Sports is a business.
It is an idea that has been floating around for quite some time and that reality has become clearer as time has progressed. It is definitely true when it comes to professional sports, where athletes make millions and they make their team owners hundreds of millions.
Collegiate athletics are not exempt from the rule. Make no mistake: college sports is just as much of a business as professional sports are, despite empty claims to the contrary made by the higher-ups in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, universities and athletic conference.
Currently, college athletes, and in particular football and men’s basketball players, do not receive a cent from massive television deals struck by conferences and TV networks. That is wrong. It is the play of these athletes and the interest of fans that makes these deals possible.
While many athletes have their tuition, housing and other expenses covered by athletic scholarships, it pales in comparison to what athletic conferences and administrators are pocketing from these lucrative television contracts.
The issue, then, is how to pay these players, particularly if the University decides to go through with paying athletes after the Sun Belt Conference gave its schools the go-ahead to pay its athletes.
The Beacon agree first and foremost that any funds going towards student pay should not come from student funds or fees.
ESPN and the Bowl Championship Series, which determines which teams play in the National Championship game and other prominent bowl games, recently agreed to a four-year deal that would pay the BCS $500 million.
Even going further, the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports agreed to a $10.8 billion deal to air March Madness between 2011 and 2024. In perspective, that is over $830 million per year to air three weekends of basketball.
A new study by Ithica College also shows that the average “Full Scholarship” athlete still winds up having to pay $2,591 dollars a year in school-related expenses that are not covered by grants or other forms of financial aid.
Students already shoulder most of the burden, accounting for the majority of funds that cover most of the expenses that FIU Athletics accumulates with one of the highest athletics fees in the state.
A potential spike in the athletics fee would put an unnecessary financial stress on students who are already struggling to make ends meet in an uncertain economy.
If the University does choose to pay for prospective athletes, it should be tied to a certain stream of revenue, such as ticket sales, ad revenue and television contracts negotiated by the Sun Belt Conference in addition to others.
This would tie the pay of athletes to a certain measure of success and would provide transparency to the process of pay-for-play at FIU.
If programs at non-BCS schools, such as FIU, decide to go forward with this type of plan to pay student athletes, and they might have to in order to compete with other schools willing to pay, they must do so in a way that ties it to their success in generating streams of revenue for the program.
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