Well, ‘tis the season as the sports fans say. This time of year, I always end up feeling out of the loop. You know, going to bars and being surprised when I see basketball on every television. Before we get started, let me be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sports, nor watching them nor pouring your blood, sweat and tears into rooting for your team.
They just aren’t really my thing.
However, giving student athletes special treatment and equating them with the rest of us students is a problem. For instance, every time March Madness rolls around, NCAA basketball players are flown around the country to compete.
Do you think these student athletes are paying for their plane tickets? Let me tell you, they’re not. In 2008, N.C. State spent about $2.8 million on team travel, according to an ESPN report on college athletic expenses. So, as a student, writer and an avid traveler, I have to ask: Where’s my plane ticket?
I would love to be treated like a student athlete. Could you even imagine? An incredible fan base supporting you on every test you take, advertisements around campus promoting the hard work that you’ve done, fans all over the country watching you perform from the edges of their bar stools and sofas, hanging on your every move.
Imagine clothing, various swag, even video game characters with your name on them. Oh, and you also get unlimited access to Case Dining Hall.
To be fair, most of the benefits I mentioned are more specific to student athletes playing revenue-generating sports, aside from the Case Dining Hall privileges, the advertising and, I’d imagine, the plane tickets. But how are they going to equate student athletes with the rest of us and not offer these benefits to all students? Instead, we should treat collegiate sports as the business entities they’ve become. Like stocking shelves at the library or flipping chicken patties at the Atrium, playing college sports should be treated the same as any other campus job, just with better perks.
Although, all of this goes without mentioning scholarships. N.C. State spent about $5.8 million on student athletes’ tuitions and fees in 2008. Coincidentally, that’s in the same ballpark as the amount of money spent on yearly maintenance for the Wolfline, a service that provides 14,000 average weekday boardings. But, that’s aside from the point.
Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly appreciate the hard work and dedication these athletes put in so that they are able to be a part of the team. It’s just concerning that sometimes these student athletes don’t even receive the education they deserve.
Take, for instance, the recent one-paragraph written by a UNC-Chapel Hill athlete that’s been circulating on the Internet. I know everyone likes to pick on UNC-CH, and they’ve been doing some shady things recently, but I’d speculate that this type of incident happens all over the country. The ones we hear about are only the ones that get caught.
Rewarding an essay of this caliber with higher marks than I received on the last economics essay I slaved over just doesn’t seem fair. Though I would also appreciate a downsized workload, that’s not really my point either. These “fluff” classes effectively rob student athletes of their education.
At the same time, it makes other students seem like they are wasting their time. And then there’s the money. I could’ve saved my parents a big chunk of change by picking up sports. They should’ve just bought me a nice pair of sneakers and made me practice all day, every day.
Okay, maybe that was a bit out of line. But the fact is, student athletes don’t get paid for the hard work they do and sometimes they don’t even receive the education their scholarship promised. Instead, they’re effectively being used to make money for the university without being properly rewarded for their efforts.
Let me reiterate, much of this criticism pertains to the university’s treatment of revenue-generating sports. That said, I’m willing to bet that a decent portion of N.C. State’s $43.8 million total athletic expenses in 2008 went toward these revenue-generating sports.
Sure, they made about a $1.8 million profit, but that isn’t too impressive considering the amount of money they’re spending. On top of that, the sheer fact that some sports are regarded as revenue-generating, and are given special privileges accordingly, balances the playing field.
If all collegiate sports were treated as separate business entities, each sport would be offered an equal opportunity for exposure. I wonder what would happen. Perhaps football and basketball would no longer be the most popular collegiate sports. What if the women’s volleyball team had a better promotions manager than the football team? Maybe we’d be all gathered around our televisions watching them play instead. Maybe I’d get back into sports.
N.C. State, something has to give. Either offer the rest of us the same benefits as these so-called student athletes or make collegiate athletics an entirely different entity altogether. Alright, I have to get back to my homework because I’m paying to be here. Go ahead, the ball’s in your court.
