Sunday, October 13, 2013

Have I convinced you college football players should be paid yet?

There was yet another study pointing out the college athletes are being robbed blind by the NCAA. Just a few fun stats: in 2011 US colleges and universities pulled in $12.6 billion in athletics revenue. Conversely the behemoth that is the NFL only brought in $7.6 billion in 2009. Admittedly that is 32 teams against hundreds of schools, but it shows how much cash is out there.

In pro sports players get 50% of profits, but in Division I-A football only 15% of revenue heads to players (and that is in scholarships, not cash - ignoring boosters of course).
The percentage is actually higher in lower divisions because money coming in is less and tuition is fairly similar (although they have less scholarships to give). Honestly I was surprised that I-AA and Div. 2 both were around 30% because they aren't close on TV, ticket, and merchandise revenue.

Professor Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College also added a good point: if the NCAA was truly amateur, they wouldn't have multimillion dollar coaches.

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