A Simple Proposal
I keep hearing how the NCAA "can't afford" to pay Division One college football players.
Here are the two primary arguments:
1) College football isn't really that profitable for most schools
2) College football supports other, non-revenue sports
You can very quickly see that those two lines of reasoning are in violent contradiction with each other.
But it's impossible to come up with a plan, they say. It's too complicated!
Here's your plan. It literally took me one commercial break to figure out.
THE ENORMOUS PLAN: Add $5 to the cost of every ticket.
Congrats, you're done!
Based on 2019 attendance, that would generate $184 million dollars.
If you gave 100% of the additional revenue generated in each game to the home team, then split it equally between the 85 scholarship players at the end of the season, it would mean about $5,000 for each player on scholarship at the lowest attendance schools and $35,000 for each scholarship player at the highest attendance schools.
Walk-ons don't get paid. Consider them interns.
There are plenty of ways you can tweak this to reduce the disparity between best/worst schools, but you don't have to. And it doesn't cost the schools anything.
The NCAA would also pass (as they've promised) proposals to let athletes profit off their names and likenesses. So the best players will naturally receive more compensation.
It's really not that complicated, is it?
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