Should We Pay College Athletes?

   In his article for ESPN, Rod Gilmore argues that college football players deserve pay for playing for their respective universities.  While I do not necessarily disagree with the fact that the current system of compensating athletes for their services to their school is outdated, I think that Gilmore left a lot out of his argument.  By focusing on traditionally “big-money” football programs, Gilmore made the “solution” to the current problem look a lot easier than it actually is.  For starters, most of the 119 Division I football programs are not “big-money” programs.  These programs are not paying their coaches ludicrously large salaries and are not bringing in the caliber of money that Texas does off of ticket sales and merchandising revenue.  So where do these teams find the money to put in the athletes’ trust funds?  Do only the athletes who attend large, well-funded schools get to reap the benefits of this proposal?  Another issue I have with Gilmore’s proposal is that other athletes are completely ignored.  In many cases, a tennis player for the University will have to work just has hard, will face just as many challenges, and will receive the same amount of scholarship money as football players.  If they are on “equal footing” as the football players in the University’s eyes, why should we pay one group of athletes and not the other?  And yes, while football players help bring more money to the university than tennis players do, this doesn’t make them entitled to sharing in the profits.  In contrast, men’s basketball programs at some universities do bring in money to the university.  Based on Gilmore’s logic, we should pay basketball players as well.  The problem with this is that by paying the players, we will have changed what it means to be a collegiate athlete and certain athletes will be placed on a higher plane than others, largely based on the popularity of their particular sport.  If making a profit is the ultimate goal of collegiate athletics, golfers, tennis players, and women’s basketball players will fail to meet that goal and their sports will then be devalued even further.  The collegiate sports system may be broken, but paying football players is not the answer.  More research must be done and more options must be explored before a solution that benefits all levels of collegiate sport is found.