© Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
OAKLAND – Saturday night when the Arizona Wildcats host the Oregon Ducks, Arizona Head Coach Sean Miller will not be on the sidelines. He will sit the game out after an ESPN report that detailed his involvement in a plan to pay a potential recruit $100,000 to become a Wildcat.
It’s a talking point discussed on sports-talk radio stations, like ours, across the nation ad nauseam. Should college programs pay the student athletes that generate millions of dollars of income? (Spoiler alert: they already do).
Steve Kerr, an Arizona alumnus, weighed in on the debate before his Golden State Warriors faced off against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Oakland Saturday night. Kerr said he was disappointed in Miller’s actions, but that doesn’t mean he thinks schools should be able to pay athletes.
“I think the NCAA needs reform for sure,” Kerr said. “And that’s not just my reaction based on the (Sean Miller) news from yesterday. It’s needed reform for many years. I don’t think the NCAA needs to pay the athletes. I think what the NCAA needs to do is allow the athletes to make some money if they’re able to do so off the floor.”
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Kerr points to the Olympics to support his argument. Once a competition of amateurs, Olympic stars like Michael Phelps and Lyndsey Vonn are on commercials selling anything from Under Armour to Bounty.
“The fact is college sports have become a billion dollar industry,” Kerr said. “And you do have some key figures driving the economics. If there’s a guy who happens to be a dominant player and Nike wants to pay him or Adidas wants to pay him to go to a certain school…the school’s not paying him. I think there’s a way.”
