Grand Designs Podcast—Episode 6—The Seismic Impact of Paying College Athletes to Play Sports

Paying college athletes will have a seismic impact and leave behind many aftershocks to reverberate throughout the whole of college academic life. No longer will academics be the focus of college sporting life. Getting paid will become the primary focus. It will open up a colossal can of worms that will echo well beyond the playing field.

When college players lose the amateur/student-athlete status, yes, they will have money. At least, temporarily. Money.com had a great article about what actually goes into the scholarship. A “full athletic scholarship (a grant-in-aid) and an NCAA Division 1 University is about $65,000. If you enroll at a college with high tuition, this includes such private colleges as Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, USC, Syracuse, and Vanderbilt. The scholarship is $45,000 for tuition, $20,000 for room and board and books at state universities discussion would be lower if you were in an in-state student because tuition would then be reduced to $13,000. But if Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh recruits nationwide and wants a high school player from California or Texas the University of Michigan out of state tuition bumps up to about the same as that charged for private colleges. A coach could offer a recruit a salary instead of a collar ship, a scholarship, excuse me, does a $100,000 salary give the student-athlete a better deal than the sixty-five-thousand-dollar scholarship. The $100,000 salary is impressive, a future Heisman Trophy winner might command more, but $100,000 is not bad for an 18-year-old out of high school. But since it’s salary and not a scholarship, it's subject to federal and state income taxes. Tuition and college expenses would not be deductible because the income level surpasses the IRS eligibility limit. So, a student-athlete paid a salary would owe twenty-three thousand eight hundred dollars in federal income taxes and six thousand seven hundred dollars in state taxes, a total of $3,500. In cities that levy an employee payroll tax, the salaried students' tax goes up to 2400 dollars per year. Income taxes, then are totaled at thirty-two thousand nine hundred dollars. As an employee, the player would have to pay at least $2,000 more in taxes such, as social security, for a grand total of thirty-four thousand nine hundred dollars. This leaves the college player with $65,100. Since college bills come to 65,000. The player is left with $100.” So, in the end, an average player would gross $100, while the universities costs will go from $65,000 to $100,000 and that is just considering the average players. Elite, five-star players will surely demand more. Much more.

Regarding those elite athletes, sure, they might be content during their freshmen and sophomore years, but as their popularity grows, so will their demands for more money leading to what is in every year occurrence in the pros: holding out for more money. College will cease being about learning to be a well-rounded person and start to be learning how to brand one’s name, likeness, and image. All incentive for remaining in school will have vanished and will be replaced with how can one make more money.

The extra money the universities will be forced to hand out has to come from somewhere. That somewhere will inevitably be lesser programs and worse, academic programs. As it works now, when a “lesser” university travels to a more predominate college, the exchange for the forthcoming beat down is millions of dollars the university can use for new buildings, such as libraries or financial help to sustain other athletic programs. Instead, that money will be forced to go to elite players.

Title IX will certainly endure some sort of fallout, whether it diminishes in scope or out right ceases to exist with any real meaning. If Title IX does stay as it is, other less popular male athletic programs will most certainly wind up on the chopping block. Whether Title IX is actually beneficial or not is a completely separate issue, but it will surely feel the effects of the changing landscape of paying college athletes to play sports. Women’s sports will most certainly feel some blowback from this.

Regardless of how one feels about whether college athletes should be paid to play sports, almost the entire college life will be impacted, both academic and extracurricular. On the surface, paying college athletes may seem like a good idea, but sometimes we lose sight of the way our causes can’t see their effects.

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