March Madness, Part 3
posted by Alfred Yen
Well, after having been diverted by the recent storm and its effect on travel plans, I returned home yesterday to see the sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament has been determined. It reminded me of an idle thought I’ve had in response to the suggestion often made that NCAA athletes ought to be paid (let’s leave aside for now whether we even care if they’re really enrolled in school). How much would they get paid?
My idle (and somewhat abstract) thought is that it ought to be theoretically possible to estimate the size of these salaries by measuring the legal and illegal incentives given to athletes now, plus/minus a fudge factor for risks incurred by participants because “paying” athletes in certain forms is illegal.
For example, if NCAA institutions can’t presently pay athletes, they can provide them with things like fancy special dorms, special charter flights, nice hotels, swank locker rooms and training facilities, tuition (of course), etc. Additionally, boosters surreptitiously give athletes summer jobs, gifts/travel/housing to family members (see reports about Reggie Bush, whose family apparently got more than $100k in beneifts etc). Together, these roughly total what it takes to get an athlete to play for a particular college.
If paying athletes above board became legal, is there any reason to think that this isn’t a crude approximation of what athlete salaries will be? Perhaps it also suggests that the few “big time” stars will get a lot, while run of the mill squad players will get rather little?
March 19, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Posted in: Culture, Economic Analysis of Law
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Responses (1)
Mom of 3 graduated athletes - April 2, 2007 at 4:28 pm
College athletes ARE paid to play. They are paid in the form of full-ride academic scholarships, as well as many, many other perks afforded only to the collegiate athlete. Our 3 sons were all high school athletes; 1 went on to West Point (that was an approximate $400k education); one chose to forgoe college; and the third elected to go straight from high school into the Army, where he continued to play sports on various competitive Army teams. Can someone PLEASE tell me why our youth feel so entitled?? Just because they have athletic talents does not mean that providing college tuition should count for nothing. No wonder our professional athletes are so money hungry… so much so that families can no longer afford to attend the professional sporting events due to the ridiculous prices that must be charged to pay these athletes.
Give me a break, folks… what are you teaching these kids???
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