Myles Brand: Pay for Play is Fine -- But Not in College Sports

Let's be clear. There is nothing wrong with paying athletes to play sports. Professional sports is big business in America. The athletes, as a labor force, are rightly paid what the market will bear. That's the professional model. But it isn't the right approach for the collegiate model of sports. For the professional model, the bottom line is...well...the bottom line. For the collegiate model, the bottom line is education. In the professional model, the athletes are commodities who can be traded to meet market needs. In the collegiate model, the athletes are students. For the last couple of weeks, I've written about the two reasons most people give for why student-athletes should be paid. The first one is the capitalism argument. Big-time college sports, especially football and men's basketball, is big business. Student-athletes are a significant part of that capitalism machine and are generating the revenue. As labor, as with their professional counterpart, they have a ... (link)