There was a time when college sports programs were a way to boost school spirit and cover the costs of scholarships, travel and other expenses.

Today, major colleges have sports programs with multi-million dollar budgets, coaches with seven-figure contracts and lucrative television contracts or conference TV networks.

The universities get a cut of the money from selling gear with the school colors and logos.

The only ones not getting a chunk of this revenue are the players at Division I (major colleges) programs.

Facing threats of college athletes forming unions, athletic department officials and the NCAA have allowed “cost of attendance” money to be distributed to athletes. The money is in addition to the usual scholarships athletes receive. The cost of attendance is designed to cover the additional expenses student-athletes have to pay.

We aren’t seeing those fees go much higher than $7,000 a year. Many are about half that amount. Expect those totals to go much higher as schools will use them as yet another recruiting tool to get top performers to enroll.

St. Cloud State University is looking at paying cost of attendance fees to their men’s and women’s hockey players. Those are the only Division I sports at SCSU. This makes sense because revenue from the hockey program is the engine that drives the other programs in the athletic department.

Is it fair to pay the added fees to major college scholarship athletes? After all, they are getting a free ride to college. We say it is fair because of the hundreds of millions of dollars the colleges and universities make off these players.

Don’t kid yourself, athletics are the “front porch” for many prospective students, as a way to boost contributions from alums and corporate sponsors. All those are additional revenue streams for the universities, not just the athletic departments.

The schools also collect money from the merchandise sold with the school, name, logo and colors. And some athletic gear companies pay the universities large fees to have make the team uniforms and have their logos on the gear.

At the bottom of the food chain are the men and women who actually play the games. Almost all won’t get a pro contract. Yet, they will have suffered several severe injuries and have spent an incredible amount of time training and at practice for the games.

The “cost of attendance” along with the traditional scholarship are  a small price to pay for those athletes. At least it is a start to a more fair system.

 

— St. Cloud Times, Oct. 13