N the Red
Sports
25
Paying for playing
AA ives in to pressure fro states to let athletes a e pro ts
Nate Albin
F
albinnat000@hsestudents.org
rom sports shows like “First Take” to classrooms everywhere, debates over paying athletes have only grown since NCAA conferences signed multi-billion contracts with TV networks like ESPN and Fox. This debate reached into legislatures lately. After California state senator Nancy Skinner drafted the new Fair Pay to Play act to stop the NCAA’s “exploitation” of college athletes. It was set to begin in 2023, but the NCAA passed a similar rule starting in 2021. The current rule has caused confusion. One thing must be known: the universities are not paying the students. Since the beginnings of college athletics, the NCAA works to keep sports fair, and they have always made sure to keep the money out of the games. Fair Pay to Play would allow royalties to go to both school and the individual athletes. For example, say I want to buy the basketball jersey for Purdue University center Matt Haarms. Without the legislation, there are two possibilities: one, the school does not produce a jersey of the individual for sale, or two, the school will sell the jersey, but the player does not get any revenue from it. With the new bill, Haarms would get a cut of the sale because Purdue sold something with his likeness. The idea of athlete likenesses has co e under fire before. In addition to the jersey issues, the popular NCAA video games made by EA Sports were discontinued after 2013 after the company was sued for their use of player likenesses. Famously, “Florida QB #15” was modeled after all-time great NCAA football player Tim Tebow. This was one of many blatant examples of using player likenesses that happened every year with each game. While many still oppose the idea of college athletes getting money, no one should be against the proposed new system. If a student artist created a masterpiece painting, then they would be able to ake oney off of their painting and their likeness. For a college athlete, they would get half of that: the likeness. Forbes wrote that athletes are currently getting
paid up to $125,000 in the form of scholarships and that is payment enough. An easy counter to this is that other students get scholarships from their art, their music, their work in school, so sports should be viewed equally to those other categories. An argument against the change is that college athletes would make absurd amounts of money. This simply would not happen for the majority. ESPN said that most athletes would use this so that they could, for example, teach lessons to kids in the sports they play or sign a couple of autographs. Maybe a few superstars like former Duke basketball player Zion Williamson or Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence would make a substantial amount, as seen from sales of nonNCAA licensed apparel, but not many at all. There are worries over schools potentially paying the athletes to come play for them. Investigations as to whether or not companies like Nike and Adidas paid the families of athletes to go to specific schools has ade this orse. ll the needs to do to fi this is to have better control of the schools it oversees. Schools would rake in the cash from marketing opportunities such as video games that have to pay just to put the logo somewhere. Schools could sell jerseys of players, they could make more money based off people that ill buy ore erseys so they can represent all their favorite players. These are opportunities for money that these schools do not have right now. The NCAA’s vote for all athletes to be able to profit off of their likenesses is so ething high school athletes will need to be mindful of. Athletes ay have to decide here to go based off financial opportunity. This was a long time coming. It will be interesting to watch this system going forward and what changes it may need. While this system may not be perfect, it should definitely be orth giving the old college try.
Purdue center Matt Haarms follows media obligations after a 99-94 win over Tennessee in the 2019 NCAA Tournament. With the new rules, Haarms would be able to make money from things such as jersey sales or being in video games. Photo used with permission of The Journal Gazette.
