by Ravi Marfatia, Staff Writer
Should certain
student athletes get paid in addition to their athletic scholarships? Prominent
sportswriters certainly think so.
Michael Wilbon,
a senior columnist for ESPN.com, has said
student athletes who participate in basketball and football should get paid
based on contracts such as the 10.8 billion dollar deal the NCAA signed with
CBS and Turner Sports in 2011 regarding television rights for college
basketball’s post-season “March Madness” tournament. Investigative sports reporter and host for
HBO, Bryant Gumbel, echoed
those sentiments when he said, “What a great business model, make billions,
but you don’t have to pay the employees anything.”
Apparently the
California Legislature has heard these concerns. They’ve just passed a bill
known as the “Student Athlete Bill of Rights” to be added to their Education
Code relating to postsecondary education. It was approved by the Governor of
California, Jerry Brown, on September 27, 2012. This is essentially the first
piece of legislation attempting to give student athletes additional rights in
response to the amount of revenue certain institutions generate from their
athletic programs.
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| © 2011 The New York Times Company |
The major
provisions in the bill include the requirement that an institution provide an
equivalent scholarship to a student athlete if a program does not renew his or
her scholarship because of an incapacitating injury or illness resulting from
participation in the program. A student athlete, however, cannot use injury as
an excuse to get out of the obligation to play on a team and still receive a
scholarship. A doctor has to declare the athlete is incapable to play. Basically, if a student athlete suffers a “career-ending”
injury, the school can’t just cut his or her scholarship when that student’s only
reason for attending was because of the full athletic scholarship given to play
a sport that ultimately generates millions of dollars for the school. (to absolve the cost of the ridiculously
expensive tuition)
The institution
must also provide an equivalent scholarship to a good-standing student athlete who
has exhausted their eligibility for up to one year, or until the student
athlete completes his or her undergraduate degree, whichever is shorter.
That is not a
misprint--you read that right. That
means that a traditional four year student athlete (maximum allowable time per
NCAA regulations) will get an additional tuition-free year after they are done
competing in their sport. Say, for example, you were a four-year starter on the
basketball team and you can no longer play and have completed your degree (and
assuming you are not good enough to play professionally). Hey, take the next
year to start on your master’s degree. Is that something you didn’t plan on doing?
Ok, then take all the classes you wanted to take but couldn’t because of stupid
general education requirements (ballroom dancing perhaps). Just enjoy that
college experience for one more year. It’s the school’s way of saying “thank
you” for the large amount of money they made off of an athletic program you
helped contribute to.
Importantly,
these provisions only apply to colleges and universities in California that
receive, on average, $10,000,000 or more in annual revenue derived from media
rights for intercollegiate athletics. Therefore, this bill would only affect
institutions that generate a substantial amount of revenue from their athletic
programs. This might not be a direct paycheck for student athletes, but it is a
creative way of additionally compensating them in exchange for generating such
a large amount of revenue for their respective institutions.
