Murphy: NCAA Routinely Defrauds Athletes, Impedes Their Education

The National College Athletic Association and many collegiate athletic programs “routinely defraud athletes,” by preventing them from getting a quality education, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Thursday.

“The lack of academic integrity across college sports may be the most insidious piece of a broken system,” Murphy wrote in a report about the NCAA and college athletic programs in March, in which he called for athletes to receive compensation for the money they bring in for their schools. He released a second report on Thursday, criticizing the idea that college athletes with athletic scholarships receive a “free education” in exchange for their work. He argues that schools in the NCAA fail to provide those students with a quality education.

“The NCAA’s primary response to my first report was that students are compensated, in their opinion. They believe that scholarship is adequate compensation for all of the time students put in and all the money they make for the system,” Murphy said in an interview with HuffPost. “But there are a lot of students who are in the big time college programs where schools are treating them like commodities and not giving them the education that they deserve.” 

“You’re obligated at these big kinds of college sport programs to be an athlete first, second and third, and a student fourth,” he continued. “It’s a bit of a red herring for the NCAA to say that a scholarship is enough compensation when a lot of these kids aren’t graduating and many others aren’t getting an education that is commensurate to their peers.’” 

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