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Initiating Forward Progress
How Paying College Athletes Can Move the Country Forward
by Mike Hayes
The NFL Draft is prom night for
American sports, with promising young talent
decorating the stage and red carpet with their
nicest, or most flamboyant, outfits. On a night
full of statuesque quarterbacks and high-flying
wide receivers, it was an offensive lineman who
dominated the following week’s draft coverage.
Former Ole Miss offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil became the leading topic of discussion after
being drafted by the Miami Dolphins, but the first night of his NFL career could land him and his
alma mater under investigation.
Somebody hacked into Tunsil’s Instagram account and posted text conversations between
Tunsil and a member of his college coaching staff. Tunsil was asking for 300 dollars to help his
mother pay for rent and electricity. 300 dollars would be no troubling amount for Ole Miss head
coach Hugh Freeze, whose coaching contract is worth almost five million dollars. Unfortunately,
that insignificant dollar amount could be enough to cost Freeze his job and strip Ole Miss of
scholarships, playoff eligibility, or their entire football program. Helping a college student keep
his mother’s lights on is a righteous act, but it violates National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NCAA) amateurism policy; policy which is dishonest in origin and corrupt in execution. The
NCAA is in desperate need of reform, and doing away with its amateurism policy would benefit
the players, the schools, and the American economy. Leading the charge for NCAA reform will
Adam Zyglis – Cagle Cartoons

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generate the conversation and policy changes necessary for a landmark economic and labor
decision that can define the legacy of today’s progressive movement.
The collegiate athlete is a uniquely American concept, and collegiate athletes did not
become “student-athletes” until the early 1950s. The term “student-athlete” was first used when
the University of Denver coined the phrase to distinguish its football players as something other
than employees. Because of this distinction, the NCAA and its colleges became legally exempt
from having to provide workers’ compensation and similar benefits that are otherwise mandated
for employers. “Student-athlete” became ubiquitous in NCAA language, replacing all previous
mentions of “athlete” or “player” in any legal documentation. In 1956, the NCAA endorsed full
scholarships for student-athletes and maintained that no other compensation was necessary. This
has remained the NCAA’s principle argument in defense of amateurism; that a scholarship is the
only compensation a student-athlete needs. This sounds like a reasonable defense until the other
restrictions of amateurism are examined.
Just as the student-athlete is unique to American colleges, mandatory unpaid amateurism
is unique to student-athletes. Students on athletic scholarships are forbidden from receiving free
meals, expensive gifts, or working part-time jobs during the offseason; restrictions that are not
placed on students who receive academic scholarships. The NCAA states that their amateurism
restrictions “bring about national uniformity and fairness,” but if that were the case, then the
athletes would be allowed to get paid or accept outside money like every other student. If
Laremy Tunsil were a student on academic scholarship, he could ask anyone he wanted for the
300 dollars necessary to help his mother with her bills. Since he was a student-athlete, the
invasion of his privacy will likely lead to an NCAA investigation of the Ole Miss football
program.

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Miami Dolphins linebacker Jelani Jenkins has not
commented on his new teammate’s potential controversy,
but he knew many people on his college team who found
themselves in similar situations. “Growing up in
Montgomery County, [Maryland,] I took for granted how
fortunate I was until I got to college.” Jenkins was a star at
Good Counsel High School, a private school with a tuition
that was over $18,000 when he graduated in 2009. “When I
got to Florida [University], I couldn’t believe the stories I
heard from the other teammates. I’d say more than half the
team grew up below the poverty line.” Under the NCAA’s
amateur policies, Jenkins and his teammates would be
removed from the program if they received money while on
scholarship.
The NCAA makes more than $870 million in annual
revenue, with more than 80 percent of that coming from
television contracts and advertisers. Some of these
television contracts include entire channels dedicated to a
single college athletic conference (SEC Network, Big Ten
Network). In 2011, CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting
gave the NCAA a $10.8 billion contract for exclusive broadcasting rights of the March Madness
Schools get Gifts,
Players get Punished
Jenkins’s final game at Florida
was the 2012 Sugar Bowl, a
game that rewards each
participating team with a $14
million-dollar appearance
prize. The Southeastern
Conference (SEC), Florida’s
athletic conference, receives a
$51 million bonus if one of its
teams plays in the Sugar Bowl.
Many college coaches are the
highest paid public employees
in their state. On top of their
million-dollar salaries, they
also receive hundreds of
thousands of dollars in bonuses
for bowl game appearances.
In 2011, former Ohio State
quarterback Terrelle Pryor was
suspended for five NFL games
because he received free
tattoos in college.
Athletic conferences, colleges,
and coaches receive millions of
dollars in annual financial gifts
while the NCAA suspends
players for accepting any
outside money or benefits.

