https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hCcVBvPbFoArnu8djMltY3jynacjf3aeSllyDC3Ilyk/edit
Introduction
The well-known NCAA is an organization that unites college athletes together to accomplish further steps for their dreams and careers. It stands for National Collegiate Athletic Association, a “non-profit organization” serving college athletes with the well being and lifelong success by regulating 1281 institutes and assists and sponsors almost half a million college athletes. It covers a wide range of sponsored sports such as basketball, football, beach volleyball for women, baseball for men, soccer, golf, swimming, and tennis. 19,500 teams are united by almost half a million college athletes. NCAA has awarded 90 national championships per year, with 46 for women and 41 for men. According to the record in 2014, NCAA has generated over a billion dollars in its revenue, and 80-90% of that revenue was produced from Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. Even though the core goal is to govern athletics competition in a fair and safe manner and integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education, it is certainly controversial since negative impacts are brought to our attention in both academic and athletic aspects. In fact, collegiate athletic students do not even receive fair contract term, with or without their consents, there is no choice really left for them. Moreover, these students in college do not receive education at the same level as other students who are only involved in academics. Negative facts are hidden behind the scene.
For the NCAA
NCAA supports collegiate athletes financially by sponsoring them with educational tuition as a payment for their hard-work dedicated to their teams and professionally by establishing a fair and safe platform for their careers.
- It is consensual between NCAA and collegiate athletes as they sign a contract before entering into the field to compete for their teams.
- The organization directly funds many education programs. For example, the Association-wide postgraduate scholarship program, degree-completion grants, and internships.
- One of the primary financial efforts that NCAA takes to help injured athletes is the NCAA Catastrophic Injury Insurance Program. This program was implemented to strengthen the athlete-organization bond. The NCAA followed this up with insurance programs and that helps student-athletes with unmet financial needs aka Student Assistance Fund.
| Education | Financial | Health and Safety |
| Walter Byers Scholarship: Two one-year, renewable $24,000 postgraduate scholarships named in honor of the NCAA’s original executive director. | Group Basic Medical Program: A program that covers intercollegiate sports-related injuries below the catastrophic insurance deductible of $90,000 per injury. | Injury Surveillance Program: Data is interpreted and disseminated to assist evidence-based decision-making in building safer competitive environments. |
| Jim McKay Scholarships: Two one-year $10,000 postgraduate scholarships named in honor of the legendary sports broadcaster. | Exceptional Student-Athlete Disability Program: The program provides student-athletes with the opportunity to protect against future loss of earnings as a professional due to a disabling injury or illness that may occur during their college careers. | Educational Affairs Grant: Up to $2,000 is awarded to NCAA member institutions and conference offices to fund student-athlete development, and health and safety related programming. |
| Ethnic Minority and Women’s Enhancement Scholarships: Twenty-six $6,000 postgraduate scholarships – 13 for women and 13 for ethnic minorities – who are enrolling in a curriculum that will assist the applicant in obtaining a career in sports administration. | Division 1 Student Assistance Aid: The purpose is to assist student-athletes with special financial needs. Most of this money is used for educational purposes, with some also going for needs such as clothing. |
All these initiatives are for the students to take advantage and potentially optimize their college/ sports career. It also reiterates the idea that injury isn’t the end all be all for a student-athlete. NCAA has opportunities where it reduces the financial stress on the student and they can also continue their education even if it means that their performance or chance at a professional career is diminished.
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/finances/student-athlete-benefits
Should the players get paid for their efforts?
While proponents of the NCAA make the claim that college athletes are currently being paid in the form of college scholarships and a college education, there are some lapses in logic in this thinking.
The idea that the NCAA is providing athletes with an education would make sense if the college athletes were actually getting a traditional college education. The reality is that the education for athletes watered down and manipulated to ultimately maximize athletic performance while making academics an afterthought.
- Playing a Division I sport – regardless of what it is – is a major time commitment. Balancing a rigorous college workload and multiple workout sessions, practices, and games can be extremely difficult. It is because of this difficulty that colleges
Is the NCAA really a nonprofit organization?
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/ncaa-business/
AGAINST THE NCAA
The NCAA advertises itself as a nonprofit organization, but is it really nonprofit? What is actually occurring behind the scenes that we, the public, are unaware of? The NCAA advertises itself as not being a governmental organization, but in reality, it is: the government is basically responsible for funding and regulating athletics at public universities. Lawrence Kahn, a renowned Professor at Cornell University, states that “most economists who have studied the NCAA view it as a cartel that attempts to produce rents by restricting output and limiting payments for inputs such as player compensation.” Through various statistics and historical events, this statement has proven itself to be entirely valid. First, the NCAA “staff” and athletic coaches get paid ridiculous amounts of money for the work that the college athletes are doing, while the ones actually responsible for making the organization money, the college athletes, receive no compensation for their efforts. To illustrate, in 2013 the chairman of the NCAA got $1.7 million for his “efforts” with the organization, while all head football coaches at the 44 NCAA Bowl Championship Series school receive an average of $2.1 million a year. On the other hand, if a player is paid even a dollar for his/her efforts, it suddenly becomes a crime. Being a college athlete is probably just as much work as having a full-time job, yet the students make no money whatsoever for all of their time and effort. Arguably, the only compensation these players receive is their scholarship to the school, something that could and does get taken away instantly if deemed appropriate (like if an athlete gets a major injury).
