Sports

Colleges should pay the athletes

Cougar Pause

Tom Carpenter

The Nebraska Legislature bludgeoned the myth that college sports exist to enhance a college education when it passed a proposal Friday that would allow Nebraska football players to be paid during the season.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said he sponsored the bill, which has a few more steps to take before becoming law, not because he actually wants to pay players but because he wanted the NCAA to address the needs of student athletes. He says it needs to increase the amount of scholarships, financial aid and earned income they can receive.

Chambers champions a laudable cause, and everything about the bill makes sense -- so it's a sure bet the proposal will fail.

NCAA rules prohibit scholarship athletes from holding jobs during their respective seasons and, contrary to popular belief, not every athlete gets money under the table, although great athletes seldom hurt for cash.

These rules embellish temptation, and poor kids can no more resist temptation than corporate CEOs and their accounting firms can resist ripping off stockholders and stealing pension funds.

Considering that college sports produce more than $2 billion annually for the top 305 Division I schools, according to a computer analysis of available data by the Kansas City Star, it sounds reasonable to provide a small stipend for the athletes who generate that surging tide of money.

The NCAA is big business. According to the Staris report, the organizationis revenues have increased 8,000 percent in the past 23 years.

The schools get a cut, but not the athletes. The top 100 major college programs each average more than $4 million annually from their bread and butter sports: football and basketball.

You wonder why no playoff exists in college football? Look at the money the major bowls offer participating leagues to maintain the status quo.

The Big 10 and Big 12 conferences made more than $45 million each from bowl revenue in the 2001-02 seasons. The Southeastern Conference collected more than $54 million during the same period.

Somewhere along the line, "itis just a game" got lost in the rush for big bucks.

The new head basketball coach at California-Los Angeles signed a seven-year contract with a base guarantee of $900,000 per year. That figure doesnit include bonuses, which could push his salary to more than $1 million.

That makes Ben Howland the highest-paid state employee in California, and the kids who raise the money to pay his check canit even get a cushion job to cover their pizza bills.

Academic cheating disappears from the headlines, but it still goes on in the sports programs. Coaches get caught and move on to more lucrative fields, and the players either turn pro or drop out of school.

Blow out a knee or suffer some other career-crippling injury, though, and many college athletes get shuffled into the background with no recompense for their injury or diploma to augment their job search.

Zany as it sounds, it boils down to the fact that student athletes need protection and support because they are exploited and abused by universities in pursuit of the millions of dollars offered as prize money for amateur championships.

Until some form of fair compensation exists for student athletes, cheating and bribery will continue and college athletes will always to be meat-on-the-hoof for the university bank account.

Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns has said he would sign the bill into law once the Legislature passed it.

The law will be enacted only if four other states from the conference pass similar bills. The other states with teams in the Big 12 are Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Colorado. Texas has introduced a similar proposal.

I say pay them.

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