Last week, Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers proposed a bill that
would require college football players to be paid.
I’m not going to debate the issue of whether college
athletes should be paid. It’s very complex and would require
50,000 words to do it justice (and my editors would kill me).
Instead, I’ll ask the obvious question: If college
athletes were paid, how would it work at UCLA?
Players should be paid based on performance, considering both
how good they are individually and for the team. Of course,
marketability and a salary cap or luxury tax would also be
issues.
Let’s assume that each coach would also take the role of a
general manager as in professional sports. The coach would be given
a budget by the athletic department, and told to use it how he or
she sees fit.
In the NBA, coaches like Larry Brown and Pat Riley, who are also
known to be terrible GMs, can usually make up for it with their
great coaching skills.
This wouldn’t work for Steve Lavin. Lavin would be the bad
GM without the coaching skills. As a coach, Lavin has been unable
to control his team. Think he’d control their salaries?
Would a maximum salary be implemented like in the NBA? Ray
Young, arguably the worst McDonald’s All-American ever, would
get the maximum, along with every other “good” player
on the team. Lavin giving T.J. Cummings the maximum could probably
get him to come back next year.
Insert your T.J. Cummings passing joke here.
Al Scates would be the athletic department’s favorite
coach. The men’s volleyball coach has a roster of 30 in a
game that requires six, and he’d give all 30 the bare
minimum.
“Negotiations” would go something like this:
“Who do you think you are Peña? There are four of you
on my JV team. You get the minimum.”
Several individual players would be paid more, solely on their
marketability.
Ricky Manning and Tyler Ebell are both flashy players with good
personalities, easy to market.
Another part of marketing I left out is Yao/Nomo theory. The
American media has historically gone crazy over certain Asian
athletes: along with the Yao Ming hype and the Nomo-mania of years
past, there has been Chan Ho Park, Ichiro, and now Hideki
Matsui.
Natalie Nakase and Ryan Futagaki would get instant raises.
On the women’s side, word around the office water cooler
says that Jackie Carleton could be the next Anna Kournikova. Except
Carleton can actually play tennis.
Speaking of women’s sports, would the female athletes have
to be paid as much as (or more than) the men because of Title IX?
Knowing feminists, the answer is yes, even though the men generate
more revenue.
No, I’m not bitter about Title IX or anything, just
because it says that even if more men than women want to play
sports, the same number of each have to play.
Would the women’s basketball players be paid more than the
men?
They should be. Michelle Greco and Nikki Blue deserve more money
than any men’s basketball player this year.
They’re good. The men aren’t.
Would the women’s soccer players earn more than the
championship men’s soccer team to balance out the football
contracts?
Would the men’s team go on strike over this? Would Tom
Fitzgerald, whose background is in the corrupt MLS, know how to
react?
This issue obviously begs more questions than answers; these
athletes are a long way from getting paid.
Some of them, anyway.