Exploitation of College Athletes

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The professional athletes in America are some of the best players in the world, but then why do people prefer watching college sports?  More people enjoy watching college football on Saturday than watching the NFL on Sunday.  That’s strange because the NFL is a mixture of the best college players.  What’s even stranger is why those college athletes aren’t paid.  College sports is a billion dollar industry, just like other professional sports in America, but the players don’t see a penny of that revenue.  The players get money for scholarships and that’s about it.  College players should be paid for all the work and time that they put in and for all the money they bring in.    

Fans against paying college athletes always say that they are student athletes and student comes first for a reason. They are students, but they aren’t treated like students.  In an article written by Brian Frederick he says, “If a student-athlete is hurt or unsuccessful, the coaches and administrators suddenly discard the noble ideals of "education" and a player is left with nothing”.  The colleges get rid of that student athlete in a blink of an eye, but why?  I thought that they were students first and if they truly were student athletes they would still be in those schools.  Most athletes that suffer career ending injuries get their scholarship revoked and they drop out of school.  Those athletes are playing sports at the risk of a major injury and they might lose their education and future because they were working for free.  

The athletes bring in too much money to not get paid.  They make these schools rich and the school’s exploit these athletes.  The players deserve the money because they aren’t taken care of.  The players receive no support with medical bills and they need the money.  The players can be making thousands, maybe even millions of dollars playing college sports, but they don’t because they aren’t considered professionals. Why should these athletes stay in college? They can go pro and sign the big contracts and big endorsement deals and that's what I'll talk about in my next post.

College athletics draws a big crowd because of the style of play.  Some of the stadiums seat 80,000 plus and they sell out every game.  With the big crowd is a lot of hidden costs. People don’t realize that they are bringing in money from so many places.  Another writer in the debate on paying college athletes, Bobby Rush, said, “Without them, we wouldn't have millions of fans buying tickets for games and subscribing to expensive cable and satellite sports television packages, corporate sponsors purchasing luxury suites and boxes in college arenas and stadiums, or consumers paying top dollar for sports paraphenelia, and jerseys.”  All those factors bring in millions of dollars for the school and the players see none of the money.  Another hidden cost is the amount of students that come to the school because of good athletics.  Students want to go to a school with a winning tradition, so they attend football powerhouses and this makes the school even more money.

The Necessity of Salary Caps

http://priceonomics.com/are-salary-caps-for-professional-athletes-fair/

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In my last blog post you read about how salary caps limit the income of NHL players.  If there was no cap then these players would be making millions of dollars more.  The salary caps existence has been debated for many years now on whether all sports should have it or not.  Currently, in the U.S. only the MLB has no salary cap, and you see players like Miguel Cabrera making 29.2 million dollars a year.  I think Cabrera is one of the best MLB players, but I think he’s getting a pretty generous deal.  After doing all the research I believe that all the sports around the world should have a salary cap.

Whenever people think of MLB teams, usually the first team thought of is the Yankees.  The reason is because they win championships and play in the biggest media market in the world.  Since they play in such a big market it allows them to pay big money for superstar players.  The Yankees outspend every team in the MLB by a landslide.  They win year after year and always have a shot at a World Series.  You know who always doesn’t have a shot at a World Series?  Small market teams.  These small market teams can’t afford superstar players and as a result they lose games and don’t make the playoffs.  If there was a salary cap, “They would give poorer, small-market teams a chance to compete, and this competitive balance draws in fans and benefits the league as a whole.”  This happens a lot in baseball, fans know their team won’t make the playoffs, and once they fall out of contention people stop watching and going to games.  When the outcome is already known before the game, it ruins the fun of watching the game.  This happens a lot in the MLB and it’s even worse in the EPL (English Premier League).  In the EPL, “The wealthiest clubs buy up the best players and dominate; only four teams (Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, and Arsenal) have won the league since 1995.”  It must be fun being a fan of those four teams, but any other team it probably isn’t.  When teams dominate this badly it ruins the excitement of watching the games.  Everyone knows in the pre-season who is going to the championship, so why bother watch?  The domination of a couple teams has ruined leagues in the past, and the EPL is lucky that the English love soccer so much.

