Pay for Play — Right After Class

On June 21st, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of student-athletes for enhanced pay and benefits related to educational expenses. Although not a free pass to sell their names and every game uniform for money, most people saw it as a ruling that athletes needed to start being directly compensated for playing college sports. The question is, what happens now?

As the landscape for paying athletes evolves, so will the complications that bring money into an altruistic system that grants scholarships to athletes who couldn’t normally afford higher education. Some may see the players as being taken advantage of because of the big television contracts and multimillion-dollar salaries that coaches earn while the players don’t get paid. However, the bulk of scholarships go to student-athletes you don’t see on television and for sports that are not followed by thousands of fans.

Now, the issue is how this type of compensation, and others from sources outside colleges, will influence the schools that players choose, as well as the culture of athletics on campuses. The bigger the player and the more important the sport, the greater the social gap between the players and other students will likely grow. Money will add a certain shine and pressure to the spotlight of those athletes. Think of the party after the big game when the now-paid athlete strikes out in the bottom of the ninth or misses the game-winning shot.

Most may see the Supreme Court ruling as a great step forward for college athletes, but there will be problems along the way, most of which the audience will never see. Stay tuned.