After a summer of shocking revelations concerning payments by professional agents to prospects still in college, a recent article in Sports Illustrated rocked the college football world yet again. Josh Luchs, a former NFL agent, detailed the inner workings of the system and admitted to paying dozens of college players during his career in order to persuade them to sign with his representation firm when they entered the NFL Draft. Luchs’ story, combined with the scandals at numerous programs, has led to new calls for the NCAA and the NFL to crack down on agent payments to players.
The Luchs story also added fresh fuel to an age-old debate in college sports: whether universities should pay student-athletes.
In his interviews with SI, Luchs said the vast majority of payments aren’t huge gifts. Agents’ commissions are limited to 3 percent, so only the top 10 or so draft picks will sign large enough contracts to justify big payouts.
Many of these players took the money not because they were greedy, but because they needed it–to buy food or make car payments, for example. Many college football players don’t come from advantaged backgrounds, and because of their commitments to football, they can’t take part-time jobs to pay for everyday expenses. Thus, when an agent comes around offering money, players are often happy to take it.
The answer championed by some commentators is for every football program to give its players a small stipend so they won’t have to take money from agents. This seems like a logical solution to the issue at hand. Players will not have as strong an incentive to take money from agents since their basic needs will be taken care of.
However, I still disagree with the idea of paying college football players.
For starters, some football players are already paid quite a lot of money in the form of full scholarships. I pay upward of $50,000 a year to attend Stanford. Athletes on full scholarships pay nothing while receiving the same education I do. Of course, these players deserve the full scholarships; I am merely pointing out that there is a pretty significant value associated with them.
Athletes are also basically receiving free training to improve their on-field performance, which pays significant dividends when they leave for the pros. Under a single scholarship, football players are receiving both a standard education, which they can utilize if they enter the regular workforce, and a “football education,” which is necessary to make those millions of dollars in the NFL.
In summary, many athletes are already receiving quite a lot for free. While the value of this education might not compare to the salaries available in the pros, no one is advocating for college football players to be paid at the same level as their NFL counterparts.
But it still doesn’t solve the problem close to the heart of the agent issue: the lack of means to pay for basics that drives many athletes to take the cash.
To me, this problem seems to break down into two distinct categories: what I’ll call “basic living needs,” like food, housing and books, and “other expenses,” like car payments.
Universities should definitely cover expenses in the first category for football players. A full scholarship should cover tuition, room and board, so these athletes should have their meals, rent and school expenses paid for. If scholarships aren’t covering these types of things, then they should be expanded to include them.
This brings us to the other category of expenses. A recent article on ESPNLosAngeles.com helped to shed some light on this issue as well. In it, former USC head coach John Robinson talked about some of the problems his players faced.
“That was one of the toughest things for me as a head coach, was the kid who was stressed for whatever reason,” Robinson told the website. “His girlfriend was pregnant, his parents were this or that, he had a car and couldn’t make the payment.”
Call me coldhearted, but I really don’t have all that much sympathy for someone who gets himself into trouble by making poor choices. If you don’t have the income to make car payments but go ahead and buy a car anyway, asking your university for a stipend to pay for it is something I just can’t endorse. Likewise, if you don’t have any money, getting your girlfriend pregnant is a stupid move.
Maybe college football players should be required to take a class in personal finance. It might help them manage their money better and avoid the pressures of agent cash.
It might even be a good idea to allow football players to take out loans against their future NFL earnings. Similar to a student loan, they could take out money now and pay it off later. It legally achieves the same basic idea as the agent payoff–cashing in on your future potential while you’re still in college.
So there you have it: my case against giving football players stipends. They’re already receiving a pretty valuable education, both on and off the field. Their scholarships should cover basic living needs, and if they don’t, universities need to expand them so they do. And it’s not their schools’ responsibility to bail them out when they get themselves in financial hot water.
Even if this solution doesn’t staunch the flow of agent cash to athletes, we can at least shift the blame away from “the system” and place it squarely on greed, both from the agents and players, with a sprinkling of poor decision-making in there for good measure.
Kabir Sawhney will teach that finance class if it means that football players will finally pay attention to him. Request enrollment at ksawhney “at” stanford.edu.