Resolved: NCAA student athletes ought to be recognized as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. December 2017 PF Brief* *Published by Victory Briefs, PO Box 803338 #40503, Chicago, IL 60680-3338. Edited by Jami Tanner. Contributions by Max Wu, Devon Weis, Chris Conrad, Annie Zhao, Matt Salah, and Abe Fraifeld. For customer support, please email [email protected] or call 330.333.2283. This product is licensed to [email protected] by Victory Briefs. Any distribution or modification of this file not explicitly allowed by the terms of purchase (including removing or obscuring this text or sending to anyone outside ASAP's school) is a violation of copyright. Please report illicit distribution of this file to [email protected]. Contents 1 Topic Analysis by Max Wu 5 1.1 Introduction ................................... 5 1.2 Background Information ............................ 6 1.3 Affirmative .................................... 9 1.4 Negative ..................................... 12 1.5 Concluding Remarks .............................. 16 2 Topic Analysis by Devon Weis 18 2.1 Introduction ................................... 18 2.2 The Resolution .................................. 19 2.3 Affirmative Arguments ............................. 21 2.4 Negative Arguments .............................. 24 2.5 Wrapping Up .................................. 26 3 Definitions / Background 27 3.1 Overview of what the FLSA guarantees ................... 27 3.2 More specifics on who qualifies in the status quo .............. 28 4 Pro Evidence 30 4.1 Student Exploitation .............................. 30 4.2 Corruption .................................... 34 4.3 Race ........................................ 52 4.4 Injury Protection ................................ 73 4.5 Economics .................................... 85 4.6 Academics .................................... 100 4.7 Institutional Trust ................................ 107 4.8 Graduation rates ................................ 110 4.9 Entrepreneurship/Financial Literacy ..................... 112 4.10 Sports bad .................................... 114 4.11 AT: Costs too much ............................... 121 2 This product is licensed to [email protected] by Victory Briefs. Any distribution or modification of this file not explicitly allowed by the terms of purchase (including removing or obscuring this text or sending to anyone outside ASAP's school) is a violation of copyright. Please report illicit distribution of this file to [email protected]. Contents 4.12 AT: Turns college into professional sports .................. 121 4.13 AT: Athletes get a free education ....................... 122 4.14 AT: Ruins the student experience ....................... 122 4.15 AT: This is unfair to non-athletes ....................... 128 4.16 AT: Spillover to high school .......................... 128 4.17 AT: Non-revenue sports will be cut ...................... 129 4.18 AT: Too expensive for colleges ........................ 131 4.19 AT: Costs too much ............................... 132 4.20 AT: Turns college into professional sports .................. 133 4.21 AT: Athletes get a free education ....................... 133 4.22 Generic non-unique to a lot of neg arguments ................ 134 5 Con Evidence 135 5.1 Title IX ...................................... 135 5.2 Cost ........................................ 136 5.3 Legal Considerations .............................. 137 5.4 Benefits of Amateurism ............................ 140 5.5 Competitive Balance/Intercollegiate Inequities ............... 142 5.6 Tuition Increases ................................ 143 5.7 Tuition Rising Impact .............................. 146 5.8 Academic Cuts ................................. 150 5.9 Scholarship Cuts ................................ 152 5.10 Program Cutting ................................ 154 5.11 Impact to Program Cutting .......................... 157 5.12 Short-changing ................................. 158 5.13 Distraction .................................... 160 5.14 Own your name ................................. 161 5.15 Internship Model ................................ 165 5.16 Reform ...................................... 166 5.17 AT: Student Athletes Deserve to be Paid for What They Do ........ 167 5.18 AT: Student Athletes are Exploited for Money ............... 171 5.19 AT: Students Would Receive Employee Benefits .............. 175 5.20 AT: Athletes and Schools Have a Primarily Economic Relationship ... 178 5.21 AT: Universities Can Afford to Pay Student Athletes ............ 182 5.22 AT: Improve the Quality of College Athletics Programs .......... 191 5.23 AT: College Sports Would Remain Just as Popular ............. 