I think they would have more because of basic talent levels, but not in such a wide disparity in terms of percentages.
Yes...a sweatshop where virtually every young athlete in America would love a chance to work.
A few of the big-name programs make big bucks on their football programs. Most struggle to get by, and frankly having to pay their athletes outside of scholarship/tutors/etc. would probably just fold up camp.
“The point is, colleges should give scholarship precedence to those who excel ACEDEMICALLY. Isn’t that what higher ‘education’ is meant to be about???”
I have to agree, the system has been deformed. College is about more than book learning. The idea is to produce a graduate with lots of experiences, not just classroom. And that’s why there are sports, clubs, trips, etc.
Major college sports, especially football and basketball have gotten out of hand. My point is, in the system, as it’s currently constituted, players for the money making sports teams should get a stipend beyond their scholarship.
Go Ducks!!
I can’t disagree. I didn’t know about the $2K maximum.
Interesting...
If CNN is so worry about exploitation, why not get rid of Division 1 sports altogether? No scholarships for athletes, and the quality of sport drops to guys working out after going to class, like it was meant to be. Then , if the NBA and NFL want to have a minor league system, they can fund it themselves.
I agree. Make every college in the country Division 3 sports; no athletic scholarships, only walk-ons. If the NBA and NFL want to train athletes, let them do it on their own dime. To large extent thats what hockey and baseball do.
When you get 90,000 people stand out in cold weather and scream their heads off for the math club that generates 10’s of millions for the college let me know.
It’s always easy to be generous with someone elses money.
Raise the limits these men can EARN from having part time jobs outside of the game. Limit their hours so they not only EARN a degree but graduate.
College football is big business yet the ones doing the bulk of the work on Saturdays have limits placed on them. Why did Jeremy Bloom have to give up his endorsements from skiing just so he could play college ball? Nothing capitalistic about this and yet these institutions take in tax payer money be that state tax receipts of Federal money. They don’t pay any property taxes yet they still manage to sponge off the communities in which they operate.
I didn’t read the full article but a college scholarship is a wonderful thing for those kids!!! My experience is not with football, but with another sport in which the athletes are very well trained and work their asses off, because they love the sport and want to succeed. Being an NCAA athlete is a wonderful thing. It’s nothing to pity. MOST ATHLETES are not on TV like the b-ball and football guys are. They do it for the love of the sport, the thrill of tough competition, and the full or partial scholarship does not hurt.
Full tuition, room and board. What else is needed? Clothes? Pell grants are rather generous nowadays. Anybody who has tuition, room and board paid can live off a Pell grant. And then there are student loans.
Those poor college athletes. Next they’ll whine about the poor high school athletes that get nothing from anyone.
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