Did you all enjoy my NBA preview the other day? Ha ha. Just kidding! I do want to talk about some guys that will probably be in the NBA soon, though. I'm of course talking about college basketball players.
The NCAA recently passed legislation that allows student-athletes to receive a stipend of up to $2,000 in addition to their scholarships. Critics of this new rule claim that this is the beginning of the end of the NCAA as a strictly amateur organization. Mind you, these are many of the same critics that argued it was unfair the student-athletes didn't receive any sort of compensation for their services other than a scholarship. Their argument is: "Now that they're getting $2,000, what's to stop some schools from giving $5,000?"
For starters, that argument doesn't make any sense. Whether or not they want to, schools can't give student-athletes more than $2,000 per year ($1,000 per semester) as a stipend. The reason this rule was even discussed is because the value of a full scholarship doesn't cover the full cost of attending college. It covers tuition, books and room & board, but not things like food, travel, etc. As a result, student-athletes were still paying a significant amount out-of-pocket despite having a "full" scholarship. (Just imagine how much out-of-pocket student-athletes on partial scholarships have to pay per semester.) This is designed to be a remedy to that.
$1,000 a semester isn't a lot, but it's enough. In fact, it's roughly the same amount regular students receive in federal work study. Nobody has a problem with that. Most student-athletes don't have time to find work study jobs, let alone something off-campus. As a result, there previously wasn't a way for them to do something as simple as order a pizza with there roommates or go out on a date. All this is doing is making it so that student-athletes can enjoy the same college experience other students enjoy.
This isn't the end of amateurism as we know it. It's a way to make an inherently unfair system a little bit fairer. And just maybe, it'll help curb the blatant rules-breaking that has run amok among athletes at BCS schools lately. I'm not condoning knowingly and deliberately breaking NCAA rules, but I'd be willing to bet (no pun intended) that many of the athletes who accepted "extra benefits" felt justified in doing so. "If my school is making money off me and I can't even afford to pay my rent, why shouldn't I be allowed to have a piece of the pie?" Especially with the size of these TV contracts that lead to all this disgusting conference-jumping. It doesn't make it right, but you do kind of have to see their point.
The other big change involves the scholarship structure. Previously, scholarships were one-year agreements that were renewable each year. Now schools have the option of offering multi-year scholarships, going all the way to a full four-year commitment. Furthermore, they can no longer be terminated based on performance alone. Doing something stupid like getting arrested or flunking out of school are still valid reasons to be kicked off a team. As they should be. Point is, now schools will be more invested in these student-athletes, and these student-athletes will be more invested in the program.
Yes, the offering of a student-athlete stipend does open up a can of worms. The NCAA didn't mandate these changes. They just said that it's an option schools now have. That obviously means the BCS schools will choose to utilize this new rule, while smaller schools that don't have the budget probably won't be able to afford it, since giving the football players a stipend means you have to give one to the women's soccer players and female gymnasts, too. This could be a huge recruiting advantage (why go to Illinois when you can go to Michigan and get $2,000 in addition to your scholarship?), as well as possibly creating an even larger gap between the haves and have-nots of college sports.
Even with these new rules in place, there are still going to be shameless boosters that try to get around the system. But I'm going to choose to look at the positive. This gives student-athletes the chance to enjoy being college students. Yes, some of the football and basketball players are going to make their millions when they leave college, but they aren't yet. And they deserve the chance to be regular college students, too.
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