Bernie Sanders Wants Colleges to Pay Student Athletes
“College athletes are workers”
Where would this end? What about the student musicians in the marching band? How about the actors in school plays?
U. S. News & World Report has the story:
Bernie Sanders: Pay College Athletes
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL candidate Bernie Sanders said college athletes should be paid, weighing in for the first time on a controversial issue that’s roiling the NCAA and college sports.
“College athletes are workers,” the senator from Vermont tweeted Friday morning. “Pay them.”
The tweet came in response to one sent by LeBron James, professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers, who was rallying support for SB-206, California’s “Fair Pay to Play” Act, which would allow student athletes to earn compensation in connection with the use of their “name, image or likeness.”
The bill overwhelmingly passed the state Senate in May. If approved by the California Assembly in the current legislative session, it would become law in 2023 and apply to all private colleges in the Golden State and the University of California system.
The NCAA opposes the bill, arguing that it would create a dynamic in which the best athletes in the country flock to California schools. NCAA President Mark Emmert threatened to bar California’s college teams from participating in national championships and asked state lawmakers to postpone their consideration of the bill until the NCAA conducts its own review about compensating athletes.
College athletics has ballooned over the last two decades into a $14 billion industry with only about 12% of that being directed to students, almost entirely in the form of academic scholarships. The NCAA basketball tournament alone, which is widely known as “March Madness,” draws upward of 100 million vierwers, has nearly 100 corporate sponsors and generates more than $1 billion.
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Comments
Colleges already DO pay student athletes. Housing, tuition, books, board, sometimes a car, spending money, and [insert crude street-language term for ladies-on-tap]. This is not to mention a free degree.
Some of us would like to see the student athletes “billed” for all of the mayhem that they cause to an academic institution.
At least at U. Maryland they have their priorities in order by cancelling classes to make room for alumni to park early for a Friday night football game.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UMD/comments/chcrzq/provost_should_have_stopped_when_she_was_behind/
Amazing, I didn’t know about that. That permanently damaged my impression of U MD as a leading academic university.
It sure would be interesting if California did this.
It’s a clever bill by LeBron James, designed for his fellow stars. I think it would be the end of big-time college athletics in California, because budget-strapped schools would be facing pressure not to use the “name, image or likeness” of any of their athletes. No printed programs at games (are these still a thing?), no TV or other broadcast.
I guess they would not be paid to play, unlike regular pro athletes.
I favor this. These young kids can incur life long injuries, while the schools, coaches and everybody else reap the benefits. We all know a lot of these kids aren’t intellectual material. The facade is unfair to the kids.
Pay them a salary, don’t make them go to class, mandate a % is set aside in a trust fund, and may the highest bidder win.
Lightning strikes, and I hope it’s true that it doesn’t strike twice: I agree with Sanders. College football teams are that league’s equivalent of the minor league farm teams.
Details remain to be filled in, but he’s right: They ARE workers. Strip out the crypto-commie rhetoric, and the “student” athletes are getting screwed.
The best solution is to separate the college teams from the colleges. That connection is an illusion, and has been for decades. May God kill me for saying so, but on this issue I am with Bernie The Slow-Mo Commie.