Moneyball Controversy

In The Washington Post Sally Jenkins writes a column titled “rather than pay athletes, show them respect”. Jenkins talks about the age old question of “should college athletes be paid?”. She wants us to consider who college athletes really are and to see that they are worth our respect and much more.

Posnanski puts a nice spin on showing why athletes don’t deserve money with what they already receive by asking readers rhetorical questions and through sympathizing to their situation. The common argument for why athletes should get paid is that they don’t get compensated for what they make for the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). Although those in support to this claim most likely are overlooking the fact that many of the athletes are receiving either full ride

The National College Athletic Association, better known as the NCAA has been involved in constant turmoil for quite some time now. In the college sports world, there are two variant sides by which neither can come to a final decision. Those side are for and against paying college athletes for participation. While some agree that “coaches are paid too much for players to be struggling to buy food” (Connolly), some actually seem to disagree. Agree or disagree, the athletes deserve a resolution because the longer the issue, the longer the struggle. The two side fail to realize that their arguments and discord does

2000, Volume 37, pg 23–27 By Tyson Hartnett Why College Athletes Should be Paid

For about a decade, the debate between whether collegiate athletes should be paid while playing has been contemplated. Now, the focus has moved from all sports to two specific areas, football and men’s basketball. Sprouting from many court cases filed against the NCAA to some ugly sandals dealing with the athletes themselves. In the 2010 – 2011 time frame, this controversy really sparked up chatter; eventually leading the current pled for sport reformation. Our student athletes are the ones who are at the expense here stuck in between this large argument. Over the past 10 years, there has been minor things done for either side and the players themselves have started taking things into their own hands. The year 2010 a total of 7 student

One argument supporting the payment of college athletes is that colleges bring in millions of dollars every year, yet the athletes see none of the money (Ford). People who support this argument say that these players work tirelessly throughout the season to win championships which then help the college receive money, and then the players receive no payment for their work. Kenneth Cooper, the author of Should College Athletes Be Paid? quoted Robert McCormick, an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. McCormick argues that “there are more demands put on these young men than any employee of the university. They are laboring under very strict and arduous conditions, so

“The best argument against paying players is that it diminishes the value of an education” (Baxter).

THe examples were complete and seemed to give a full point of view on the issue at hand. However Thelin could’ve used more examples of current universities that have been accused of paying their players over the last year. This would’ve helped the paper because the audience reading this article will have heard about scandals and that would’ve caught their attention. Thelin presents many valid points, for instance if players received a salary, taxes would be deducted from it and they would end up with about the same amount of money that it takes to go to school. This is a valid point because the author uses numbers that are to scale and would represent an actual financial situation for a student athlete if they were given a fluctuating salary. The article is slightly biased because John Thelin is a professor at the University of Kentucky. They are known for their sports teams so he will not want the system to change. With that being said, Thelins bias does not affect the main points of his

“Should athletes be paid to play?” By Jared Walch, Blake Marshall, The Daily Utah Chronicle

Cohen, Ben. "The Case for Paying College Athletes." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 16 Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Oct. 2014. This is an article written by Ben Cohen for The Wall Street Journal. This article is written in favor of paying athletes. He brings up past flaws of the NCAA to reiterate his point. This interested me because of the source it was written from. It is a unique article that is extremely well written. His argument for payment is in strong contrast with much of what I have read and will give me backing points to the argument.

In April of 2013 the article by Seth Davis titled, “Should College Athletes be Paid? Why, They Already Are” was published in Sports Illustrated. In this article Davis goes over why college athletes shouldn’t be paid because they already are being paid by scholarships. Over the course of his article he uses different audience appeals to help with the effectiveness of the points being made. Seth Davis does an outstanding job at informing readers of Sports Illustrated about his opinion of the way college athletes are already getting paid. Davis gets his point across by using Pathos and logos effectively. Not only does Davis use pathos and logos effectively but he uses another article by Taylor Branch to help support his argument even further.

In this article titled “Analyzing Arguments: Those You Read and Those You Write” goes over multiple strategies and examples to help you analyze the meaning and purpose of a specific argument and how to strengthen your own.

Zirin goes into depth about how sport writers get pampered with expensive gifts from corporate sponsors and how the NCAA is making money off of uncompensated young athletes. While Ajmani goes into detail about how students are not getting fair treatment, "College students are pawns in a huge chess game" (Ajmani 209); students don't benefit from the games, as they are the ones getting played. Student athletes put themselves at risk just for the love of the game; if they get hurt on the field or court, they don’t have worker's comp for injuries, according to Dave Meggyesy. Both authors believe there is corruption in the NCAA system but focus on different

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In

Other themes that are pro-compensation include redefining amateurism and worker’s compensation and liability issues. The fourth stream of literature focuses on various reasons that intercollegiate athletes should not be paid to play, mostly viewpoints that consider the use of the Sherman Act within intercollegiate athletics to be judicial overreach.