The Ethics of Collegiate Sports

Source: scarborough.com

With the Olympic Games currently taking place in Sochi, I thought it would be appropriate to examine a sports-related issue as the subject of this week’s ethical dilemma: collegiate athletics.

College sports are already a huge and rapidly expanding facet of American entertainment and media. NCAA leagues have become more popular than ever with millions of viewers tuning in to watch with nearly as much enthusiasm as the professional levels. Student athletes are feeling the full effect of this increasing attention, and as a result have provoked a very ethically challenging discussion: should student athletes be paid?

Due to the increased popularity of collegiate athletics, student-athletes are generating greater amounts of revenue than ever before. However, due to the rules of the system in which they play, no student athlete ever sees a penny of this revenue. Considering the long hours of practice, academic obligations, and high performance expectations of these young athletes, many argue that they deserve to benefit from the financial potential of their abilities. Especially in recent years, where college programs have raking in more revenue than ever before, it seems unethical that a student athlete could be paid nothing in comparison to a professional athlete making millions.

However, some argue that student-athletes are compensated in other ways for their work. For example, many student athletes receive lucrative scholarships to the universities that they play for. Furthermore, some argue that the logistics of paying student athletes would be impossible to deal with as well as intrinsically unfair. While some schools have very profitable athletic programs, many others don’t. In fact, some collegiate athletics programs, especially for less-popular sports, are losing money. In these cases, it would be impossible for the university to compensate athletes at all let alone to a comparable extent of the more profitable schools. Finally, the critical ethical component against paying students athletes lies in the nature of the universities. Some claim that since the purpose of universities is to educate students, paying student athletes would destroy what is already a compromised system of student-athlete recruitment and would sacrifice the educational benefit to athletes in the name of profit. Basically, it would be a very ethically-dubious decision.

As someone with my own athletic high-school experiences, I can certainly attest to the long hours of practice and high expectations that burden student athletes. I can only imagine the increased intensity of the burdens at a collegiate level, and therefore sympathize heavily with the student athletes. However, I also recognize the serious ethical and logistical issues that arise with the option of compensating these athletes monetarily. Hopefully, universities and their hard-working student-athletes will eventually be able to come to an ethical compromise which will provide a fairer outcome for the players.