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Analysis: Why College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

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Sports have been an integral part of leisure time for America since the early 1900s, when listening to sports, especially baseball, on the radio was a major source of entertainment for many families. Lately, college sports, primarily men’s basketball and football, have become more and more popular. Now that college sports have grown to such a high popularity level, people ask, “Should these kids get paid?” Though many believe these athletes should be paid, I do not. Collegiate athletes should not be paid because they are not going to school for sports, but for an education. These student athletes are not professional athletes, and it is unfair to other student athletes and the rest of the student body, for them to be paid as such. Colleges …show more content…

Athletics is just an added incentive, which provides them opportunities” (Birkenes and Bagaria 7). I personally agree with this because when a student receives a sports scholarship, they are not only being paid to go …show more content…

But, very few schools actually gross much money from games because not every school has a nationally popular sports program. “Fifty colleges report annual revenues that exceed $50 million. Meanwhile, five colleges report annual revenues that exceed $100 million,” which is only a fraction of the schools in the United States (Mitchell and Edelman 17). In the event these few schools paid their players, they might convince a player to go to a school that does not have a good program for the degree the student is aiming to receive. As stated earlier, these players are still students, and going to school for the right degree is the most important aspect in their endeavor. And just because these schools are high grossers, that does not mean they are able to pay all of the athletes on their various teams. The various schools still have scholarships to provide to worthy students, staff salaries to give, and expenses to pay. Also, schools that do not have the funds to pay athletes would have a dwindling number of athletes, since many of the players would most likely go where they would get paid. This can harm the school’s assorted teams and the university itself because there is less income coming in from the games, since there might not be enough players on some

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