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Ryan Cowan
September 16, 2014
First Year Seminar
Source Evaluation
In Michael Dobie’s article “A rim-rattling in college sports; Athletes aren’t blind to the
billions they earn for the NCAA, Change is coming...” He discusses how college athletes deserve
to be and might potentially be compensated with more than just a scholarship. He notes how the
National Labor Relations Union ruled that the football players at Northwestern University are
“employee’s” at the school rather than “student athletes” the preferred term of the NCAA. This
ruling gave the players the ability to unionize and engage in collective bargaining, which would
cause student athletes to be compensated more than just a scholarship. Dobie sides heavily with
the players, this made most apparent with this quote “Look: An ace from the NCAA’s house of
cards just fluttered to the ground. It’s about time.” Dobie goes on to say that the impact of this
ruling in a practical sense, will not be known for a while, however this coupled with a federal
lawsuit filed with former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon against the NCAA claiming that
college athletes should be compensated when their likeness is used, such as in video games,
could impact future rulings for student athletes. (Dobie 1)
Towards the middle of his article Dobie states some numbers on the NCAA’s revenue on
contractual agreements with broadcasting and gives salary of Florida’s head basketball coach,
and the bonus of Ohio State’s athletic director. “TV contracts for the new football playoff
system and men’s basketball tournament are worth $18 billion – to the NCAA and its schools.
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Florida’s men’s basketball coach Billy Donovan just got a new $3.7 million-a-year contract.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith just received an $18,000 bonus – because one of his
school’s wrestlers won an NCAA title.” (Dobie 1)
Further investigation on these numbers that Dobie provides shows that he is about dead
on with the $18 billion dollars that the men’s basketball tournament, and college football playoff
TV contracts are worth. Reed Karaim, a freelance writer in Tucson, Ariz., and graduate from
North Dakota State in Fargo, who has written for The Washington Post, U.S. News & World
Report, Smithsonian, American Scholar, USA Weekend and other publications wrote an article
called “Paying College Athletes” in it he says the TV contract just for the basketball tournament
itself is worth $10.8 billion over 14 years. This number reported from FOX news a large news
corporation, albeit with a very conservative agenda, however it does not seem that political
agendas play a large part in this debate and that the article was strictly informative rather than
persuasive. (FOXbuisiness 1; Karaim)
The playoff system recently implemented is worth $7.3 billion over 12 years beginning in
2012, this reported by John Ourand and Michael Smith two staff writers at
sportsbuisinessdaily.com. These two number come out to a grand total of $18.1 billion. (Ourand,
Smith)
As for the coaches salary Dobie was again almost spot on with his number, the actual
number that was reported by several different sources such as ESPN, USAtoday, and CBS, was
$3.5 million. In Kenneth Jost’s article “College Football” he shows a graph of the top 11 paid
college coaches as of 2011 which ranged from $5.2 million to $3.0 million. Though Jost’s article
is not about paying student athletes but rather the current state of collegiate football in a cultural
and business sense does begin to talk about revenues of top college football programs and
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whether those athletes are compensated enough. Jost’s article is informative without using his
own opinion but rather those of the many sources he uses. Also Jost graduated from Harvard
College and Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of the Supreme Court
Yearbook and editor of The Supreme Court from A to Z. He was a member of the CQ
Researcher team that won the American Bar Association's 2002 Silver Gavel Award. His
previous reports include “Professional Football” and “Sports and Drugs.” He is also author of the
blog Jost on Justice. (Jost)
Dobie begins making his final points by saying the NCAA use of the term “student” in
“student athlete” “has been betrayed by its own actions and those of its members.” Dobie uses a
study performed by a learning specialist at the University of North Carolina. “A reported 60
percent of football and basketball players at the University of North Carolina can read at a level
between fourth and eighth grade. Up to 10 percent read below a third grade level.” These
reports were true and they were actually a rather large scandal in the world of sports and
academia. Mary Willingham performed the research over 8 years and studied over 160 football
and basketball players at the University of North Carolina. Dobie then says that most
scholarships are one year renewables which means that those scholarships can be taken away for
a reason that has nothing to do with academics. Another point made about the word student in
the term student athlete in Dobie’s article is in the Northwestern case the NLRB said “football
players are recruited for their athletic prowess, spend as much as 50-60 hours per week on
football, and cannot be considered ‘primarily students’” In Kariam’s article he presents this
information taken directly from someone on the NLRB “The regional NLRB director concluded
that the time Northwestern players spend on football — 40 to 50 hours a week during the season,
even more during training camp — and other special demands placed on them mean they are not
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primarily students who play sports, but laborers working for the university. ” Kariam has taken
this information directly from the case report and the NLRB’s website. Though the numbers are
not exact and Dobie adds in those theoretical training camp hours to strengthen his point it is not
totally out of the realm of possibility that these athletes spend 50-60 hours a week, it is more than
likely very accurate, though he provides no factual evidence on this. (Dobie 2; “UNC debating
literacy report” Karaim)
Dobie concludes his article by stating that the University and NCAA are both appealing
the ruling and giving some advice to the NCAA on how it could have avoided this by letting
athletes earn money from marketing ventures or a $2,000 annual stipend or even by guaranteeing
athletes the scholarships they earned for all four years they are at university. Overall Dobie’s
article makes several claims that are all accurate and trustworthy. It is obvious that he did his
research before writing this article, although he does show favoritism towards the athletes, and
does not really tell the story from the universities perspective. (Dobie 2)
To be credible it takes years of hard honest work, it is hard to be credible again if a writer
has a bad history, so for someone to have a clean track record and a good education can go a
long way in being considered a credible writer. Those writers who are not credible are those that
help spread misinformation, now it is not them by themselves causing the spread of
misinformation. It is up to the reader to make sure that what they are reading and subsequently
spreading is in fact the truth. The reader is more responsible for misinformation than the writer
of said information is. There is a simple way to prevent this as well and that is simply to not
believe the first thing that is presented, go back and read other perspectives and sources of the
same thing. It will go a long way in more than just finding truthful information.
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Works Cited
Dobie, Michael. "A Rim-rattling Ruling in College Sports; Athletes Aren't Blind to the Billions
They Earn for the NCAA. Change Is Coming..." Newsday 30 Mar. 2014: 2. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
<http://ezproxy.marshall.edu:2056/hottopics/lnacademic/>.
Karaim, Reed. "Paying College Athletes." 11 July 2014. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
http://ezproxy.marshall.edu:2165/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2014071100&type=hitl
ist&num=0
Jost, Kenneth. "College Football." CQ Researcher. 18 Nov. 2011. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
<http://ezproxy.marshall.edu:2165/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2011111800&type=hi
tlist&num=10>.
Ourand, John, and Michael Smith. "ESPN Homes in on 12-year BCS Package." American City
Business Journals, 9 Nov. 2012. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Special-Content/News/2012/BCS-ESPN.aspx>.
"Time Warner Joins CBS in $10.8 Billion March Madness TV Deal." FOX Buisiness, 22 Apr.
2010. Web. 16 Sept. 2014. http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/04/22/time-warner-joins-cbs-
billion-march-madness-tv-deal/#content
"UNC Debating Literacy Report." ESPN, 15 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Sept. 201.
