Why foreign student athletes choose America and the NCAA

While college athletics represent an enormous role in an American college experience, the same cannot be said about a European college experience. Students in the United States put a premium on being able to attend tailgates and games in stadiums with some 100,000 fans, while universities in Europe focus mainly on education.

In Europe, college sports are open to all and do not match the elite level of play that is required of student athletes in America. Scholarships are not offered based on sporting abilities and universities don’t spend millions of dollars funding their athletic departments, instead choosing to focus on grooming students for the professional side of their lives.

Additionally, you won’t find an international equivalent to the NCAA. This may be due to the fact that Europe has developed a different way of grooming and recruiting athletes. Take soccer for example, prestigious European clubs such as FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid don’t recruit their players from university athletics like the American NFL or the NBA, but rather these organizations develop talent at their own private academies where players begin their intensive training at a young age. College athletics isn’t a pathway to the professional level in Europe, perhaps that explains why many European athletes make their way to the United States after their high school years in an effort to continue developing their skills in their chosen sport.

Young soccer players being trained at the FC Barcelona Academy, a full-time residential soccer academy.

The NCAA notes that there are about 17,000 student athletes from other countries within its organization. Tennis draws the largest amount of foreign student athletes with about 30% of women on college tennis teams coming from other countries. Ice hockey is a close second, garnering about 21% of male ice hockey players from other countries. Furthermore, these foreign student athletes are very likely to receive generous scholarships for their time contributing their skills to American universities. It is said that foreign student athletes are often at an advantage over American student athletes because they are more familiar with a sport that isn’t as popular in the US. The fewer options of sports allows for European athletes to focus more on one sport whereas American athletes may be distracted by the number of choices of sport available in the US.

British tennis player, Cameron Norrie who played at Texas Christian University where he became the top-ranked male college tennis player in the United States.

They do, however, get a chance they would not have gotten in their home countries; the ability to play their beloved sport and continue their academic development at the same time. Nonetheless, it’s imperative to recognize that foreign student athletes uproot their entire lives in hopes of continuing to perfect their skills in their chosen sport at American universities. Most of them leave family behind, face language barriers, have to make new friends and are forced to adapt to a new culture and way of life. All of this on top of essentially working two jobs simultaneously; playing a Division I sport and being a student, without getting compensated fairly for the effort.

It’s clear that foreign athletes give up a lot to come to American universities and deserve to be compensated for not only the effort they are putting into playing their sport, but the sacrifice they have made by leaving everything behind and joining an American university.

Time is Money: How Student Athlete’s Spend Their Time

“Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.” – John C. Maxwell 

Every college student can heavily relate to being engulfed by a sea of assignments, upcoming exams, and future presentations. It can feel like professors planned to assign everything all at once just to make the students life just a little more miserable. So, imagine having all of that along with mandatory practice, weight training, games, conditioning, and the list goes on.

Sounds pretty tough.

In contemplation of whether or not student athletes should get financial compensation for playing a sport seen by thousands of people, it is vital to look at exactly how much these students are dedicating to these sports.

According to the NCAA, students are prohibited from spending more than 20 hours per week doing athletic related activity.  These activities include practice, on field training, clinic participation, game review, etc. This, however, does not count traveling to competitions/games, banquets, and promotional activities.

Although banquets and P.R. for a team does not count towards the athletic hours, these few things can take away a large amount of time from being in class or studying notes. Traveling to games can take away an athletes whole day that could have been dedicated to academic purposes. And despite all of this, students still claim they dedicate up to 40 hours per week on their sport during their in-season.

40. Hours.

Spending an average of 40 hours dedicated to perfecting your throwing technique, diving ability, or touchdown pass is equivalent to the 40 hour work week that most people know all too well. The difference here is that the men and women who go to work for 40 hours a week are compensated by their salary. Unfortunately, these athletes can’t say the same.

Athletes continue to be overworked and yet, overlooked in terms of payment. Considering these students put in an amount of work that is more than comparable to a regular office job, it isn’t hard to argue for some sort of monetary compensation for college student athletes.

