When will I ever get a good quality rest? This is a typical day in the life of a student athlete, faced with several struggles during his or her time in college. The university exploits student athletes, because it makes a great amount of revenue on students athletes, restricts them to earn their own money and puts their health at risk. First reason why many universities exploit their student athletes is because considering fact that they make a substantial profit on them. College athletics is a big business across the United States in many universities, the most refutable being football, hockey, and basketball.
They make a great amount of money for universities by selling tickets for their games and online live streaming. In the article ” Point/Counterpoint: Paying college athletes”, Dennis Johnson says that: ‘The total ticket revenues for football and men’s basketball were $757 million in 1999, total value that exceeded the total ticket sales for all of professional baseball, football, and hockey that year”. Star athletes, who win prizes for their time-consuming trainings, don’t make any money for their effort, despite the fact that they are the ones earning the money.
In fact, the amount of revenue that many athletes make for their respective schools is more than what their scholarships pay for. So who is getting all of this money? Surprisingly, the coaches at the universities get the most of revenue. For example, the highest employee at the Northwestern University, coach Pat Fitzgerald, earned more than $2. 2 million in one year (Linda Shaves). According to statistics, anesthesiologists, who considered as a best-paid job in US earn only $232,830, which is 10 times less than coaches. At the same time, student athletes who are the main resources for his revenue do not gain anything.
One might argue that college players receive full rides, with tuition and room and board paid for, along with advantages, including tutoring and better food and accommodations at many schools (Linda Shaves). However, from a personal side a s a student athlete, I realize that it is not as luxurious as it may seem. We, student athletes, have to work twice as hard as a normal student in order to balance academics, practices, and performing well in our sport. Have very little amount of free time between morning practices, daily classes, afternoon workouts and ours of self-studying. Eave to squeeze time for sleeping and relaxing in order to perform at the level demanded of me as a student athlete. Moreover, I also have limited amount of free time during weekends, because I need to play tournaments and do my homework. Another reason why I think that universities are exploiting student athletes is that athletes are prohibited from making their own money as far as work -study jobs on or off campus. According to the NCAA regulation, student athletes are forbidden from trading “their likenesses or names”. They can teach at a sports amp, but can’t use their likeness to advertise or promote the camp.
They can start their own business, but cannot sell their own image (autographed photos, for instance) or even use their own name to promote it (Andrew Cline). Thus, athletes are not only indebted to the university because of their financial aid, but become subservient to the university because of the NCAA regulations. At the same time, non-student athletes are enjoying their college life. People have only one chance to experience college. Unfortunately, student athletes are deprived of feeling all its beauty. Universities exploit student athletes in a way that requires too much without giving anything in return.
The students are expected to practice and play at a professional level while the university rewards them as if they were amateurs. For instance, college level of coaching is still not effective as it should be. According to the USA today: ” Basically, poorly performing teams might get a brief improvement when changing coaches, but the change doesn’t last – bad teams remain bad. And average teams, those that hover around six wins every season, actually get worse after making a coaching change. (Paul Mergers). From my personal experience, before coming to college, I expected a very high level of coaching and practices.
However, once I have started to practice with my new team, I realized that workouts are easier compare to how I used to practice before. At the same time, college requires student athletes to show good results. People might claim that since student athletes have all necessary facilities to perform and succeed, they can work by themselves. This statement is true, but from my own experience, I realized that in order to compete at a higher level, I deed someone to instruct and coach me. Coach can motivate and push people to have better results, which you have never been expected from yourself.
Finally, the most crucial reason is that student athletes put their health in risk, which cannot even be compared at the same level with the scholarship. According to Brian Frederick, Board Member of Sports Fans Coalition and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Sports Industry Management Program: “How can a “free education” compensate them for debilitating injuries caused during their time on campus? And how can we as fans truly enjoy a oddball game knowing that one player’s career-ending injury will leave him saddled with nothing more than a lifetime of pain and doctor’s bills? Thus, student athletes are insecure since they never know when they will get injured from matches. Once they are injured, university doesn’t need them anymore and they are eventually ended in oblivious. Since student athletes dedicate their whole life for sports, they are ignorant of knowledge in other areas. Nearly all who play big sports such as basketball, hockey, baseball and football will experience wear and tear on their bodies that they may not have anticipated: iron strains, concussion-related brain injuries, pulled muscles, back pains, crushed bones, worn-out knees, elbows and shoulders.
Honestly, student athletes are at same position as professionals in the sense that they have to manage their studies as well as their commitments to their sport. Furthermore, student athletes are fully dependent on the university. They are not able to sign any contacts, talk to agents and make money. Every time they go to game, they put their life on risk. In fact, student athletes are completely oppressed by university.
