It appears the question now isn't should student-athletes be paid or not, it is now when will student-athletes be paid. Athletes know that they are the main reason the university is able to bring in so much revenue through sports along with media contracts. For March Madness, a basketball tournament of 68 schools, CBS and the NCAA agreed to a 14 year $11 billion dollar agreement for the rights to air the games along with a couple other TV stations, but they have the rights to the regional finals, along with the final four. ESPN has agreed to air the College Football playoffs for 12 years for around $5.64 billion dollars. To pay that much for these games there must be additional money for players of those teams to receive. All the memorabilia being sold and tickets bring in high numbers as well. The players know they are the reason the schools are receiving this income and they should be a part of it. Joe Nocera has come up with a 5 step for players to receive pay fairly so that everyone can afford to attend school and pay for all the costs. He has decided that a salary cap be made, $3 million for football and $650 thousand for basketball. Their would be a minimum salary of $25,000 per athlete in order for lower athletes to still afford costs of college. This would still leave a lot of money for coaches to offer higher salaries to big name players. Every player that stayed in school all four years would get an additional two year scholarship which he or she could use to get a bachelors or masters degree. All athletes would receive health insurance because injuries do happen a lot in sports. There would also be an organization to represent former and current student athletes that would manage the health insurance and salary cap minimums and so on. No longer would players be suspended for selling memorabilia or autographs as they now would receive enough money to afford the costs of living and attending a university.
"Joe Nocera is an Op-ed columnist for The Times and is the co-author of "All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis."
Read Joe's article here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/lets-start-paying-college-athletes.html?pagewanted=all
Nocera, Joe. "Let’s Start Paying College Athletes." The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Dec. 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.
Read Joe's article here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/lets-start-paying-college-athletes.html?pagewanted=all
Nocera, Joe. "Let’s Start Paying College Athletes." The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 Dec. 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.