ShouldCollegeAthletesBePaid-SantaClaraLaw.pdfVIP

Should College Athletes Be Paid? A Discussion Forum Institute of Sports Law and Ethics, Santa Clara University Preface The Institute of Sports Law and Ethics (ISLE) has a strong focus on the ethical aspects of sports. In September, 2012, ISLE presented its third annual symposium, “The Role of Sports in Higher Education” (see /sportslaw/). Widely divergent views on this controversial subject were voiced at the Symposium, from op-ed columnist Joe Nocera of the New York Times (a vociferous critic of NCAA policies) to Wallace Renfro (an NCAA Senior Vice President responsible for NCAA policies), and all points in-between. There was a particular focus on the issue of whether college athletes should be paid. For example, the Selected Proceedings, which can be found at /sportslaw/, include articles in favor of paying college athletes* and arguments against.? There was also, however, one suggestion of a new way to look at this issue. That came in the lunchtime remarks of David Drummond, a senior vice-president at Google and a former varsity football player at Santa Clara University. His remarks, which are available at the link in the paragraph above, suggested that similar issues have been successfully addressed by universities that license technology created by students. His own company, Google, started with such licenses from Stanford University’s Office of Technology Licensing, licenses for which student inventors received payment. His remarks recounted the initial criticisms of payment of students for university technology transfer, primarily how payment was, or easily could become, inconsistent with a university’s academic mission. He also recounted how these criticisms have been overcome in a way consistent with the academic mission. That consistency was facilitated by a paper, Nine Points to Consider in Licensing University Technology, issued in 2007 by eleven distinguished institutions: California Institute of Technology; Cornell University; Harvard University; Massa