Student-athletes deserve to be compensated at the club, scholastic and intercollegiate levels.
The most iconic moments in sports have many faces: the buzzer beater, the last strikeout and the saving goaltend.
There are many anomalies in sports, just as fanatics attach themselves to competition in many ways.
However, athletes’ platforms to advocate for what they deserve are often left empty-handed in athletes that aren’t compensated with a professional contract.
Roughly 86% of collegiate athletes live below the federal poverty line, according to Fordham University library.
For my high school varsity basketball teammates, keeping it together meant working side jobs, living off borrowed money and team dinners.
Eleven players, including myself, were on financial aid. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel for a team that mainly consisted of minority players.
Throughout my scholastic basketball career, every one of my teammates graduated, four of them went on to play intercollegiate basketball, two went on to play for community college collegiate basketball and one of them went on to play overseas professional basketball.
However,only two of those players received compensation after basketball.
This would allow younger athletes to have hands-on experience and essentially help athletes who come from backgrounds of poverty to garner income and make better life decisions.
For many athletes that compete at a cutthroat level today, name, image and likeness (NIL) is the only form of compensation they can accumulate.
The theory of NIL is the three main elements that create a legitimate path of publicity as an amateur version of a sports brand, according to a NCSA Sports Recruiting article.
Scholastic and intercollegiate players should learn how to approach and handle money.
The University of California Berkeley created a program known as ‘GOLDEN’ that invested in young athletes to make better decisions later in life, according to an Icon Source article.
GOLDEN aims to give these students the knowledge they need to make better decisions about their future and partnerships. These university-funded tools are a great start to help student athletes to take advantage of NIL, according the same article.
Many players that my high school team played against would shun developmental leagues such as minor league baseball and the NBA G League.
As they got older and were able to gauge the competition, and especially when my teammates entered college sports, they saw that signing any contract would suffice as their way out of poverty.
This is the wrong way to learn about money, simply because the way the current system of NIL is constructed is ineffective in showing athletes the value of money.
For example, American professional basketball player Allen Iverson earned a total of $200 million throughout his career, according to a ClutchPoints article.
Iverson struggled with his money, and in 2010 he officially declared bankruptcy after failing to pay a debt to a jeweler, according to the same source.
If scholastic and collegiate athletes had the opportunity to grasp their own NIL, we would have less poverty among athletes, but also smarter and more confident people.
The Amateur Athletic Union is where players have the opportunity to travel around the United States and essentially play basketball year round, according to a ProSkills Basketball article.
When my team and I played in the California Interscholastic Federation–Central Coast Section playoffs, the gyms that hosted these games would be compensated with money from our families, friends and fans.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2021 that non-professional athletes could enter deals and endorse products based on their name, image and likeness, according to a Supreme Court article.
The Supreme Court decided to rule in favor of National Football League player Shawne Alston’s NIL and the violation of antitrust laws, according to the same source.
Anthony Kocheran, writer for the Cherry Bekaert, used professional athlete Caitlin Clark as an example in his article on May 20, 2024.
In the article, Kocheran said Caitlin Clark is an example. Clark garnered $3 million from NIL.
Athletes deserve to have the chance to better themelves financially, not just competitively.
