David Kahn, Columnist

College Sports Has a 1 Percent Problem

The vast majority of the 85 scholarship football players and 13 basketball players at each Power Five school are not "value creators."

August 13, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC

By David Kahn

David Kahn has been general manager of the Indiana Pacers, president of the Minnesota Timberwolves, head of the Oregon Stadium Campaign for Major League Baseball and is currently teaching two courses on sports economics at New York University.

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As we slide down the slippery slope toward paying college athletes, consider this: There are approximately 420,000 students playing college sports, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Included are the 6,370 scholarship athletes who play football or men’s basketball in one of the"Power Five" conferences that have now voted to shrug off many of the constraints of the NCAA.

But if the issue is really about handing over the value to the "value creators," as some have put it, then we’re not talking about 6,370 deserving athletes. We’re talking about a very small fraction thereof.