Pac-12 players have threatened to sit out this season unless they are paid 50% of the revenue from this season. They say the demands are long overdue and have to do with their human rights. Both the Coronavirus global pandemic and racial injustice were brought up with concerns about this college athlete boycott.
But how would student-athletes make 50% of revenue help with COVID-19 or racial injustice? How does it fit in with those two movements? How do they even fit together? That's the problem with this boycott: it does not.
It’s a completely different topic: student-athletes being paid.
The players boycotting has explained that most college football players are black while the people in power who make money off of them playing are white. All while they don’t get paid. The reality is that only a few dozen of the hundreds of athletic departments across the country turn a profit. So, the idea that money is just spilling out of spigots all over these universities is just patently wrong. And the obvious next point... student-athletes are paid in the form of free education, housing, and meal plans.
Numerous students, of all races and ethnicities, have to go into debt to attend school, pay rent, and afford food. Some don’t even get the chance to attend college. How about the Title IX female athletes who are afforded scholarships to fulfill their educational and athletic dreams? I think the selfish Pac-12 players lost sight of these kids as well.
If the schools were to give 50% - or even 5% - of their revenue to these kids, they would have to make cuts literally everywhere else. People would lose jobs. People who have to pay for their own rent, food, and even kids' education. By asking to be paid for NIL (name, image, likeness) and to receive such a large amount of revenue, these kids are being extremely inward. Especially in this unprecedented time of the world plagued by a global pandemic and racial injustice. Millions are without jobs already.
College students are the only players who currently do not have a say on when they play and the protocols in this pandemic. So, if they were to boycott for stricter COVID protocols, I could get behind that. If they were boycotting over racial injustice, I could get behind that. But to boycott over wanting to be paid a ridiculous amount while others are struggling to stay afloat and keep their houses, count us out.