Roy Exum: A Vol Is Worth $521,854

  • Sunday, October 23, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum
The definition for the term “fair market value,” this from the IRS tax code, “is the price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts.” So a recent article in Business Insider has just revealed a University of Tennessee scholarship football play has a fair market value of $521,854 per year.

What Business Insider has done is to take data from the U.S. Department of Education and utilize a system developed by Drexel University professor Dr. Ellen J. Staurowsky. As BI writer Cork Gaines explains, “Using the NFL's most recent collective bargaining agreement, in which the players receive a minimum of 47 percent of all revenue, each (university’s) football revenue was split between the school and the athletes with the players' share divided evenly among the 85 scholarship players.”

Of the 20 top programs in the county, a University of Texas scholarship football player is worth $671,173 per year (up from $622,104 last year.) After that, only an Alabama player ($536,485) is worth more than a Tennessee player. Michigan is fourth ($487,979), Auburn is fifth ($479,634), Georgia is sixth ($479,506), LSU is seventh ($477,259) and Florida is 11th ($413,162.)

The average fair market value for a top-tier FBS player is $163,869 with the average in team revenue now about $29 million a year.

In 2011 Dr. Staurowsky authored a study entitled “The Price of Poverty in Big-Time College Sport” that determined the average shortfall for a full scholarship – the actual price it costs the university – was $3,222 in the 2010-2011 school year. During the same year the average fair market value for a FBS football player was $120,048 and for a full scholarship basketball player was $265,027 (there are far fewer scholarships in basketball).

In the study the Drexel sport management professor wrote that 85 percent of players living on campus and 86 living off campus – scholarship players, mind you – had actual incomes that fell below the federal poverty line.

“Our findings continue to unmask the pretense that big-time college sport is about ‘kids’ playing ‘games.’ Big-time college sport is about big-business. The mythology of the ‘student-athlete’ as promoted by the NCAA is revealed to cover up a system of inequities in compensation and treatment for the athletes who make the most sacrifices and contribute the most to the enterprise,” she wrote.

“Public policy makers, higher education officials, and athletes themselves have an opportunity in light of recent events to call for and implement reforms that will eliminate the exploitative college sport practices that bring no credit to higher education,” Staurowsky added, “and have caused considerable pain and hardship to athletes over the years.”

The 2011 report also read, “Duke basketball players were valued at $1,025,656 while living just $732 above the poverty line and a scholarship shortfall of $1,995.  The University of Florida had the highest combined football and basketball revenues while its football and basketball players’ scholarships left them living $2,250 below the federal poverty line and a $3,190 scholarship shortfall.”

The biggest villain? A Drexel news service release included this: “Backed by the findings in the study and an “Inside Higher Education” report showing that almost half of FBS colleges were caught violating NCAA rules between 2001-10, the report implicates the NCAA as the entity primarily responsible for the scandals that have plagued college sports.

“The report says, ‘Through the NCAA, college presidents mandate impoverished conditions for young, valuable players and throw money around to all other college sports stakeholders when those players perform well, a formula that drives the powerful black market that thrives at so many universities nationwide.’”

Many scholarship athletes use food stamps. “Despite athletic programs’ record revenues, salaries, and capital expenditures as well as prohibitions on countless sources of income for athletes, the NCAA explicitly allows taxpayers to fund food stamps and welfare benefits for college athletes.  As (one expert) noted, “Basically, the NCAA is forcing taxpayers to pay for expenses that players would be able to pay themselves if not for NCAA rules.”

royexum@aol.com

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