The Fifth Lap

By Gabe Cuadra     1/31/13 6:00pm

This Tuesday, ESPN.com featured one of those misleading (but brilliantly crafted) Internet headlines- those designed to garner a click on a slow news day for a story that is barely even news.

"NCAA Athletes Can Legally Pursue TV Money," the headline read.

The actual story proved much less dramatic than such a headline suggests. A federal judge simply dismissed a legal maneuver by the NCAA in an antitrust suit involving former NCAA athletes attempting to secure portions of TV revenues for NCAA football and men's basketball players. If the case makes it to a jury trial - and there are still several legal hoops to get there - the trial would not take place until June 2014 at the earliest.

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So for those keeping score at home, the headline is a stretch at best. But I digress.

Though the news may be minor, it brings back to the forefront the issue of the NCAA's economic model and, more specifically, the idea of paying players in NCAA athletics.

There are many ways the revenue and expense model of collegiate athletics can be improved. In fact, there are many ways it needs to be improved, quite clearly made evident by the recent conference realignments and the number of athletic departments dependent on donations and school subsidization to stay afloat.

But paying student-athletes is not one of them.

There are two main reasons it does not make sense to pay student athletes, and neither of them has to do with protecting some facade of innocence formerly attached to amateur athletics. 

The first is that student-athletes are already compensated and arguably compensated very well. The most obvious way in which they are compensated is through academic scholarships. It is worth noting for those who argue that only athletes in "revenue" sports should be paid that such sports receive proportionally many more full scholarships to distribute than their "non-revenue" counterparts.

Moreover, the compensation goes well beyond scholarships. Student-athletes are provided top-tier coaching, access to doctors and a training room staff, a wide range of equipment, paid travel expenses, access to tutoring and assistance in securing jobs after graduation. Parents pay a lot of money to youth club teams every year for a fraction of the services student-athletes receive for their athletic services to the school. In fact, many parents pay for those youth club teams in the hope that one day their son or daughter will receive an athletic scholarship and the benefits that come with it. 

And while many of these services do not pay off in dollar terms until after graduation, there are mechanisms to assist students whose economic situation means they need money to help them get through college now. 

The second reason is a brutally economical one. Student-athletes simply do not have very much leverage. Fans are not drawn to collegiate games because of the greatness of the players. If they were, minor league baseball, European and D-League basketball, and Canadian football would draw our attention. Instead, their popularity pales in comparison to collegiate athletics. (To briefly link back to reason one, it should be telling that so many of America's best young athletes choose college over these other developmental opportunities where they could be paid immediately).

Instead, fans watch college athletics because of the rivalries, because of the atmosphere, because it connects them to a special period in their lives and allows them to share a piece of that period with their kids and other loved ones.

There are very few players who could truly hurt the popularity of collegiate sports by bargaining collectively or going on strike.  Those players that could have more to lose in terms of hurting their future professional contracts than they stand to gain.

Instead of fighting to pay student-athletes, efforts should be shifted to enabling other reforms of the system. For example, there should be broader revenue sharing so schools can form conferences based on regional and peer institutions instead of chasing a bigger TV footprint. There should be initiatives to slow the facilities "arms race" that has quickly widened the gap between the haves and have-nots of collegiate athletics. There should be a renewed desire to use the spoils of sports to improve their sponsoring universities instead of expecting the flow of funds to move in the opposite direction.

The next decade may feature a bitter fight over pay-for-play in college athletics. There may be a shift to give players semester stipends or to loosen the rules around athletes' abilities to market their names and likenesses. There may even be a day when college football and college basketball have a salary cap, though I believe such a system would do more harm than good.

But for the vast majority of student-athletes, those who will not someday make their money in a pro uniform, such changes are not going to make them rich and could very likely leave them worse off, all things considered.

The system may have its flaws, but paying players is not the way to fix it.

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