As I begin to do further research about making my case for just why college athletes deserve to start being paid, I reflect back on my previous post of how much in revenue the NCAA earns.  What I did not touch on is how much schools make from the NCAA in order to pay their coaches to be at the school.  In the past ten years, I have seen coaches leave the NFL to take on a college coaching job, but when I asked myself why, I saw just how much they would make being a coach at these schools.  The reason the system is this way and college coaches are paid so well, is due to the fact the school doesn’t have to pay any of the athletes that are filling the stadiums or arenas, just the coaching staff.  I found a book titled, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, written by Allen R. Sanderson and John J. Siegfried.  Within this book, there is a chapter that is titled, “The Case for Paying College Athletes,” which highlights what I have brought forth as well.  “Several college coaches have gained celebrity status and corresponding compensation packages…Alabama’s [Football] Nick Saban earns over 7million per year.  Among head basketball coaches, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski earns 9.7 million per year” (Sanderson & Siegfried, 115).  It also goes on to mention that the average for football coaches is 1.9 million and basketball 1.2 million respectively.  Now although these are the two largest revenue generating sports, so much so they generally make enough to provide the funding for every other sport the schools may have, it doesn’t mean that it is fair for them to do so.  But this doesn’t fall back on the school entirely, but more so the NCAA.  The reason I say this is they sign away the media rights to these big name schools ensuring that they are nationally televised and then profit from this.  What this means is that a company such as NBC can buy the rights to televise the schools games, and in doing so the NCAA gets paid for the viewership.  Additionally, the schools profit solely off of revenue generated from ticket sales, jersey sales, food sales, etc.  None of which a single player will see.  If you’re thinking to yourself, well that doesn’t seem fair, I agree with you.  As I continue to do some further research on the topic, next week I will be diving into the question of does getting a scholarship count as being paid?

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Sanderson, A., & Siegfried, J. (2015). The Case for Paying College Athletes. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(1), 115-137. Retrieved October 12, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43194698