The Shame of College Sports by Taylor Branch (14615 Words)

This article by Branch deals is a position paper that tackles the debate over paying college athletes. He takes the position in favor of giving NCAA athletes a portion of the wealth that they help generate for campuses. I really enjoy the way he goes about making his point, mainly by completely dismantling any arguments for the continued exploitation of student athletes.

His first argument in support of student athletes is centered around challenging the claim that paying athletes would somehow compromise the integrity of college sports. He does this by pointing out the fact that the NCAA’s integrity is already more than compromised since they have commercialized university sports and generated revenue from student athletes. The NCAA has continued to get away with exploitation by using very tired yet effective methods like labeling the students as amateurs. By doing this, they place the students in a position of powelesness which then justifies their position (if this sounds very similar to slavery it’s because it pretty much is with a few extra steps).

Another aspect of the article that I enjoyed was the way that it sprinkled in stories displaying some of the NCAA’s organizational failures and its failures to help individual students. One good example was when they were in the case where several universities were holding students hostage with their scholarship money. Stories like this again disprove how the NCAA has the best interests of the players at heart. 

One of the strongest cases for paying student athletes came up after the tattoo story, where students were receiving free tattoos and other services in exchange for memorabilia. The argument here is that these players clearly hold value, and they’re naturally going to look for ways to trade that value. The fact that the NCAA does not pay these players actually endangers them since they’re more likely to resort to more dangerous methods of trading their value for products. The point here is, hey, college players are already recognizing their value and using it to get services, so, please, make this less dangerous and pay them.

The author constantly reminds his audience that these students that are being exploited are exactly that: students. Taking the NCAA’s argument that these students are merely amateurs, it would come to reason that since these students are not professional players, their first priority should be their studies. If this were the case, then maybe the NCAA would have something to build their case on. However, as Branch points out, this is certainly not the case for big time NCAA players. Coaches demand a level of commitment beyond what the “ameteur” experience would entail, pushing students to seek a career in professional sports when most of these player’s sports careers will end after college.