A perfect example of the salary cap is the NHL.  The NHL has a hard cap salary cap meaning you can’t go over the cap, only the NFL and the NHL have hard caps.  When you watch a NHL game you don’t know who will win.  The worst team can beat the best team on any given night.  It gets even better in the playoffs too.  When you look at the past the NHL has had many 7 and 8 seeds (the 8 seed is the last spot) move on and beat the top ranked teams.  There are two conferences, so these 7 and 8 seeds finish about 15 out of 30 and they beat top 5 teams in the playoffs.  A couple of years ago the LA Kings won the Stanley Cup as an 8 seed.  The playoff format has changed now with the NHL into a bracket format, but what it used to be the lowest seed plays the top seed, no matter what round.  This means that the Kings knocked off the best team left in their conference every single round until they were champs.  Also, every series in the NHL playoff is close.  There are numerous game 7’s and pretty much every game is a one goal game coming down to the wire.  There was only one sweep last year in the NHL playoffs.  The Ducks beat the Jets in 4 games, but 3 of those games were decided by 1 goal and some of the games went to overtime.  The NHL players don’t make as much, but the sport has the best competitive balance that will make the players more money in the future because the viewer ratings are strong.  All NHL players make good money for the skills they bring to the table, except for the rookies who are locked into rookie contracts.  Whether that’s ethical or not is questionable and I’ll break it down  in my next post.

The Effects of TV on Sports

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nbas-new-tv-deal-blow-up-the-salary-cap/

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When it comes to sports you see all the great talent these professional athletes have, and you also see how much of a profit these athletes make now.  When you compare athletes from other sports you see a wide range of contracts between the superstars of these sports.  Hockey superstars make around eight million dollars a year, where an all-star basketball player will make 20-25 million dollars a year.  Both athletes dominate their respective sports, but why is there such a pay differential.  After a little research I learned all about the roles of TV contracts and have concluded that TV contracts play a big  role in determining the salary cap and the player contracts.

The NBA is coming up on the end of their old TV contracts and this will result in a big pay day.  When the old TV contract was signed the NBA wasn’t as popular, but now it’s one of the most popular sports in the world. The New York Times reported, “Disney (ESPN/ABC) and Turner (TNT/TBS) will pay the NBA nearly $2.7 billion per year, on average, over nine years to retain exclusive broadcasting national broadcast rights” http://grantland.com/the-triangle/nbas-new-tv-deal-blow-up-the-salary-cap/. This will be huge for the NBA because it will bring in more revenue and it will increase the salary cap.  Analyst project, “If the new TV deal kicks in for the 2016-17 season just shy of $2 billion, the cap could exceed that same $14 million leap, all the way to around $80-plus million.”  This means that the salary cap will go up and players will make more money.  Recently, over the summer big name players like Anthony Davis and Jimmy Butler signed contracts worth more than 20 million dollars a year due to the anticipation of the new TV contract negotiations.  More players will follow with big contracts and it will all be because of the new TV deal.  Many players are signing short term contacts as a result of the upcoming negotiations.  LeBron James only signed a two year deal so he can jump back into the free agent market once the TV deal is done so he can make more money.  This move is smart, but LeBron is rolling the dice because if he gets hurt he will lose a lot of money. The NBA players are becoming rich, but other athletes, like hockey players, aren’t making as much.

The NHL isn’t as popular as basketball in America, but in Canada people live hockey and the same goes in Sweden, Russia, Finland and many more countries.  A couple of years ago the NHL signed a record deal with Rogers Communication and NBC to televise the NHL deals.  The NBC deal wasn’t worth as much, 200 million a year,  but Roger Communications deal was worth five billion dollars over 12 years.  That is in no way even close to what the NBA TV contract will be in 2016-2017.  The salary caps in each sport are about the same, but hockey has 20 players where basketball has 11 players that are on the payroll.  The NHL is more popular now, but they have to wait 10 years for a new contract that will be worth double what it is now.  When that time comes the all-star players will make up to around 4 million dollars more per year, but until that time comes the NHL players will always make less than the NBA players. The salaries are limiting the pay, and that brings up the discussion of whether or not there should be a salary cap.

Million Dollar Industry

The reason I am so intrigued with this topic is because I'm a big sports fan and watch all kind of sports.  Sports are a big part of my life and I see how good these professionals are and don't understand why an average player in one sport will make more than a superstar in another sport.

• The overall question I plan on answering by the end of the project:

What determines how much different professional athletes get paid? 

Sub questions I will need to answer in order to answer the overall question:

• How big of a role do TV contracts play in the payment of athletes?
• How big of an effect does the salary cap have?
• Should salary caps be allowed?
• Should college athletes get paid?
• Do ads pay out different sums of money to athletes in different sports?

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• My plan of research (what specific Library Databases, specific websites, names of authors, people, etc. will I pursue to find the answers to the questions above):
• What I plan on using for my research are the databases that the library gives us. The main database I'll use is Proquest Research Library because I've used it in the past and it's very resourceful and there's a wide variety of topics that I can find. I will also try and use some articles written in sports blogs because I believe that there is a lot of good information there. I will go on websites like Bleacher Report and ESPN to read all the articles written on my

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