shizzle787
King Shizzle DCCLXXXVII of the Cesspool
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It's coming, and it's coming really fast. There are two lawsuits that will make landfall within the next two years that will change the face of collegiate athletics as we know it. The end result will be universities across our country paying student athletes as student-employees.
The $64 million dollar question is will non-revenue sport athletics be paid at least a minimum wage as well. Why is this an important question?
It's one thing for a school to pay 15 women's basketball players and 13 men's basketball players and/or a big football school to also pay their 85 football players. It is another thing to pay 300-700 athletes, especially for any school in Division 2, 3, or even in the lower to mid levels of Division 1.
If this goes down, not only will a lot of schools no longer be able to afford athletics, but many small private schools may have to shut their doors as a healthy percentage of their students are tuition-paying athletes.
I would assume many junior colleges would shutter athletics as they are not core to their mission.
Let's just take an example: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/...fe/sports/
Northern Arizona has 409 student-athletes. The current minimum wage in Arizona is $13.85 per hour. Even using a conservative estimate of 20 hours per week for payment, each student would get $277 a week for probably 34 weeks or so. That is $9,418 per year per athlete. I think that is very conservative but let's go with that.
That comes out to $3,851,962 if every one is paid minimum wage. Their current budget is a little over $20 million. That is almost a 19% athletic budget increase! NAU may be able to afford that but for any athletic department in Division 2 or 3, a cost increase of $3-5 million could be deadly.
The $64 million dollar question is will non-revenue sport athletics be paid at least a minimum wage as well. Why is this an important question?
It's one thing for a school to pay 15 women's basketball players and 13 men's basketball players and/or a big football school to also pay their 85 football players. It is another thing to pay 300-700 athletes, especially for any school in Division 2, 3, or even in the lower to mid levels of Division 1.
If this goes down, not only will a lot of schools no longer be able to afford athletics, but many small private schools may have to shut their doors as a healthy percentage of their students are tuition-paying athletes.
I would assume many junior colleges would shutter athletics as they are not core to their mission.
Let's just take an example: https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/...fe/sports/
Northern Arizona has 409 student-athletes. The current minimum wage in Arizona is $13.85 per hour. Even using a conservative estimate of 20 hours per week for payment, each student would get $277 a week for probably 34 weeks or so. That is $9,418 per year per athlete. I think that is very conservative but let's go with that.
That comes out to $3,851,962 if every one is paid minimum wage. Their current budget is a little over $20 million. That is almost a 19% athletic budget increase! NAU may be able to afford that but for any athletic department in Division 2 or 3, a cost increase of $3-5 million could be deadly.