Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
A new on-line startup called FanPay is offering people a chance to pay student-athletes if they stick around long enough to get their degrees.
Instead of pay to play, it's more like pay to stay.
"The current incentives in college sports are misaligned," said one of the founders, Kelly Garvy, who is also a graduate student at Duke University. "There are all these incentives to just keep the student athletes working their butts off for their sport and less and less emphasis for education."
Gravy said she and her co-founders hope that FanPay can increase transparency and empower student athletes.
"We'll see a higher quality of education, more graduation rates and more fair dispersion of some of the wealth that's generated in college sports," said Garvy.
But the project raises ethical and legal issues in college sports and has received push back from the NCAA. According to a column published by the NCAA in November, there are some restrictions to how college athletes can engage in crowd-funding programs.