Should College Athletes Be Paid?

The Free Market is Going to School, And We should All Be Worried

(Auburn Quarterback Cam Newton; students no longer use 
sports as a means to attend school, many now use school 
as a means to play sports.)

There's a black market for athletes in college sports.   Auburn Tigers quarterback Cam Newton is the current star of college football and is in the conversation to win the sport's top individual honor, the Heisman trophy. There's just one problem. He's embroiled in an unfolding scandal of allegations that he or those around him solicited large sums of money, in violation of the NCAA's longstanding policy that prohibits college athletes getting paid or accepting favors. If Newton were alone his problems would be little more than an unfortunate scandal. However in late summer, Super Bowl champion and New Orleans Saints RB Reggie Bush was forced to give back his 2005 Heisman trophy after it was revealed he accepted money and gifts when he was a college athlete at the then National Champion USC Trojans. In fact, during the summer of 2010 the NCAA opened an embarrassing amount of investigations into a score of collegiate football programs citing similar cases of student athletes being paid. Whether they want to admit it or not, college sports has a crisis on its hands. It's because of that crisis that American institutions of higher learning are probably about to become beacons of free market capitalism. Which will be a crisis in and of itself.

Out of Touch

Lebron James is out of touch. Since announcing his decision to leave the city of Cleveland in an hour long televised spectacle aptly named “The Decision,” Lebron James has demonstrated exactly the degree to which he’s out of touch. In fact it’s clear that he’s been out of touch for some time. Those who’ve had the pleasure of discussing this topic with me over the previous 7 years are well aware of my opinion/criticism of the man, which has centered on the very idea that King James has been walking around wearing a crown well before any actual coronation ceremony. There can be no ignoring the fact that Lebron is an outstanding basketball talent and easily among the best players in the NBA, but he has yet to be and may never be the best of his era or of all time. Yet both the media and James’ behavior led many people to believe otherwise, and in turn that’s exactly what caused the basketball superstar to use an hour of America's time so he could take his talents to South Beach.