A New Twist to an Old Argument

Perhaps the most perplexing part of the ‘should college athletes get paid’ argument is the notion that pundits forget that the word college precedes the word athlete.

The reality of the issue is that colleges make A LOT of money off of the kid’s name because of the amateur status of college players. That is irrefutable; yet the national conversation seems to be missing the practical implications of shifting student focus from academics to what they do on the field.

When a college athlete leaves school early without having the skills in (insert whatever major here) they are setting themselves up for failure; and just paying them for on the field prowess will not alleviate that.

Out of the 9,000 or so college athletes who play college football, roughly 300 of them are invited to the NFL combine and only 215 actually go on to become pro. That is 2.4 percent for those keeping score at home.

The percentage of NBA players who come out of college is even lower; less than one percent to be a bit more accurate.

The NFL Player’s Association website even says in plain English, “As you can see, most people who want to become NFL players will not. Therefore it is very important to come up with alternative plans for the future.”

The place for young adults to establish their alternative future plans is in college.

In today’s national conversation, both the institutions that make money off of them and the champions of college athletes forget that the chief reason they go to the University of wherever is to get a degree.

However, the young athletes are free to forgo their degree and declare for the NFL or NBA draft after one or three years respectively.

Considering that the average NFL career is three years and that the average NBA career is roughly six years, these kids will inevitably be thrown out into the world after making six figures a year with no idea how to do anything else.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean that the University of Notre Dame should continue to make almost 69 million dollars in football revenue alone without having to pay their student athletes a dime of it.

It is just that paying amateur athletes, in all sports, will not solve the greater problem of college athletes who wash out of the NBA or NFL not having any practical skills to acquire a new job.

If for whatever reason college athletes are allowed to get paid by their respective universities, there has to be a contractual agreement stating they cannot turn pro until they get a degree in the major of their choice.

With this prevision, college athletes have to go to class and graduate with the same 128 credits most universities require to get a diploma. Then if they want, they can peruse their dreams of becoming the next Peyton Manning or Michael Jordan.

Making college students graduate before they take the chance on themselves to turn pro is not, and cannot be viewed by society as, a punishment for going to college.

If the young adult wants to be a pro, and get paid for playing at the university of wherever, that badly then they’ll hit the books and get the degree to do it.

The most treacherous thing for student athletes is ending up in the abyss of those who failed to go pro and can’t do anything else.

Paying college athletes alone doesn’t help them escape that vortex, making them graduate before letting them try to go pro does.