College Football: The case for paying FBS players

The money is certainly there to pay student athletes. And even Title IX offers a logic to pay players. Here is how much college football players could make.

Even though this year’s College Football Playoff national championship received the lowest TV rating in the first five years of the series, it still meant that more than 27 million people tuned in at some point of the game. Naturally, viewership tapered off later in the contest as Clemson built a four-touchdown cushion in the 44-16 victory over Alabama, but one-twelfth of the country saw some portion of the title showdown on January 7.

The economics of getting to that game are fascinating. Alabama is a top-five program not just on the football field but also when it comes to generating revenue. Their long history of success dates back to a landmark victory over Washington in the 1926 Rose Bowl as the first team from the southeast to play in the oldest bowl game.

The 20-19 win over the 10-0-1 Pacific Coast Conference champions earned Alabama their first national championship, and the school hasn’t looked back as they continue to dominate more than nine decades later. The brand continued to evolve and grow under prolific coaches like Bear Bryant and Nick Saban, and as a result, the football team draws more than $100 million annually in revenue.

Clemson’s history is a little less prolific or deep in terms of national success, though they have been regionally relevant for more than a century. The Tigers won a pair of Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association titles under John Heisman in 1900 and 1902, then went decades without a conference crown until Frank Howard led the team to the Southern Conference championship in his first season at the helm in 1940.

From 1953, when Clemson was a charter member of the ACC, through the 1980s the team was a regular challenger in the conference. The Tigers even won the 1981 national title under Danny Ford. But between 1991 and 2011 the team failed to finish atop their league even once, and it was only under Dabo Swinney that Clemson really started to evolve out of its regional roots. As a result, they draw on average less than $50 million in annual revenue.

In both cases, the programs draw far in excess of their operating costs for the season. But can every school afford to pay their players? (Answer: YES)

Once the actual nuts-and-bolts expenses of operating a football team over the course of the season are factored in — even when accounting for the ever-escalating salaries for both head coaches and their assistants — each school is left with tens of millions waiting to be used.

When student athletes are required to put in as many as 50 hours per week preparing for and playing in games each Saturday, it is hard to think of it solely as an extracurricular pursuit. Even when factoring in all scholarships, schools still have money that they are required to spend. That is what has escalated spending races around the country, as athletic departments commit more resources to infrastructure, coaching salaries, and gimmicks like never-ending uniform combinations.

Title IX says that student-athletes are required to be presented with the same opportunities to compete in intercollegiate athletics. The law also demands equity in scholarship distribution. But beyond that, the fact that teams can pay vastly different sums for things like coaching salaries indicates that there is nothing inherent within Title IX that prevents payments for revenue-generating sports.

Even after spending higher sums on coaches and building projects, there is still money sitting there. As the following dataset shows, even the smallest schools have surplus value built up from the fruits of the labor of student-athletes. As a major revenue sport, college football programs at the FBS level have anywhere from twenty grand to nearly a million extra dollars after expenses are accounted.

Hard data is the biggest motivator for changing NCAA policy. While we will use this dataset in several ways over the next few weeks of the early offseason, however, the biggest takeaways is that the money exists — even if accounting for both the rise in coaching salaries and scholarships not just for the football program but for the university’s athletic department.

The system, ultimately, is built on the backs of young men whose efforts are grossly undervalued. Even a full cost-of-attendance scholarship is a major undervaluation of an FBS team’s earning potential.

The numbers don’t lie. Excuses for continuing to refrain from paying players, then, is predicated on a myth of amateurism that was designed to protect the system. So far it continues to act exactly as it was designed, and the group with the least agency is left to shoulder the bulk of the risk inherent in the sport.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The money is there, with Power Five schools enjoying a six-digit gap on revenues that actually make it to student-athletes. Redistributing that revenue to those who generate it would be the most equitable decision possible, which is why the NCAA and its member institutions will always do whatever possible to fight justice.