Moral High Ground

Barro has some okay arguments in this book but the one that really ticked me off was the one pertaining to the monopoly of the NCAA. He comes across as arrogant in this section and if you don't believe me, re-read pages 130-131 and tell me he's not classist at the least, racist more likely, or just bitter he was never good at sports, cause he truly wants to screw these athletes over. Okay enough of the gut reaction, on to the point...

The NCAA has the moral high ground in their position. That's the point of the NCAA. College athletes are NOT professional athletes. The cap on the amount of money that the division one football and basketball players receive is intended to remind them that they are not professionals, nor will they likely be after college, if they even finish college.

The idea of paying college athletes is ridiculous. The whole idea behind the NCAA is that it is a non-professional system where school comes first. Though this idea has been distorted in recent decades, good coaches know that their players are very unlikely to ever be a member of, let alone play on, a professional sports team. Caps on the amount of money that players can receive serve to attempt to show that they are not on a college campus to solely make money, for themselves or for their schools, but they are truly there to learn. Barro's example of the kid that is recruited from the ghetto and then paid the typical amount, aka room & board and tuition, and saying that the player will surely "remain poor after these four years (130)" is shortchanging the athlete. Student athletes are just that, students first.

As we talked about in our tutorial on Tuesday and as is common knowledge when talking about the gap in salaries between the rich and the poor and the minorities from the whites the key factor is always education. Saying that we should just pay these kids to play for four years and then let them go back to being poor is pessimistic and discriminatory. These kids are on a college campus for a reason, to get the education they need to make it, and if they learn to take advantage of that education it'll be worth more than you could possibly be paid to play football at a mediocre level for four possibly five years. The point is that it's not about the money, though even if it were the education is way more valuable financially than your salary in those four years. Graduation is the key and the best win for any college athlete.

Fact: Average income for a black male with a high school education: $22,823
Average income for a black male with a four year degree: $42,285