photo essay

Jon Hocking

Eng. 101

5/8/12

Photo Essay

Michigan Stadium is the biggest college football stadium in the entire country. This stadium holds over 100,000 people (20 Biggest American Football Stadiums).  Gillette Stadium only holds 68,000 people (NFL venue info). This picture shows how big the fan base is for some of the top colleges for sports. You can tell by the picture that many people are wearing the Michigan State shirts. The college must make a fortune on just merchandise alone.

Reggie Bush was awarded the Heisman trophy after his 2005 season at USC. He was the first player to have this award be stripped away. While he was playing the NCAA found out that Reggie had accepted 300,000 dollars’ worth of gifts (A simple solution to NCAA corruption). If giving the trophy back wasn’t bad enough for him, he also would not be allowed to play his senior year. I don’t think that this is fair because the NCAA took back the only thing they give to players. Regardless if he accepted money he was still considered the best player in 2005.

The video game company EA sports develop new NCAA video games every year.  The games they make for NCAA are football and basketball. The player on the cover is Robert Griffin who is the quarterback at BU. Even though he is on the cover he won’t receive any compensation for it what so ever. Even though he can chose to not be on the cover it still makes no sense that he doesn’t get paid for it.

In just the first week of the 2011 NCAA football season there were over 150 injuries (NCAA injury report). Many of these injuries are bad enough where the athlete wouldn’t be able to keep playing that season. There’s no reason an athlete should risk injury or even death without any form of pay if they can go pro if they are good enough. This is why most players who are talented enough skip their last two years of college and go straight to the pros.

Nick Saban is the head coach at The University of Alabama. Not only is he the highest paid NCAA coach but also the 4th highest paid coach at any level including professional. Nick Saban makes over 6 million dollars annually (The Highest-Paid College Football Coaches). Everyone associated with the NCAA is being paid for their work except the players. The good thing that the NCAA is doing is providing the best coaches and staff for the players preparing them for professionals.

This is a picture comparing the revenues of the NCAA men’s basketball and baseball, football and basketball. These are the three highest paid professional sports. As you can see NCAA men’s basketball makes almost $100 million more than baseball, football and basketball. So why is it that NCAA men’s basketball players have a combined salary of less then just 1 professional athlete in any other sport? This is because somehow the NCAA believes that when players are making money it changes the game.