Analysis: Why College Athletes Should Be Paid For Playing

student-athlete is a lot of work because, for football they have to wake up every morning to do

With debate on whether or not to compensate the college athletes in monetary terms due to the students’ sports talents help their various colleges to receive awards both rewards and cash money, it is important to look at criticisms of the National Collegiate Athletic Association with regards to the association’s advertisement deals of approximately more than a billion shillings profits yet no athlete is being compensated for his or her hard work. That according to Zimbalist (2013) is because the critiques are using the very developments to argue in favour of the payment of the student athletes since the opportunity for education and exposure to earn a professional contract is enough compensation since the cost of paying the student athletes would be too high.

College athletes have a hard life. They have to keep up with their grades in school, and focus on sports. For all of the work they do and how much time they put in to sports, they should get paid. They should get money for working as hard as they do. College athletes shouldn’t get paid as much as a professional sports athlete, but they should get paid a descent amount. If all the colleges were paying their athletes, it would take away from their scholarship purposes.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a business that keeps expanding while the players it supports make nothing. This year the NCAA announced that they are on the verge of reaching the one billion dollar mark in annual revenue. Last year they pulled in an astonishing nine hundred and eighty nine million dollars. Most of its profit growth comes from the division one men’s basketball tournament, which accounts for eighty to ninety percent of their success. With all this incoming profit some players feel as though they are entitled to a piece of the pie. There are currently lawsuits pending and some players have even gone as far as attempting to unionize. Although they are receiving scholarships and get a lot of other assistance,

Nine days till Christmas break. Just nine long and exhausting days separating us from sweet, freedom and our own lovely beds! Have you ever thought about how crazy it is for us to be so desperate and excited for a break? We just had one! Thanksgiving was a quick tease for our soon long month of, lets be real, sleeping and Netflix. Thanksgiving was full of food, shopping, sleep, and football. Even if you’re not a huge football fan your Thanksgiving was in some way affected by America’s favorite sport. Whether it was watching your team play, or watching some family member going crazy at the TV, my dad…. Football is a traditional part of our day of thanks. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be playing in one of those games on

Athletes are sometimes overworked because coaches and colleges think they need to practice all the time. College athletes go through grueling practices, meaningful games and practice over 40 hours a week (Kahn). These athletes spend too much time practicing to work on actual college class work. Athletes are more of an employee than a student with the amount of practice they have. These players do not have enough time to do it all. “the schedule is akin to a full time job, with 40 to 50 hours a week devoted to football-related activities”(He). Football players, whether it is practice or not, spend way too much time doing football activities to get homework or other school related things done. Sports are a big part of these kid’s life but it should not be their entire life. Athletes will have nothing to fall back on if colleges work them so much with practices and not enough with school. Having all of this practice time may not help them prepare for the real life after college. All that colleges would have to do is have the sports teams focus a little bit less on practice time and maybe a little bit more on actual school. College students need to be prepared for life after college and practicing all the time does not

The question has been tosses around for a while now. Why should college athletes be paid? They should be paid only if the college can afford it. What this means is that if a division three college can only afford to supply scholarships to athletes that’s fine, but the problem comes in when division one colleges make millions and millions of dollars along with the NCAA while athletes only get scholarships around $40,000 dollars. Another example of inequality is that coaches not just colleges can be made multimillionaires within one season of coaching. One example of that is University of Kentucky Coach John Calipari.

Another major argument used to support paying college athletes is to say college athletics is a large business. Supporters say that college athletes should be paid because the extremely large organization known as the NCAA is making lucrative amounts of money off of them, and what they do is considered a business (Frederick, 2013). They argue that the extreme amounts of money the NCAA earns from these athletes is too much, and that they can afford to compensate the athletes for the large amount of money they generate. College athletes sign a letter of intent to play for a specific university knowing that the school will generate large amounts of money off of their appearance, and performance. If college athletes do not agree with the fact that universities and the NCAA will make large sums of money from them they should not play

This scholarly article by Debra Blum attempts to legitimize the argument that athletes should be compensated for their hard work from the perspective of former Duke University player Dick DeVenzio. It describes his struggle in day to day life and shows that players need to receive compensation to survive. This source provides primary source evidence for my argument.

There are conversations about how football and basketball players should be paid, that’s the basis of pay-for-play, but if you pay the boys you have to pay the girls as stated in title XI. If things aren’t as equal as possible the NCAA simply wont allow it. They would have lawsuit after lawsuit if colleges weren’t able to spread the wealth to everyone, man or woman it has to be equal. It’s that simple.

Student athletes devote hours of time in universities all around the United States every year. They play many different sports, everything from water polo to football. It is really hard to be a college athlete for many reasons. These athletes play their respected sport multiple times a week, traveling a lot and miss many classes, which makes it much harder for them to take care of the education. The question, “Should college athletes get paid for playing their sport” is asked regularly. This has been a common argument over the last couple of years, and it seems it is here to stay. I wanted to find out what the people at Campbell think about that, so I went around campus and asked people that question. I asked 40 people, 27 said that they should get paid and on the opposite 13 people said that they should not get paid. I think that they should get paid. Athletes put their body on the line and some of them even make a huge amount of money for their schools.

“I’ve been writing about this issue for several years now calling for college athletes to be paid the wages that they deserve and am sad to acknowledge that very little has changed since I was a college athlete at UCLA, so poor that I and most of my teammates could barely scrape by. But just as with every injustice, wrongs don’t get righted unless we keep raising our voices again and again. So, once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” (Kareem Abdul Jabbar Guardian Par 2). They fail to acknowledge how much our college athletes work and how we fail to even give them a single cent for how hard they work for their respective schools. The Guardian talks to Kareem Abdul Jabbar about his views on the recent controversy about how the schools

To play college football you need to be dedicated, because it is just like having a full time job. College football players are constantly working on their game and improving their skills. Before the football season starts, the workload for these athletes are about 50 to 60 hours of training per week. That is crazy compared to what a normal student works with a PAYING job. A college student works about 20 hours per week on average. When the football season begins the workload is 40 to 50 hours, and they have to manage their time with school. These players barely get any breaks, but when they do it is only for a couple of days. NLRB said, ‘’while these players are allowed to leave campus for several days before Christmas, they must report back by Christmas morning.’’ Furthermore, after the season spend many hours on weight training and preparing for spring and summer practices.

Again, college athletes are very important to their schools, they are the ones who rake in all the money. These athletes just cannot do it all and still keep up. College student athletes should be rewarded for their hard work and dedication with fair compensation because they are unable to hold full- time paying jobs, they have no time for extracurricular activities, and they work their hardest every day for their

     College athletes are not forced into playing the sport that they have devoted their time to during their years in secondary education. They continue to play into the college level for their love of the game.