When the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded in 1910, nobody knew that it would turn into a multibillion-dollar industry. This multibillion-dollar industry pays everyone apart of it, except the athletes whom are single-handily the ones making the profits for the industry. The hierarchy of the NCAA is broken down into committees and cabinets of people who have managerial ideologies of college athletics; which in return has been robbing college athletes for many years.
College athletics are being ruled by a group of managers who are trying to keep the traditional order of the NCAA like it was when it was founded. The NCAA is doing a fabulous job at maintaining and managing college sports, but there are issues within college sports that managers are unable to resolve. They cannot resolve these problems because they are only controlling and directing a system that has needed drastic improvements since its inception. Athletes are struggling financially to live an ordinary college life despite putting in long hours of practice and study for their school. They are simply not reaping the benefits from their hard work.
The average college athlete at a division I school would earn nearly six figures a year through the university’s donations, advertisements, media rights and everything that has a price tag on it. None of the athletes are seeing a penny of what they are contributing and bringing in for their school. The NCAA does not want to amend the rules to college sports because the NCAA officials have the mindset of “This is how it has always been”. The NCAA is continuously struggling between keeping the status of their student-athletes as amateurs and rewarding the student-athletes for the hoards of profit they have brought to the NCAA.
Mark Emmert who is the current president of the NCAA has rejected the idea of payment for players because he and the rest of the NCAA are clinging on to the outdated model of amateurism for college athletes. They believe that if they implement a pay for play system, college athletes will lose their title of amateurs and will develop an employer-employee relationship with college athletes. Although a pay for play system will create an employer-employee relationship between college athletes and the NCAA, student-athletes will no longer be neglected.
The NCAA needs a new approach to creating an innovative system that properly pays players. The NCAA is in dire need of a group of leaders who can work collaboratively with the players, coaches, and fans to find a way to compensate student-athletes.
