On the heels of NCAA president Mark Emmert advocating up to a $2,000 stipend to cover some of the costs of living, the Associated Press reports that more than 300 college athletes at Georgia Tech, Arizona, UCLA, Kentucky and Purdue signed a petition to ask for a percentage of the television revenue from skyrocketing deals. They sent the petition in to the NCAA last week.  But this petition wasn’t just about padding student-athlete wallets — the signers want to see a portion of television revenues put into an “educational lock box” to help basketball and football players pay for future education once their eligibility is exhausted. That said, the petition also called for players to get the money “with no strings attached” upon graduating.  Yellow Jacket freshman defensive end Denzel McCoy summed up athletes’ discontent well: “The things we go through, the hours we put in, what our bodies go through, we deserve some sort of (results).”

NCAA President Mark Emmert Has A Player Petition On His Desk. (Credit: Nick Laham/Getty Images)

I, for one, think this is a terrific idea. Clearly, the fine economic details will need to be worked out, but using money to promote graduation and further education might be a way to keep players in school. The NCAA’s mission is to educate athletes. Unfortunately for a select few basketball and football stars, there are only potential injuries awaiting an extra year or two of college eligibility. While the money wouldn’t be nearly enough to compete with professional salaries, the lock box would at least begin to balance the scales.

The NBA and NFL are the other two keys of the puzzle. With a looser interpretation of “amateurism” from the NCAA, there would be pressure on the leagues to provide more incentives for staying in school.  Regardless of the solution it’s great to see student-athletes taking an active presence. The National Collegiate Players Association (NCPA) has sat idly by for far too long as the schools, conferences and administrators have continued to enrich themselves with obscene amounts of money. Even if pay-for-play ends up not working out, it’s crucial for the NCAA to start listening to the concerns of its players — and for the players to start voicing these concerns. With all of the money-driven conference realignment and lawsuits currently being levied against the NCAA, changes are most definitely coming.

mpatton (576 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 10:00 am by mpatton and is filed under acc, microsites. Tagged: arizona, georgia tech, kentucky, mark emmert, ncaa, ncaa pay for play, ncpa, purdue, ucla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.