What makes a student and what makes an athlete? This conversation is deeply important to me. I get very passionate about it.
College sports are egregiously out of control, with salaries no state employee, no matter how good s/he is at a job, has any business having. You’re not going to convince me, no matter how hard you try, that a college football coach needs to be making $5-7 million a year to win ballgames. I personally think we’ve gone so far away from the amateur model that it’s hard to ever see a way back from where we are right now. That said, I also firmly believe in protecting student-athletes and making sure they have the same rights as everyone else in school.
Universities have long been using the student-athlete classification to avoid paying money to these workers. Let’s be clear: That’s what they are these days. Maybe at one point athletics took a backseat to academia, but that’s no longer the case right now. The sport has evolved and people are expected to not just put time in on the field, but in the weight room and study room as well. That’s not even counting the school work they must complete to remain eligible. There is so much going on in the sport of college football, never mind the amount of games students are responsible for in the modern era.
While universities are sending students home due to massive COVID-19 outbreaks, they’re keeping football players on campus. Some states are even classifying football players as “essential.”
I cannot think of one way in which football is essential, but then I’m not the one making these decisions. If I were, they would be very different. At some point, lawyers are going to be able to take all of these transgressions by the NCAA and they’ll use them to convince a judge that not only is football not essential, but these athletes are being treated closer to workers than to students.
It’s a complicated topic, no doubt. There are many ins and outs to the discussion and it’s not fair to athletes that they’re constantly told what they are, instead of having any ability to define it by themselves. While we are starting to see more agency from the players, the NCAA and its member institutions still hold all the cards for now. There will come a time when this must be sorted out and the courts are likely to be involved. Right now, however, one would be forgiven if one was unable to make heads or tails of what constitutes a student and what constitutes an essential worker.