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Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

The players should be paid a salary, full stop. If you're an athlete at a D1 school in the primary money making sports of men's basketball or football you're hardly a student -- most days are spent training or preparing for a game, the athletes notoriously take cupcake classes and majors; and we've seen enough academic scandals to know that 'student-athlete' is a misnomer. The NCAA is another case of cartel like behavior in the American economy and I'll be glad when this phony amateurism is put to rest.

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Anyone on a full scholarship at a D1 school already gets a monthly stipend, basically a small salary that covers miscellaneous expenses. It's not much but most student athletes simply don't provide any value to their school beyond that. However, there is the 1% of top athletes who are worth millions of dollars of marketing value and this bill will hopefully allow them to capitalize on that.

While most of these student athletes are unlikely to make millions, this bill allows that bottom 99% to make money in other ways that were previously prohibited, such as providing private coaching to younger athletes.

>The players should be paid a salary, full stop.

This is where I disagree. I don't think the schools should be obligated to provide a salary. These are amateurs, by definition.

That said, if you are popular enough to make money outside of the school, of your own volition, the NCAA has no business stopping you from doing so.

> These are amateurs, by definition.

They are unpaid workers providing economic benefit to their employer, the same way that has been federally outlawed most of the other places it was practiced (often also with students) when the rules on unpaid internships were tightened down.

They are amateurs only by circular definition: the trade association of their employers prohibits paying them, so they aren't paid, so they are “amateurs”. Using that as an argument to continue not paying them is ludicrous on it's face.

This is where I think the argument falls down. They do get a free ride. That might not seem like much, but I worked full time while going to school full time. I could have created a lucrative start-up in the hours I was working to pay for school. The athletes also get the primetime TV exposure and ESPN highlights that lead to a chance for $MM contracts. They also get some of the best training and coaching facilities that money can buy.

I get that the players are taken advantage of but so do all of our employers. They aren't slaves, they can try out for professional sports around the world right out of high school and start making money. It will probably be less but they have options.

The one fallout of this is that there are lots of collegiate sports that will go away. They schools won't pay the money for the field hockey team so all the players can get a salary.

All this to say that this is much more grey than a lot of people think it is. I think the right solution is to get rid of college athletics completely. Move it to an intramural setup. All the other leagues can create their own farm systems like baseball has and people can start having minor league NFL and NBA teams in their middle sized towns instead.

> The one fallout of this is that there are lots of collegiate sports that will go away. They schools won't pay the money for the field hockey team so all the players can get a salary.

So, what you are saying is that the field hockey team wouldn't meet the economic benefit to the school test to determine that they were entitled to pay if rules like those for unpaid internships were applied? And, therefore, wouldn't be covered, at all?

Just to reiterate the point above, they're not entirely unpaid, unless they're a walk-on. Scholarship players receive tuition, housing, food, health care, clothing, professional career prep beyond the classroom, supplemental tutoring, a stipend, and all kinds of other benefits.

It's not as cut and dry as, they get nothing. The all in spend on a College Football player annually is probably well over $80k.

There are a lot of activities that happen in the course of normal academics that contributes to the economic benefit of the school. Most of this is seen as being a normal course of attending school: tasks assigned for academic credit, or simply voluntarism. Athletics used to be that way until the demand side of the equation got out of hand.

Well a lot of those activities are paid too. Marching bands get paid. Tutors get paid.

Graduate research and teaching assitants get paid. People doing graded, required internships that provide non-incidental value to the employer get paid, per IRS rules. Yes, lots of them used to be unpaid, but term slavery in exchange for education has fallen out of favor.

Well, except for athletics, but that is starting to be seen as problematic, too.

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