Tyler Duke, Staff Writer
For most students, getting home for the holidays is an event they look forward to for most of the semester.
Once the weather starts getting cold and the tests start getting harder, students begin to anticipate the holiday break to get time off and spend some extra time with family and friends. It is usually a nice period of relaxation after a semester of hard work.
For many student-athletes, that is not the case at all – especially for basketball players.
College basketball is played right in the heart of the holiday season. Over the years, more and more tournaments have been created during Thanksgiving and even leading up to Christmas. One would think that the NCAA would try to avoid playing games right around Thanksgiving and the winter holidays, but this is the NCAA. Why would the NCAA pass up televising marquee matchups when millions of people are together during the holidays looking for something to watch on TV?
The NCAA has made it apparent over the years that their main focus is to make money even though they advertise that their mission is to “safeguard the well-being of student-athletes.” The well-being of a student-athlete would likely be better if they were permitted to be home with their family over the holidays, but that is rarely the case with basketball players.
The schedule for NCAA basketball seems as brutal as ever for the holidays this year. There are multiple tournaments being played right around Thanksgiving that dozens of teams will be apart of. There will be 18 Division I men’s basketball games played on Thanksgiving this year – including the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets playing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
That means 36 teams will be playing in games on Thanksgiving. Fourteen of those games are played at a neutral site, which means that only four of the 36 teams playing are actually playing at home. There will also be two NCAA Division I football games on Thanksgiving. One will be broadcasted on Fox Sports, and the other will be broadcasted on ESPN – money, money, money.
The NCAA does at least prohibit basketball games being played on Dec. 24, 25 and 26. But wait, there’s five college football bowl games being played on the 24th and 26th. With that being said, there are still 35 Division I men’s basketball games being played on Dec. 23 and 26 games being played on Dec. 27.
The Kennesaw State men’s team will be playing at Illinois Dec. 27. I don’t know the details of the trip, but I cannot imagine the team will be leaving any later than early on the morning of the 26, if not sooner. For players who don’t live close to Kennesaw, that makes it almost impossible to be home for Christmas, if they celebrate.
While the KSU men’s team will be home for the week of Thanksgiving, the women’s team will not be. They will be playing in New Jersey Nov. 26 and in New York Nov. 29.
Student-athletes aren’t forced to play college sports. I understand this. To be fair, I am not necessarily for paying college athletes. It is a complicated situation that could be hard to instate into college sports.
The point is that they are not being paid to do it. Many student-athletes are playing college sports and receiving scholarships to get through college and to obtain a degree. Their respective sport isn’t their job. It isn’t what they do for a living. Since that is the case, I don’t believe it is ethical to force college athletes to play games that restrict the players’ opportunity to go home for the holidays.
If every other student gets that opportunity, it should be the student-athletes’ right to have that opportunity as well. Scheduling games around a few days on two weeks of the season wouldn’t be very hard.
We get it. Games on Thanksgiving get good ratings.
Well, that is too bad, NCAA. Until you start rewarding financial benefits to student-athletes, you shouldn’t be able to reap financial rewards for their play every chance you get.