193 3 This product is licensed to [email protected] by Victory Briefs. Any distribution or modification of this file not explicitly allowed by the terms of purchase (including removing or obscuring this text or sending to anyone outside ASAP's school) is a violation of copyright. Please report illicit distribution of this file to [email protected]. Contents 5.24 AT: Unionization ................................ 194 5.25 AT: New NLRB Memo Recognizes Student Athletes as Employees ... 197 5.26 AT: Recognizing Student Athletes as Employees is the Only Solution .. 198 4 This product is licensed to [email protected] by Victory Briefs. Any distribution or modification of this file not explicitly allowed by the terms of purchase (including removing or obscuring this text or sending to anyone outside ASAP's school) is a violation of copyright. Please report illicit distribution of this file to [email protected]. 1 Topic Analysis by Max Wu Max Wu debated for Mission San Jose HS from 2013-2017. Over his career, he earned 13 bids and 2 auto-quals in his junior year, reaching deep elimination rounds at almost every tournament he attended. Max was ranked as one of the top 10 teams in the na- tion in both the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 season. He reached the final round of the 2016 Tournament of Champions and championed the 2017 Harvard Round Robin, among other impressive outround finishes at the NCFL Grand National Tournament, the Glen- brooks, Stanford, Harvard, Apple Valley, UNLV, and NSDA Nationals. Currently, Max is a freshman at the University of Chicago, and hopes to double major in Political Sci- ence and Philosophy. 1.1 Introduction Hi there! If you’re reading this, it means, hopefully, that you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on the 2017 December Public Forum topic, Resolved: NCAA student athletes ought to be recognized as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The status of student athletes in the NCAA is a recurring and hotly contested issue in both directions. Unlike many past topic areas, we are not very far removed from the world of college sports; students at nearly every American high school matriculate to higher educational institutions on the basis of athletic scholarships. I live on the same floor as football and basketball players (a constant reminder of UChicago’s storied Division III athletic departments). You may even know a few college athletes yourself. Acknowledging our special relationship with this month’s resolution will you serve you well when developing a strategy. It will remind you that arguments divorced from reality will not be as powerful as arguments rooted in well-understood truths. It will also humanize athletes and give faces to the statistics and impact cards You may be inclined to believe this topic will produce uninteresting or repetitive rounds; I’ll be the first to admit that the NSDA hasn’t exactly been hitting home runs this year. After doing 5 This product is licensed to [email protected] by Victory Briefs. Any distribution or modification of this file not explicitly allowed by the terms of purchase (including removing or obscuring this text or sending to anyone outside ASAP's school) is a violation of copyright. Please report illicit distribution of this file to [email protected]. 1 Topic Analysis by Max Wu a fair amount of research, however, I am confident that debates will be full of clash and have a diversity of warrants and impacts. In this analysis, I plan to review information I believe to be crucial in understanding the resolution and to present a few potential arguments I think will be effective on both sides. 1.2 Background Information The first key term in the resolution is ‘NCAA student athletes.’ The NCAA, or Na- tional Collegiate Athletic Association, is a nonprofit organization that oversees the of- ficial athletic activities of colleges across the nation. It includes 24 separate sports like and 480,000 student athletes. NCAA athletes are asked to practice on a consistent sched- ule and travel across the country to compete with other schools. The NCAA splits up college athletics into three categories: Division I, Division II, and Division III. Divisions are generally based on the size of schools involved, with larger universities competing in D1 and smaller schools in D2 and D3. An important distinction is that D1 and D2 programs are allowed to offer athletic scholarships, while D3 programs are not. There are 19 Division I-III men’s sports and 21 Division I-III women’s sports. The majority of students do not extend their athletic careers further than NCAA college sports. The NCAA1 specifies on its website, “Fewer than 2 percent of NCAA student-athletes go on to be professional athletes. In reality, most student-athletes depend on academics