Pay College Athletes, and Whether or Not Chapter

pay college athletes, and whether or not they are being exploited for their work on the field, remains a hot topic of contention in both scholarly and mainstream media. Both mainstream media and scholarly literature address a wide range of topics related to the issue of student-athlete compensation, albeit with the scholarly literature focusing more on financial data and legal analyses too technical for publication in popular magazines. In "Exploitation in College Sports," for example, Van Rheenen (2013) discusses the ways it may be possible to measure exploitation quantitatively using a calculation based on surplus value and marginal revenue product. Van Rheenen (2013) also includes the issue of race in college sports, discussing the graduation rate disparity and other "cultural divisions of opportunity," p. 550). In the Time magazine cover story on the same topic, Gregory (2013) avoids the issue of race but spends considerable time arguing in favor of compensating student-athletes. Gregory (2013) and Van Rheenen (2013) analyze the topic contemporaneously, making these two articles worthy points of comparison between the two types of literature on the subject. In spite of their stylistic differences, both Gregory (2013) and Van Rheenen (2013) conclude that student-athletes are being exploited, and that the system of college sports should be restructured accordingly.

The issue of exploitation is central to the debate on whether student-athletes should be paid or not. Exploitation has both "philosophical and psychological implications," as Van Rheenen (2013) points out (p. 550). The definition of exploitation is, according to Van Rheenen (2013), "primarily a moral construct understood as an unfair exchange between two parties," (p. 550). In the case of student-athletes, the unfair exchanges is the fact that the students have a financial value to the school, but receive nothing beyond the basic tuition, room, and board offered.

Likewise, Gregory focuses on the issue of exploitation but does not offer as erudite a definition as Ven Rheenen's. Instead, Gregory (2013) uses anecdotal evidence and rhetorical questions to raise the ethical and moral problems. "Why shouldn't a player worth so much to his school, to his town and to the college-football brand be able to sign his name for money, just as any other celebrity has a right to do?" (1). Gregory (2013) also quotes a Stanford economist Roger Noll, who noted "the rising dollar value of the exploitation of athletes," which is "obscene" and "out of control," (p. 2). Whereas Van Rheenen (2013) avoids hyperbole and informal language like "obscene" and "out of control," Gregory (2013) uses such rhetorical devices to appeal to the mainstream readership of Time.

Instead of using anecdotes and emotionally…