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basketball tournament. The
athletes whose performance
generates this billion-dollar
interest from television
networks are systematically
forbidden from receiving any of
the revenue that their own hard
work produces.
The median coach among 126 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision schools made $1.9
million a year in 2013, a number that has certainly gone up after big-name hires like Jim
Harbaugh at the University of Michigan and Lovie Smith at the University of Illinois. The
comparable salary for a basketball coach was $1.2 million, and the comparable salary for an
athlete in either sport was zero dollars and zero cents. If a coach without any academic
relationship to his school can earn money because of what he does for athletics, his players
should be able to do the same.
The NCAA sells memorabilia and merchandise with the names, images, and likenesses
(NILs) of players, but student-athletes doing the same is a violation of the amateurism policy.
These NIL issues are the first of the NCAA’s exploitative structures to be successfully
challenged in court. In the 2014 O’Bannon v. NCAA case, former UCLA basketball player Ed
O’Bannon brought a class action lawsuit against the NCAA. O’Bannon and a collection of other
former college athletes believed that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by restricting
compensation for using current and former players’ NILs in video games. The court ruled in
favor of O’Bannon and also added that the NCAA had an inconsistent definition of amateurism,
Sara Cwynar – The New York Times

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which weakened the NCAA’s argument and swayed the court in O’Bannon’s favor. O’Bannon v.
NCAA is believed to be the first domino in a chain that will lead to compensation for collegiate
athletes.
The easiest model of reform for the NCAA would be ending the policy that forbids
players from earning money from their NILs. Allowing players to auction off signed or game-
worn memorabilia would provide athletes with an option for income that would cost nothing to
the NCAA itself. Right now, the NCAA is selling an officially-licensed “No. 1 Ole Miss Rebels
Replica Football Jersey” for $89.99. That jersey is modeled after Ole Miss wide receiver Laquon
Treadwell, one of Laremy Tunsil’s college teammates. If the NCAA investigates Ole Miss and
discovers that Treadwell sold a jersey of his own in order to make food or rent money, the school
could be penalized because their player sold a product that the NCAA sells, in replica form, in
stores across the country.
Turning a blind eye to players selling merchandise and receiving gifts may be the easiest
solution, but it is not the best option for either party. Allowing for open negotiations between the
schools and their recruits takes the advantages of the previously mentioned solution but keeps
them in a regulated, contractual agreement rather than an under-the-table offer. This is certainly
the most capitalistic option, as it allows the recruit to explore the market that exists for him. The
schools want the best players possible in order to bring revenue and prestige to their school, and
the players can negotiate for a fair compensation for their services. This option, however, would
likely need to involve agents and players unions and the price for 5-star recruits would raise
yearly.

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The option that benefits both parties without creating chaos is implementing a fixed-rate
stipend or salary into the scholarships of players who attend Power Five conferences. These
Power conferences (ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big XII, and Pac-12) are the ones that generate most of
the NCAA’s money, especially through their television rights. A $20,000 annual player salary
could easily be split between the school, the athletic conference, and the NCAA. $20,000 is
slightly less than what a $10/hour job would pay for a year, a realistic amount for a college
student to earn while in school were he not playing sports.
That number of moderately low-paying jobs being created yearly would be fantastic for
the economy, and since the stipend would no longer be paid once the player either graduates or
leaves the team, the amount of money being paid year-to-year remains rather static. This money
going directly into the hands of people in these college towns will keep money circulated in the
communities and in the hometowns of players. Studies from before, during, and after the Great
Recession support the progressive stance that raising the minimum wage would improve the
economy, but low-to-moderate-wage job creation by the thousands would stimulate the economy
even more. The NCAA can help brighten the immediate and long-term future of its athletes and
the American workforce as a whole by providing this livable wage for their Power Five athletes.
If the NCAA fails to revise and reform its troubling amateurism guidelines, it risks
having them altered by force. Students are already attempting to unionize, and Dr. Herbert
Ruffin II of Syracuse University said legal battles about amateurism policy “can lead to an
explosive revival of the student-athlete activist movement that helped bring these high-caliber
athletes [to the schools] in the first place.” The threat of Missouri University’s football team
sitting out one of last season’s games in protest caused the school to act quickly; directly
indicating how much money is at stake for these schools on a weekly basis. The NCAA and its

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colleges risk losing even more money if protests are also met with numerous labor, fair
employment, and anti-trust lawsuits. Simply put, the NCAA needs to get in front of this issue or
else the issue will get in front of the NCAA.
In the past, Dr. Ruffin has explained how student-athlete activism has had far-reaching
political impacts beyond the world of sports. Now the NCAA has another chance to “do the right
thing for the sake of doing the right thing.” The right thing, in this instance, is ending the unjust
amateurism policy in college sports. Laremy Tunsil may never have to ask for money again, but
too many of his college teammates cannot say the same. The athletes who need reform the most
are the ones whose futures remain uncertain after sports. More than 98 percent of college football
and basketball players pursue careers outside of professional sports, and their labor deserves at
least a small fraction of the revenue they generated while representing, and working for, their
colleges. If Tunsil and his teammates were compensated as the Ole Miss employees that they
were, their entire community would reap the benefits. Now that the United States has worked its
way out of the Great Recession, it is time to look forward and work towards a new era of
economic and political excellence. Bringing an end to a multi-billion dollar exploitation practice
is a decision of historic proportion that will set the economic and labor standards that will be
remembered as a signature moment of America’s new progressive age.

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References
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References
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References
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