Sports and the Media John Paye was a star quarterback at Stanford University in the 1980s. In his senior season at Stanford, the football team had a record of eight wins and three losses. The year after Paye graduated, the Cardinals record fell to four wins and seven losses. Economist Roger Noll of Stanford University estimates that Stanfords net operating revenues declined by $400,000 the year after Paye departed, yet Paye only received a scholarship valued at $17,000 (Shropshire 72).
Through his athletic talents at Stanford, he generated an enormous amount of money for the school, yet he was not given anything besides a scholarship in return. Throughout his career he was forced to perform so that his team would have a winning record. Pressures were put on him not only from his college, but also through the media. Because of contracts between college institutions and media personnel, college athletes are expected to perform well to obtain high ratings for the media. The NCAA has a current seven year $1.7 billion television contract with CBS for the rights to televise its mens basketball tournament (Gerdy 114).
CBS pays this enormous amount of money in hopes that the basketball games will draw high ratings, thus increasing its profit from corporations commercialism. Given that both media and colleges benefit financially from their student-athletes, it seems only fair that the athletes be monetarily compensated for their athletic performances. It is clear that college athletes are being exploited through the universities to which they belong.
The Essay on Paying College Athletes Student Athlete 2
College Student-Athletes Can be Compensated for Their Services to Universities. Every year nearly 330, 000 college students don uniforms and become student-athletes for their respective schools (NCAA). These students participate in a wide variety of interests, from football to crew, cross country to golf. The sports surely vary in public interest and the amount of revenue that each attains each ...
Many colleges only look at the athletic potential of a high school student and not at the students academic achievement. A study done in 1996 showed that the average athlete on a top college football or mens basketball team enters college in the bottom quarter of his class (Sack and Staurowsky 96).
Included are athletes who cannot read or complete simple mathematical problems. They then exploit these students until they are injured or use up their four years of eligibility (Student-athletes).
Many colleges do not adequately prepare their athletes for the future. They are only concerned with the present, and how the athletes are performing on the athletic field. Walter Byers, the executive director of the NCAA from 1952 to 1987, says that college admissions offices and faculty exploit athletes by taking on board poorly prepared students and providing them with low quality course work so that athletes can meet minimum eligibility standards (299).
The athletic departments main priority is to keep their athletes eligible for their athletic season rather than pushing them to succeed academically. In 1994, Clifford Adelman, a Senior Research Associate for the U.S. Department of Education, compared the academic performances of varsity athletes to the rest of the student body.
He concluded that varsity football and basketball players took longer to graduate, earned lower grades, and pursued less demanding courses (Byers 301).
By providing them with lower level course work, colleges do really not perceive these athletes as students. The primary focus of these colleges seems to be the revenue generated by the student-athletes. There are many examples of athletes who have been pushed through college without receiving a proper education from their chosen college. Dexter Manley, a football player from Oklahoma State University, and Kevin Ross, a basketball player from Creighton University, both graduated without learning how to read (Byers 298-299).
Both of these men are examples of poor, academically unqualified students who were used and victimized by their athletic departments.
The Term Paper on Scholarship Athlete Athletes College Ncaa
Piece of the Pie Money is an important issue for almost all college students. Very few are lucky enough not to have the financial burdens of tuition, housing, and food interfere with their academic initiatives. Some students have parents that are wealthy enough to cover all of the costs of college. Other students are given financial aid from the university that they attend. If necessary, students ...
The daily actions of universities should show clearly that educating student-athletes is the primary purpose of their athletic departments, and that the true measure of success hinges upon athletes obtaining degrees (Gerdy 137).
In reality, this is not how many universities operate. Brian Rahilly, a basketball player for the University of Tulsa, aimed at playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and then becoming a sportscaster. He left school without a degree, and was quoted as saying; I was shortchanged. There are times I feel that I was nothing more than a piece of equipment, like a football or a practice jersey that the Tulsa Athletic Department owned (Byers 298).
Numerous athletes share Rahillys ideas about the idea of becoming a professional athlete and the elite ones do become professionals.
Many of these athletes are leaving school before their eligibility is up and before they earn their degree. This is one reason why the NCAA is looking into giving intercollegiate athletes some financial relief beyond scholarships (Wulf).
