Last college football season, Johnny Manziel was accused of selling his autograph. He was suspended for the first half of the opening game of the season. I am not a fan of Johnny Fuseball. He was a talented college quarterback. It will remain to be seen if he can hack it in the NFL. I believe that he won't. He seems to have the personality of Ryan Leaf with the skill set of Tim Tebow. But old Johnny really should not have been the debate. The debate needs to be about colleges making tons of money off of predominantly 18 to 22 year old students.
Those who feel the NCAA is in the right to have rules against players being paid will point to the fact that players are getting free educations. I agree that is a very valuable payment for their services. However, is this payment anywhere comparable to the hundreds of millions dollars that college sports brings into the school. Also, their education is not a priority for the schools. Look at football and how it now takes up the entire fall. At one time there were only nine games a season plus a bowl game for a few elite programs. Plus teams played more regional games. Now there are at least 12 games for each program and up to 14 games for some teams. College basketball has thirty some off games a year. So on and so on. Point being, if education was so valuable to the school then they would focus more on the student than the athlete in student-athletes.
One of the biggest problems with the current system, especially with football and basketball is that players are still getting paid just under the table. Then the result after being caught can be losing that educational opportunity. Once again, that does not help the student in the student-athletes.
When it comes down to it the school can make as much money as they want on the backs of the athletes. Sure they technically don't use the player's name. Well unless you count those commercials on Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS, etc. that use players images in order to drive up ratings that in turn drive up TV contracts that in turn get more revenue for schools in negotiations. Negotiating is not something the student-athlete is allowed to do. They must sign the dotted-line or not play. They can't just go straight to the pros in football and basketball. Interestingly those are the two money maker sports for most schools.
There needs to be one set of rules for both sides. Either the student-athletes can go out and negotiate the same as the schools for the use of their images and talent or the schools must only make enough money to pay for the student-athelete's education and they cannot use that person's image. And if you don't think the schools use the student-athelete's image to make money, I wonder how many #2 Texas A&M jerseys sold this year. Maybe none but I bet they sold plenty. As a libertarian minded individual, I believe the first option is the best. Let these men and women get a life lesson in economics and responsibility. Let the schools make all kinds of money off sports. If the schools really cared about the students then they will use that revenue to pay for people to help the students to learn how to use that money properly. Then maybe we won't see millionaires without money by the time they are 40 years old.
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