Brandon Lucas
9440 Deer Crossing Lane
Jonesboro, Ga 30236
November 12, 2014
Washington Congressional Office
255 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative David Scott
Why aren’t we as college athletes being paid? Athletes don’t get any benefits for the hours and dedication we put into our sports. College athletes should be paid because we bring in a lot of money and publicity to Universities. I know one of the most common rebuttals is that we are given scholarship money which pays for our education, room and board, and some meal plans, and that’s enough “payment,” but the amount of money that is brought in to the NCAA and most Universities far exceeds the amount of scholarship money we receive. One of the biggest
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Fifty schools have reported annual revenues of at least fifty million dollars and with five Universities reporting an annual of at least one hundred million. The revenues are paid to NCAA executives, athletic directors and coaches. Head football coaches at the forty four BCS schools got on average two million dollars. In 2011, NCAA president, Mark Emmert, was paid two million dollars. The highest paid public employee in forty of the fifty states is the state university's head coach. Nick Saban, the University of Alabama head football, just signed a contract for seven million dollars per year which is more than one hundred and sixty times the average wage of a Tuscaloosa school teacher. But the NCAA still refuses to share any of the profits with student-athletes. This not only makes sure great wealth for athletic directors and coaches, but it also sustains poverty for many of the athletes who provide their labor. This to me sounds like modern day slavery. In 2011 a report called "The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport" said that 85% of college athletes on scholarship live below the poverty line and not only are the rules that prevent colleges from paying student-athletes ethically wrong, but they also are illegal in reference to Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Really the NCAA members are wage fixing to prohibit the pay of student-athletes which violates some antitrust