 

Time to step up, UMD.

From joining the Big 10 conference in 2014, in an attempt to boost its athletic programs, to devoting $155 million to renovate Cole Field House, to trying to recruit the best athletes to its various varsity teams, it’s evident that the University of Maryland places significant importance on its athletics. But in an attempt to improve the athletic department, UMD has left its student athletes in the dust.

Cole Field House

The university does not only receive funding from the state, but it also receives donations and brings in a large amount of revenue stemming largely from its athletics thanks to ticket sales, broadcasting rights, endorsements and more. In 2014, schools in the Big 10 conference each earned a revenue of $32 million thanks to broadcasting deals with television networks. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which oversees and sets the rules for the various conferences that universities are part of, is also a very rich organization. 2014 saw a revenue of nearly $1 billion for the NCAA. Bringing it closer to home, UMD ranks 15^th in basketball programs that make the most money with a revenue of $17.1 million. Additionally, of the five highest paid university positions at UMD, four of them are part of the athletic department, each earning a salary of more than $494,000 a year.

Maryland’s Men’s Basketball coach, Mark Turgeon

These are all enormous sums of money. So why isn’t some of this money going to our student athletes, who make these teams successful and who invest copious amounts of time and effort in being the best students and athletes they can be in order to keep the various scholarships they have earned?

Instead of building an indoor football practicing facility, or paying our coaches and athletic directors as much, let’s stop exploiting our players and see that our student athletes drive a significant part of the revenue this university earns and that they should be rewarded accordingly. Even though some student athletes, not all, receive some or significant financial aid (scholarships) from universities, that reward does not match the effort put forth by our student athletes, which could be seen as working two full time jobs with some students reporting spending nearly 40 hours a week practicing for their sport, in addition to the time it takes to stay on top of their school work.

It’s time to face the music and start compensating our student athletes the way they deserve to be compensated. Touting a “free education” is not only insufficient but is also false as some student athletes do not receive even this much.

So, it’s obviously not a money problem, so what is it?

Student Athletes? What are those?

Almost all of us have been to a college sports game, or at least seen one in one of those coming-of-age-in-college movies. We watch. We cheer. And we oftentimes forget that the guy that just scored a point for the home team has the same 8am final exam the next day. We might be running on the same amount of sleep, but we can pretty much know for sure that his body is way more fatigued than ours could be.

That’s the life of a College Student Athlete (CSA).  A full-time student and a full-time athlete. Regardless of the time they have to spend, CSAs are expected to maintain a certain Grade Point Average to be allowed to stay on their sports team, and/or even enjoy any perks they might have.

If you are in college currently or have attended some sort of post-high school institution, you are familiar with the long and frustrating nights and  days where it seems like you are drowning in assignments. You remember those times when you were trying to resist crawling into your bed and hibernating until the semester is over?

Yeah, me too.

Well, for the average CSA, that is definitely not an option. Mornings before class are often spent in the gym or the field, going through drills, working out, and doing whatever else the coach wants to throw at them.  After all, athletes have to #AlwaysStayReady right? Then they go to class and listen to the same boring professor you have to listen to. When the next day rolls by, it’s time to repeat the process.

With the University of Maryland being a Big Ten school (a mid-western college known for its smarts, athletic competitiveness, and any other kick-ass value that a college should have). CSAs are very active during on and off season, preparing for games with other members of the Big Ten (no pressure at all). So, their daily routine is non-stop.

So why are CSA and Collegiate Athletics important to University?

CSAs are important because they bring in more revenue for the college whether it be through ticket sales, donations, endorsements (especially when the teams in that school are RED HOT with the wins) and licensing deals. Just to remind ourselves of the money that is being made, UMD made $94 million in 2015-16. Schools like Texas A&M made $194 million, so as we can see, this is no joke.

So, if CSAs are the cash cows, colleges are the farmers that don’t know when to stop milking them.