Respect the work of all collegiate student athletes

TO THE EDITOR:

I read yesterday that the NCAA’s contract with CBS to broadcast the NCAA Tournament is roughly $6 billion dollars.

I laughed and thought to myself, and they say college athletics is an amateur sport. Later in the article, it was stated that the NCAA makes 98 percent of its money from the NCAA men’s tournament.

We are talking about a $6 billion industry on the backs of “student athletes.”

While students are quick to point out the millions of dollars that athletes stand to make at the next level, they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the millions upon millions that schools make on their athletes.

While every Tar Heel fan recognizes that a No. 50 UNC jersey is Tyler Hansbrough, Hansbrough himself is not entitled to any of that money.

In the professional world, they would call that a royalty.

The public’s misplaced criticism also exist in the world of professional sports, where people lament and bemoan the salaries of athletes, but never stop to think about the billions of dollars that some franchise owners and networks bring in every year.

Finally, before you are quick to point out that athletes should give back and be so humbled by their schools, remember the image of Da’Sean Butler, an outstanding basketball player from West Virginia?

Butler suffered a devastating knee injury and was writhing in pain on the floor of the basketball court at the Final Four, and no doubt coming to grips with the fact that his NBA dream might have snapped along with his knee.

This is the risk that players or “student athletes” take every time they step on their respective fields of play.

I have never heard of an owner or chancellor tearing an ACL, have you?



Gerard Anthony

UNC ’08