PHOTO CREDITS: David Rosenfeld
BY DANIELLA ASPURU
There is no off-season for student athletes. Whatever sport they play becomes their life. So when they’re offered the chance to perform on a college level, most jump at the opportunity to be one step closer to reaching their dreams. But is that a blessing, or actually a curse?
Every single day athletes are risking injuries to benefit themselves and others: their school, the program, coaches, friends, family etc. What they get in return is a small chance to make it big. Many students are willing to take the chance at whatever the cost, whether that be injury or even criminal activity. South Florida is a huge football breeding ground. According to the website bleacher report, Florida has the highest concentration of NFL players to population percentage at 3.77%. This means that most NFL players come from Florida. Recently, there was a situation at a high school in Broward County where ineligible football players were made eligible to play. When the students first arrived at the school, their GPA did not meet the 2.0 GPA requirements to play football. So what did the school have students do to pick up their core? Nothing. The students did nothing, yet they still played the whole season. The high school where the ineligible students played is now being accused of grade tampering and under investigation of the Broward County School Board and the Florida High School Athletic Association. The football season is over for this high school and now they are not allowed to participate in the play offs. The future isn’t clear for the program but programs can be rebuilt. So how about the students on the football team? Their season is cut short and many of them have college scholarships to play football. Colleges will find out about the accusations and question whether they really want the student on the team, so now all of the students’ future college educations are being jeopardized and for what? To win football games? Are wins really worth risking a student’s future? In the football world, wins and championships are pushed to any cost, especially with the athletes, even if a crime has to be committed to make sure the school wins.
Exploitation doesn’t stop at a high school level; at the college level it is even more obvious than ever before. Athletic scholarships can be taken away in an instant. Athletes have to be on their A-Game or else they risk losing their scholarship. Even injury would still result in their scholarship being taken away. Most scholarships are given on an annual basis so if an athlete performs poorly one year, the next year he can be off the roster for good and lose a free education. Since they are not considered employees, universities aren’t required to provide health insurance, so if the student athletes get injured they aren’t guaranteed any type of insurance compensation. Stanley Doughty is a prime example. Doughty was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs his junior year of college. After he signed his $400,000 contract with the team, his physical exam revealed he suffered a cervical spinal injury and one more wrong hit could result in Doughty being paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. His contract was immediately thrown away. To stop his symptoms, surgery would cost $20,000, a price to hefty for Doughty and his family to afford. His injuries occurred while in college, yet the school refused to pay for the surgery.
As I stated earlier, sports are very important to athletes. The grind never stops for most. Colleges understand that their athletes are dedicated to the sport and use this fact against them. NCAA rules state that college athletes only can have one day off during the regular season and two days off during the off-season. Only two days. Most summers are consumed by training, and college athletes as well as high school athletes are required to attend summer practice.
Colleges don’t care; if you aren’t benefitting them they will cut you off completely from the team with no remorse. Schools make money off of their athletes and these athletes are treated as employees with no pay and ridiculous working hours. Is that slavery? Some can argue that yes, these students are receiving a free education and they are playing the sport for the love of the game in order to one day hopefully make it to the next level, and these two factors are enough of a “payment.” However, it’s not fair to have schools, coaches, video game companies and corporations such as Nike make millions off of these student athletes and they don’t even get a nickel’s worth of a payment.