What makes this even more striking, however, is that if college athletes attempt to utilize their athletic abilities in any personal profitable ways, they receive major punishments. Essentially, once you sign that contract, the NCAA has possession of you. Donald De La Haye, a kicker for the University of Central Florida, encountered this problem after making his own Youtube channel. Once this was discovered by the NCAA, the organization told him that the only way he would be permitted to continue playing in the NCAA was to 1. Stop selling ads for videos that pertain to college athletics and 2. Give up all of the hard earned money that he had made through his channel to the organization. The organization then publically stated that De La Haye “could maintain his eligibility and continue to monetize videos that did not reference his status as a student-athlete or depict his football skill or ability.” These conditions were too much for the star kicker of the team: “I worked so hard for it, you want me to just throw my money away? Want me to take down my videos, which again I worked so hard for and wasn’t comfortable doing? So I told them no.” Therefore, just because the NCAA has such strict policies prohibiting players from making money for themselves, the University of Central Florida lost an essential member of their team. http://www.latimes.com/sports/more/la-sp-ucf-kicker-ineligible-youtube-20170801-story.html
Furthermore, although the staff and coaches get paid ridiculous amounts of money and the organization as a whole receives countless donations nationwide, both refuse to put even a dime towards the improvement of NCAA facilities and athletics. At the University of Maryland, for example, each student is charged $400 a year (as factored into their tuition) to subsidize their football team and at the University of Berkley most, if not all, of the cost of their $474 million dollar stadium came from the required payments from actual students attending the university and taxpayers. Isn’t it ironic that the coaches and staff are getting paid so much money and the students get nothing, but the students are the ones responsible for paying and funding aspects of the NCAA that make it the thriving organization it has become today? There are also other “behind the scene” revenue streams of the NCAA organization. For example, in 2015 the NCAA agreed to a 14 year $10.8 billion contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting to televise games, meaning that the organization will bring in, even more, money than they already do. On average, the entire college sports industry already generates an average of $11 billion in revenues and this contract is bound to increase this even more. The question remains: what is actually happening with all of this money? Where is it all going?
Against the NCAA
Is it justifiable to violate academic regulations to get a “one up” in the NCAA?
AGAINST THE NCAA
http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/09/ncaa-business/
There are a lot of coaches, college professors, and other people involved in the NCAA who believe it is justifiable to cheat and violate academic policies for college athletes so they can continue playing for the university. The University of North Carolina, for example, is a huge public university that has contributed to this belief. From 1991 to 2011 it was said that UNC helped about 3,100 college athletes get good grades in classes they did little to no work in. Some students were even caught completely skipping out on classes and assignments, yet still receiving adequate or high grades in these classes overall. Furthermore, in the 1990s Clem Haskins, the head coach of the football team at the University of Minnesota, got a graduate advisor to write over 400 academic papers for student-athletes so that they could pass their classes and continue to play for the University. Even more surprisingly, multiple athletes admitted in the Spring of 2017 that a teacher of their music history class was giving them answers before a test so that they would pass and maintain their scholarship. These are just a few examples of immoral and unjustifiable actions taken by professors at top public universities to assist college athletes in maintaining their scholarships.
It is known as a fact that for collegiate athletes, they do not have to achieve such an academic success in their education since they have dedicated most of their energy into fields. It is controversial to the core goal NCAA sets in the first place: to provide a platform to ensure these collegiate athletes that they will achieve their higher education along with their professional careers. According to NCAA’s official website, “80% of college athletes are earning degrees”(NCAA). However, among those college athletes, many professionals cheat to accomplish recruits to qualify as “student” athletes, while this cheating process is actually supported by the university. In the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the university has sponsored fake classes for students who are mostly athletes with high credits for courses that are never taught in reality. Academically, it is certainly unfair for other students who are not involved in athletic sponsored events since these athletes did not contribute any academic efforts to receive credits that these “normal students” have been fighting for. Moreover, the mistake made by the university has been running for almost two decades, yet NCAA has helped it to escape from any punishment. After this ugly truth has been revealed, the investigation has been taking for three- and-half-year, showing NCAA’s continuing weakness in regulating and punishing its member institutions. Despite the fact that the university had admitted academic fraud, NCAA still protects its member institution without any consideration of the neglected core goal they have once pledged to the public. By protecting the university, which is a member of NCAA, NCAA has claimed that the “paper courses” in the department of African and Afro-American studies were supposed to provide the athletes only as a benefit to the efforts they have dedicated for the university, meaning the wrongdoing of the university did not violate the organization’s rules according to the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions. In this case, the athletes in this University have been awarding with “extra benefits” to accomplish their academic goal into higher education, which does seem to parallel to NCAA’s core purpose as they ensure the collegiate athletes receiving both academic and professional achievement under their platform. However, this academic fraud is faking higher education achievement for athletes who have never dedicated any efforts into academic field. Therefore, the academic achievement these athletes have achieved is nothing but a lie.