Armstrong Williams
Writer for the Washington Times Armstrong Williams would likely agree with the statemtent that Horace Mitchell stated saying that student-athletes should possibly be given more additional resources. Despite that, he would likely dispute the idea that college athletes are just amateurs. Williams’ believes that college athletes are being extorted. He clearly believes that they are and that certain athletes are being taken advantage of without proper compensation. He asserts, with statistical evidence that there are some college Division I programs with players valued at more than six figures, yet are still living below the poverty line. He states, “The fact that Texas football players are valued at $513,922 or that Duke basketball players are worth $1,025,656 and they may be living below the poverty line is downright outrageous” (Williams 1). This is news to me; I never imagined that a collegiate athlete could be valued at such a high amount of money. With this statistic I could fully agree with Williams that this is extortion. If a player is being valued at that much money without any sort of compensation I think that is immoral. Meanwhile NCAA executives are reaping most of the benefit that could be going to that athlete. Although this is the case for some athletes at Texas and Duke, this is extremely rare. I think that the NCAA should look into these specific cases and reevaluate how they could fairly compensate the athletes that are valued at such high amounts.