Assignment Five

College Athletes and Compensation
Professor Adam Lawrence
Strayer University
June 9, 2013

PART I: PROBLEM
The goal of this paper is to focus on evidence that college athletes, specifically, football players should be compensated for the talents they demonstrate on the field; for many reasons. It is well documented that college presidents, coaches, athletic directors often think of athletics as the “front porch” of their campuses (Weaver, 2011), as it relates to college revenues. Weaver further maintains that college athletes, especially football players, are needed to generate the revenues to build both and support a winning football team, and athletics department. And historically colleges rely on ticket sales, game programs, and advertising revenues, to do so. Additionally, coaches’ salary and facility renovations also are factor in terms of colleges and universities needing to generate revenues as well. But before the former can be brought to fruition colleges must first persuade the most talented athletes to their school. What criteria do colleges and universities utilize when recruiting athletes with regard to talent, academics, finances, and student population? Additionally, what perks are colleges and universities offering these athletes to entice them at a minimum to the said front porch? Let’s start by first exploring how colleges and universities generate revenues.
First, warning sign (problem) is that billions in annual revenues generated by colleges, universities, conferences and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) are in large part derived from rights and fees paid by media conglomerates such as ESPN/ABC, CBS, and Fox for a license that affords the networks the right to broadcast live coverage of the sporting events over television, radio, the internet, and other technological platforms, as well as