Pay For Play, Someday?

Former University of Texas Longhorn Emmanuel Acho argued for the student-athlete throughout the recent SXSports session, claiming that college athletes do not have an advocate or someone to represent their best interests. He stated that if Colt McCoy’s Longhorns jerseys are being sold, McCoy deserves a piece of the revenue. “The NCAA is more or less a dictatorship,” Acho said, when referring to its refusal to pay its players in spite of the fact that some Division 1 athletes single-handedly generate millions of dollars for their respective universities.

Texas Christian University Athletic Director Chris Del Conte countered with a statement that paying players according to their worth is a slippery slope because it could lead to even more corruption, such as car dealerships promising cash incentives to high school recruits in exchange for appearing in their TV commercials. Del Conte reasoned that the notion that one player (e.g. Manziel) could generate millions of dollars for a university is absurd because college football is a team game, not an individual game.

Sports Illustrated writer Andy Staples believes that the modernization of college football programs has become an arms race that has gotten way out of control. It costs way too much of the taxpayers’ money when the modernization of sports facilities leads to increased sums of revenue being spent on the big programs.