Corruption in College Athletics

Amy Goodgame

S.Bloom

Compositon I

March 2, 2017

At the crack of dawn all throughout the world the alarm of a young college athlete blares loudly. Silencing the alarm clock, the young athlete gets up even drearier than the morning before. Starting their day just like any other athlete would. 5 AM workouts followed by class, then more workouts, and finally ending the day with a late-night practice, leaving little to no time for homework or extracurricular activities. College athletes make a career out of their sport. Pouring blood, sweat, tears, and time into everything they do without making a dime.

Concerned coaches, athletes and universities discuss the issue of paying college athletes daily. Organizations like the NCAA constantly fight the battle of whether a college athlete should be rewarded with a check. Taylor Branch wrote an article published in The Atlantic titled “The Shame of College Sports.” The article looks at multiple views of coaches and players as well, who express their opinion about paying college athletes. In this article, Branch explains the corruption in college sports by discussing how some colleges bribe athletes with money to attend their school while other colleges give no gratuity to their athletes, because the NCAA does not allow it. Branch also presents the idea that the NCAA is full of corruption, and elaborates on how the athletes are taken advantage of daily.

Branch believes that unethical deals are presented daily in the life of a college athlete. “The tragedy at the heart of college sports is not that some college athletes are getting paid, but that more of them are not.” Only the top prospects in college football and basketball receive huge bonuses, while many baseball and athletes who are women do not receive any type of benefits when it comes to money. Branch claims that the athletes who do not receive any benefits work if not even harder than those who do receive the benefits. Many elite athletic brands offer money to universities which then creates a contract that benefits the university, but not the individual players. Branch explains college athletes are not allowed to sell their own merchandise, make money off a commercial, or make money from representing a brand. All the money goes to the universities funds and is used for the universities purposes, however many universities find easy loopholes around these types of situations. Branch compelling that these loopholes are extremely unfair to those athletes who invest so much time and receive so little.