This financial relief would at least show that universities appreciate the efforts put forth by their athletes. Along with the idea of becoming a professional, various student athletes feel like they were merely property of the athletic department, used to financially aid their college. College athletes are clearly not treated as normal college students. John Gerdy, a member of the college athletic community for many years, states that athletic departments view scholarship student athletes as property, bought and paid for with an athletic scholarship (139).
Because they are paying for the athletes education, they feel they have the right to control his or her activities. The athletic scholarship also contributes to the alienation of student-athletes from the general student body (Gerdy 139).
The general student body views student athletes with scholarships like paid employees brought to the college to increase their schools visibility. Coaches also look at student-athletes as their employees whom they can control. They feel like they can limit their athletes activities to only those they believe to be important. The NCAAs mission is to protect athletes from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises, yet the colleges and athletic conferences exploit their young players (Byers 346).
The Term Paper on Stress In College Students
College students all stress out about one situation/life generality or another. Some of these situations/life generalities are individuation, computer anxiety, ethnic and gender roles in student-athletes, and mathematics anxiety. There have been many studies looking at stress in college students. At one time or another, college students are forced to deal with a stressful situation. Stress, in ...
Coaches are able to control what endorsements are used by their team, whereas the players have no say. Because of these ties between colleges and commercial enterprises, student-athletes feel pressure to perform to the best of their ability in order to adequately represent their endorsers.
Student-athletes are under a tremendous amount of pressure while in college. They have to juggle their schoolwork, practice schedules, traveling commitments, and public relations duties. But most importantly, they are primarily used by the universities to increase revenue and gain exposure for the school. The pressure of making schools look good to outsiders is an emphasis to athletes. Universities benefit directly in the form of huge gate receipts, donations to university programs, television revenues and national visibility from athletes performances (Hart-Nibbrig and Cottingham 27-28).
For this reason, athletes are greatly pressured to bring in as much money for their school as possible. Because of the drive for a successful sports team to bring in the most money possible for their college, student-athletes are faced with more pressures than the average college student.
Aside from pressures placed on student-athletes from their university, there are constant pressures inflicted by the media. The expansion of major college sports events to the point where they have become important contributors to public entertainment is partially due to the development of the media in mass society (Hart-Nibbrig and Cottingham 17).
Television has in fact replaced universities and colleges as the producer of intercollegiate sports. Crucial to this latest sports explosion was the emergence of television as the most potent medium of mass communication (Hart-Nibbrig and Cottingham 26).
It is because of television that colleges exploit their players to increase revenue. When television first broadcasted games, it increased attendance at the stadiums by 5% (Lawrence 97).
Not only are the schools earning money through the endorsements and television contracts, but also the exposure increases their ticket sales.
The Research paper on Effect of Television Media
Effect of Television Media on Body Image in Adolescent Girls diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. Research has continually revealed that television media has had an impact on viewers, however, more specifically studies have indicated that the adolescent has been most impacted especially the population that are diagnosed with eating disorders. In particular, this study will examine the adolescent ...
The success of the television programming is due to the performance of the athletes. If the games are not exciting, ratings go down. If ratings go down, sporting events will be pulled from the television programming. But today, with its growing audience appeal, television is increasing the size of the markets for entertainment products of universities, and thus is directly contributing to the recruitment and exploitation of the athletes signed under scholarships to do one thing: perform (Hart-Nibbrig and Cottingham 28).
Colleges and universities do not want to lose the exposure that they receive through the mass media, so athletes are instructed to make the events entertaining. Although the athletes always try their best to win, the market value of a given college athlete is due to the effects of commentators and the media focusing attention on that individuals skills. So in part, the media controls the future of many college athletes.
Aside from the media placing added stress on athletes to perform, the media exploits the athletes value as a person. American television/entertainment culture has as its foundation a pattern of production, consumption, and marketing of sources (Gerdy 32).
By using athletes as billboards, companies use the media in college sports to promote their products. Corporations such as Nike and Reebok have contracts with college teams so that the players wear the companys logo on their jerseys. While colleges and coaches receive money for these contracts, the athletes only receive the clothes they wear. It only seems fair that the athlete, who is being used as a billboard, ….
