The NCAA maintains a balance between amateurism and the increasing need for generating revenue. (Cianfrone, Kaburakis, Paule,& Pierce 2012). In this balancing act, there were various policy considerations and legal constraints. The behavior of amateurism is something that cannot be monitored all the time and it is more so a concern in Division I athletes as far as enforcing rules and regulations. Few studies have examined the perception of amateurism and video games on African American college student athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the perception of amateurism and video games on Division II African American college student athletes.
Method:
A convenient sample of student-athletes from classes in the Department of Health and Human Performance at a small southeastern private historically black college and university was utilized in the study. The perception of Amateurism and Video Games was measured using the Modified Version of Amateurism and Video Games Questionnaire. The responses on the questionnaire ranged from 1 to 5 on a Likert scale with 1 being extremely unlikely to 5 being extremely likely.
Analysis/Results:
Independent t-test and ANOVA were utilized to determine the differences between the demographic categories and the perception of Amateurism and Video Games questions, alpha = .05. Students reported means above 3.0 for the following questions, “I would like to be featured in an EA Sports video game”, “I believe the way the NCAA institutions and video games are using student athlete’s image/likeliness is fair”, and “I believe that there should be a separate waiver form that would help student athletes clarify the way in which NCAA would utilize student athletes in age likeliness”. Males reported a higher score compared to females in regards to Question # 8, “I would like to be featured in an EA Sports video game”. Analysis of variance revealed that students who played basketball and football scored higher than those who played volleyball, softball, and tennis in regards to Question # 8, “I would like to be featured in an EA Sports video game”.
Conclusions:
Results from this study are similar to others in that student athletes in football and basketball wanted to be featured in EA Sports video games and how they felt that the NCAA was fair in how they are using student athlete’s images and likeness. Recommendations are made to further examine amateurism and perception video games among African American college student athletes.