Just a few days into the first trial related to the FBI-led college basketball recruiting scandal that took down multiple administrators and coaches and tarnished the reputations of many others, we’re learning just how far and wide the scandal reached, even if the details remain unsurprising to anyone who has followed the sport for at least a little while.
The most standout allegation came from Christian Dawkins, once a rising business manager out of Atlanta, who affirmed documents that show he paid former Alabama phenom Collin Sexton in various ways as part of a scheme to get top recruits to attend Adidas-sponsored schools.
According to an email Dawkins sent to his potential business partner, the plan was to give Sexton a $5,000 payment as well as $1,500/month while he attended Alabama. On top of that, Sexton’s family would receive $21,000 for travel expenses and Sexton’s brother would get a job that paid him $35,000/year (with bonuses).
It’s not a shock now to learn about the payments. The two were linked back when the story broke and Sexton was suspended for the first game of the 2017-18 season. He returned and led the Tide with a 19.2 PPG average and was named to the All-SEC Tournament team. Sexton went pro after the season and was selected eighth overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Draft.
While there are plenty of details to grab onto, we’re interested in that $1,500/month. Because for the sake of argument we got curious if that ends up being a “fair” salary for a college basketball player at the Division 1 level. Obviously, it was illegal what Dawkins did, but if we all decided to be adults and treat college basketball players fairly, would $1,500/month be good enough to justify paying them for their efforts?
It doesn’t take very long to realize the answer is no.
Treating a college basketball career as a job, it becomes apparent very quickly that the compensation simply doesn’t add up. According to the NCAA, student-athletes’ are allowed to practice for 20 hours per week, or four hours per day, while in their season. Of course, that’s not what actually ends up happening. According to surveys, many student-athletes say that they end up practicing in some form for 30 hours every week and some even say it comes out to 40 hours a week. And that’s on top of their classwork, homework, and other educational responsibilities. And we haven’t even talked about game days and all of the preparation, playing, and post-game responsibilities that go into that.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s stick with the 20 hours/week lie. That’s roughly 80 hours/month. Since this is happening in-season we also have to include game days, so we’ll just call the whole thing 100 hours/month to make it even.
At that point, this low-as-we-can-go level for what qualifies for work time for college basketball players, that $1,500/month comes out to $15/hour. Minimum wage in Alabama is currently $7.25 (which is horrifying) so in that respect, Sexton is doing pretty well by comparison. Of course, your average minimum wage worker isn’t generating millions of dollars of value for their employers in just a few months of work, so perhaps that $15/hour isn’t so great after all.
Obviously, we’re being facetious here. There are dozens of variables and factors that go into deciding the value of compensation for student-athletes in profitable sports. And yes, it’s very much against the rules to give a guy money so that he’ll play for a specific school. But, like, even with all that said, $1,500/month (plus $5,000) remains an absolute steal given what kind of money Collin Sexton generated for Alabama in his short time there.
Pay the players already, will ya? And for the love of god make it more than $15/hour.
You are so smug. First, this 1,500 a month would be on top of housing. Let’s say that they can call that a $500 housing cost. Plus the student does not have to pay ANY utilities like water,gas,electricity,sewer service or trash collection. Even if they lived for $500 a month rent in a studio apartment they would have to pay SOME utilities. lets call this $150 a month. So now they are at $650 for total housing cost. Then the student gets free food. (We can gripe about the NCAA food guidelines.) Let’s call that $150 a month.(I think that is cheap) So now the total is $800 a month, plus they get a small amount of money for things like laundry and incidentals. Let’s say that is $200 a month so they get $1000 a month ALL school year on top of the $1,500 a month during the season. So if school runs from Sept thru May that is $9,000 in room and board that they get above and beyond the 6 months of payments during the season Oct-March. So that is $9,000 in salary plus $9,000 in room and board for a total of $18,000 above tuition and books for NO MORE than 600 hr of work. That equals $30 an hr plus tuition and books for a basketball player under that formula. How many people get $30 an hr compensation for part time work in college. NO ONE that is who. Stop looking at this as a socialist WHORE who thinks these poor kids are victims, and start doing the math. I know you cannot because you are a sarcastic troll SJW, but this would be more than a fair compensation.