Americans Strongly Favor Moneymaking Deals for College Athletes, Poll Says

Forty-six percent of those surveyed said colleges should pay their athletes, while 49 percent said they should not. Those numbers diverged when accounting for age, race and, to a lesser extent, gender. For instance, 63 percent of those under 45 felt that colleges should pay their athletes, while just 32 percent of respondents over 45 were in favor of the idea.

And while 69 percent of Black and Latino respondents said colleges should pay their athletes, 60 percent of white people said colleges should not, said Zachary Arth, an assistant professor of sports communication at Marist.

If college athletes did receive salaries, though, 66 percent of respondents said the money should go to all athletes, while only 25 percent said it should go just to athletes who generate significant revenue for their schools — meaning, primarily, football and men’s basketball players. That ratio did not vary much across all categories, even region and political party.

As for betting, the Marist poll found that 45 percent of adults, including 39 percent of sports fans, believed that gambling on college sports encouraged athletes to cheat. When the same question was asked in 1985 in a Media General/Associated Press poll, McManus said, 70 percent said gambling encouraged cheating.

Polls conducted by other organizations have reported similar shifts in people’s attitudes. In 2009, an annual Gallup poll on moral issues found that 36 percent of respondents believed gambling was morally wrong, and 58 percent said it was acceptable. By 2021, those numbers were 30 and 68 percent.

The poll of 1,264 adults, with questions available in English and Spanish, was conducted from Feb. 15 to 21 by live interviewers using landline and mobile phones. The margin of error was 3.5 percent. Of the group polled, 707 adults identified as sports fans with a margin of error of 4.6 percent.