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Ohio State becomes ground zero for paying student athletes debate

Well known writers, executives, economists and former student athletes talked about the dilemma faced with college athletics.

By Geoff Hammersley
Tom Pidgeon/Getty Images

"This is not a sports issue. This is a civil rights and a human rights issue"

– Joe Nocera at the Sports and Society Initiative at Ohio State (via Summer Cartwright)

On Friday morning, some notable people inside the sports business spoke to an audience at Ohio State about paying student athletes.

The first panel had New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, who wrote about the NCAA in a co-authored book Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA, joined by Vince Doria (former ESPN Senior VP), Matt Mitten (Professor of Law, and Director of the National Sports Law Institute (Marquette)) and Andrew Zimbalist (professor of economics at Smith College) spoke for roughly 90-minutes about how college athletics got into this predicament on whether or not athletes should be paid.

Nocera jumped on the fact that higher stipends are a way to entice athletes to certain schools.

Another case was that businesses used a certain amount of revenue to pay their people, while, hypothetically, some colleges spend below that on scholarship costs.

The second panel brought up some notable former Buckeyes, including one of the heroes from the 2003 National Championship game, Maurice Clarrett.

The panel discussed what they've done since their college days, and whether or not payment should be dished out to the student athletes. The conversation then spun into how the student-athlete balanced leaned more toward the athlete side, and not too much on the education side.

"After years of reporting on occupations like this one, I’ve never heard of even one case of a college staff member of administrator coming away with even a scratch. Yet in the name of preserving "safe space," these protesters were evicted."

– Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic

Stemming from last week's sit-in at Bricker Hall to further the #ReclaimOSU movement to increase transparency from the Ohio State University administration, there is now a well-written piece on the definition of a "safe space" after OSU officials removed the protesters.

The University said that employees in the building were scared that the protesters were going to do something, which caused intervention as seen above.

Friedersdorf's article goes on to talk about how universities deal with protesters, and how being afraid of a potential action/reaction is a tricky slope to navigate.

Nonetheless, this has opened the conversation to what exactly is determined to be a "safe place", with this protest happening at a metropolis of a school in Ohio State.

"All day of game lots are available for free parking, with the exception of the west stadium lot."

– NBC4 Columbus

For those of you going to any of the festivities – the Garth Brooks concert, Spring game and/or baseball game – on the Ohio State campus this weekend, you probably should know a few things about the parking situation.

Shuttles will be running from West Campus starting at 9 a.m. til an hour after the spring game; disability park will be at the north St.John Arena parking lot – and is free.

From the Ohio Expo Center to OSU Campus, COTA will have a gameday shuttle.

If you aren't about that driving or busing life, Uber and Lyft are viable options to get to the events, as well.

Here's a traffic bulletin on what roads to avoid for the concert Friday:

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