National Collegiate Athletic Association: Ethical Issues In Collegiate Sports

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is an organization that is responsible for the health and long-term success of their collegiate athletes. The NCAA is comprised of 1,121 colleges and 99 voting athletic conferences. Although the NCAA is very big and has the attention of a ton of people, this does not stop the organization of committing unethical practices. In my paper I will discuss how the ethical complication that arises are two very big issues in collegiate sports at the present time and that is the non salary payments to the athletes and the exploitation off the athletes despite the billions of dollars in profits that the NCAA intakes annually off of their athletes names. The issue of fairness, autonomy and social responsibility

From a deontologist prospective an individual will focus his attention on the moral principles as duties. Individuals have moral duties to do things that are right to do and moral duties not to do things that are wrong to do and to a deontologist whether something is right or wrong doesn’t depend on consequences but rather whether an action is right or wrong in itself. For example if someone is a parent they have a moral duty to provide for their child. Not paying an individual who on most accounts are sacrificing their health and a majority of their time is wrong in itself and using them as a means to generate large sums of money for your school is unfair, which leads to the issue of fairness. Fairness is acknowledged as fulfilling an individual’s agreed upon role in a just system. James Schulman adds “fairness requires treating equally individuals in the same circumstances and avoiding undeserved favoritism”. No it is unreasonable for each individual to expect fair wage in return for their

A utilitarian theory would say that there are no acts that are wrong in and of themselves and that if actions such as killing or torturing are wrong it is because they produce less good than other alternatives that are available to that person. If we were to more closely examine the differences between the two theories is to a deontologist individual such as Kant there is a presumption against certain kind of actions. To a utilitarian not paying the athletes is for the good of everyone involved because they university provide the necessary training and exposure to coaching to advance to the professional level where you may earn plenty more than at the collegiate level and they taking the risk. To a utilitarian that ends justifies the mean which sees the athlete go to the professional level and making millions of dollars because of the coaching and proper training they received from the collegiate level. A utilitarian view may examine the issue and argue a deontologist and ask that is the act of not paying the athlete inherently wrong? On face value the answer is no because they can argue that the college athletes are like any employee that is working for them in the sense that the employee performs services for a settled wage, so they are not using the employee as a mere means. A virtue ethicist theorist views things as