$2,000 not enough for student athletes

“NCAA pushes $2K increase for athletes”

HERE.

It’s a start, but $2,000 is simply not that much money anymore, and while it may allow track & field and volleyball players to be happy with buying themselves a nice new laptop, it will do nothing to stem the tide of corruption in the big money sports. $2,000 just isn’t enough to prevent a basketball star from a poor family from accepting cars, jewelry, and so forth.

What would a fair amount be that might take a little bit of the temptation out. How about paying college athletes the same amount they pay their graduate students in teaching assistantship stipends? Then you might be looking at $15,000-$20,000 in some cases, and while it obviously wouldn’t stop corruption, it might make some of the players less desperate.

I’m a huge college sports fan, but I’m afraid I’ve come around to the view that big-money sports simply brings too much corruption to the table at universities. I’d rather have the European-style system of clubs and junior teams for our professional sports franchises.

However, that won’t happen. Universities are too dependent on the money, both directly and also from the role of sports programs in stirring up alumni enthusiasm. And too many fans like it this way. So, we will continue onward with the current comical system in which, if you live in a place like a Big Ten university town, you’re going to see football and basketball players (many of them from deeply impoverished backgrounds) riding nice motorcycles around town all the time. We all know it happens, but we all sort of pretend it doesn’t count.