Essay On Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

College athletics is a billion dollar industry and has been for a long time. Due to the increasing ratings of college athletics, this figure will continue to rise. It’s simple: bigger, faster, stronger athletes will generate more money. College Universities generate so much revenue during the year that it is only fair to the players that they get a cut. College athletes should get paid based on the university’s revenue, apparel sales, and lack of spending money.

The NCAA is a money-generating monster that disregards college athletes’ financial well being. How can we stand back and let the NCAA steal money from the hard working athletes that provide it? Take this for example: Philip is a landscaper that works hard day in and day out mowing yards. He is not always perfect, and makes the occasional mistake. Even though he make mistakes, he is good at what he does. Now imagine if Philip earned a very small amount of the total money made. The rest of the money goes straight to his advisor who sits around and does nothing all day. This is what collegiate sports have come to. Collegiate athletes are working hard by earning money for the NCAA. The NCAA is

College athletics are becoming more like the professional leagues except for one big issue, money. Student athletes bring in a vast amount of revenue for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) not to mention recognition and notoriety regarding the athlete’s university. However, the debate continues as to whether student athletes should or should not receive payment for playing college sports.

College athletics have been incredibly profitable businesses for many years. With the advent of televised sporting events, the profit margin has increased exponentially. The Texas Longhorns’ football program alone grosses 104 million dollars annually (forbes.com). So, where is all that money going? Most of it goes right back to the school. The athletes who practice for endless hours and devote their lives to the sports get nothing but the satisfaction of winning. So, should Division One college athletes be paid? Division One athletes should be paid because they generate a significant amount of revenue for the school.

Paying College athletes has been a trending topic around the National Collegiate Athletic Association over the years. Many have strong opinions about this topic, and the opinions vary. The discussion of paying college athletes began in 1991 when the famed Fab Five became a household name in the United States. The Fab Five is arguably the greatest recruiting class of all time; all attending the same school (Baxter). The Fab Five first created controversy when they started to question why the university and university officials were making millions and millions of dollars off their names, and they were just deprived hungry college kids not making a dime. Nike even made billions by copyrighting their famed black athletic socks, black

Due to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules and regulations no college athlete is able to receive any compensation or endorsement while participating in college athletics. These rules have long been challenged, however no changes have been made by the NCAA. With universities grossing close to $200 million a year college athletics has turned into one of the top industries in the world. The NCAA is a governing body of college athletics, but without people questioning the NCAA and demanding changes to the monopoly that the NCAA is nothing will happen to the unfairness to college athletes like it is currently.

Even though an additional $2,000 a semester does not seem like a lot of money, for some smaller market colleges this extra expense may create problems. That is why I suggest either requiring the NCAA itself to provide the extra money to the players or allowing the players to make money off of jersey sales, autograph signings, etc. By potentially taking this financial burden away from the schools and transferring it the NCAA you avoid putting undo stress on smaller schools and instead ask the NCAA, a multi-billion dollar industry, to barely dip into their huge expanse of funding/profit. Furthermore, the NCAA itself is considered a non-profit organization so instead of hoarding the billions of dollars a year that it earns it should be giving money back to the student-athletes who have made the NCAA what it is today (SOURCE). Even though many schools would not be able to pay student athletes the extra scholarship money many larger schools could easily provide this additional scholarship money. For instance, some schools already pay their head football coaches millions of dollars a year. One specific example of this is Alabama Head Football coach Nick Saban. Saban makes six million dollars a year and also receives other

College athletes generate millions of dollars for their schools each year, yet they are not allowed to be compensated beyond a scholarship due to being considered amateurs. College athletes are some of the hardest working people in the nation, having to focus on both school courses and sports. Because athletics take so much time, these student-athletes are always busy. College football and basketball are multi-billion dollar businesses. The NCAA does not want to pay the athletes beyond scholarships, and it would be tough to work a new compensation program into the NCAA and university budgets. College athletes should be compensated in some form because they put in so much time and effort, generating huge amounts of revenue.

Twenty eight of the division one college football teams generated over 100 million dollars in revenue last year (Schroeder). The 65 universities that make up the Power Five conferences, plus Notre Dame, totaled $6.3 billion in revenue during 2014-15 as compared to the $11 billion brought in by the NFL. With the amount of publicity that the colleges and NCAA are receiving along with the money that they bring in from college football, the players deserve a portion of the money rather than just a scholarship. The revenue brought in by these colleges are often seen going to the coaching staff and the overpayment of their coaches as seen when Jim Harbaugh transitioned into being a college coach but received the same wage.

The college athlete should get a part of that money that is giving to coaches because they're the ones playing in the games. “Sperber’s right, but the “haves” schools are only partially to blame. The villain of college athletics is still the NCAA, initially a two-person agency set up by Theodore Roosevelt to address the growing number of serious injuries in college football. Its bureaucracy has ballooned to more than 450 employees, seven of whom earn more than $400,000 a year, an additional six who earn more than $250,000, and four others drawing more than $175,000. These and the other 400-something salaries rely on the NCAA’s golden goose: March Madness, the closest thing Americans have to a domestic World Cup (king, Paying Division I Athletes Will Hurt Lower-Tier Schools).This shows how instead of the NCAA giving money to the players that play these sports and risk their careers they rather pay their employees.

College student-athletes are amateurs and should be treated as such. Playing in the NCAA as an athlete means that you are an amateur and not a professional. “Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board and other allowable expenses.” (Mitchell). These athletic programs allow the players to continue playing the sports they love at a higher level while receiving a higher education as well. College sports would turn into a bidding war, create a “free agency” and ruin the overall idea of amateurism that the NCAA was founded on if salaries were involved. Larger schools that make more revenue or have more money to offer could easily persuade the top recruits to come and play for them. This would create a bidding war and a certain type of “free agency” that is foreign to the NCAA because the idea of being an amateur

Imagine being a student athlete in college, stressing the thought of being broke and knowing the amount of free time that is available. Could be as much as a few hours or close to zero. Class work, homework, practice, and games all take time which also sums up the main jobs for a college athlete. All student athletes should be paid because they have to maintain more endurance for other reasons rather than just practice and games. They are not treated special or different because they play a sport, they are treated like any other regular college student.

It is easy to see that the athletes bring in more money than a small salary to support the players’ families, or to have some food to eat at night. College athletes definitely deserve to receive some sort of financial compensation for all the money they bring their university. Last year, the University of Alabama received six million dollars to play in the Peach Bowl in the NCAA College Football Playoffs. (Smith 1) Whereas the players that got them there, which some believe are worth around 100k a year, receive nothing other than their scholarship.

Each university associated with the NCAA differ in size and budgeting. Some schools would have no problem paying each student athlete at their school only because of their profits from their ultimate money sports such a football and basketball, while other schools struggle now to even field enough teams to remain an NCAA school. This is why I find it intriguing to see where each school lies on how this situation could affect them. Athletes being paid could also affect high school and pro sports as well which interests me more to research this topic. High school athletics could improve by students pushing harder at the high school level to reach the college level because of pay, while pro sports could have many different affects such as students not leaving school early because of pay at the college level now.

The NCAA’s greatest fear about paying student athletes is the money itself. They worry it will be spread thin between all the sports departments, but with all the money circulating around the college sports industry, they should not have any concerns. The two most popular college sports, football and men’s basketball, generate over $6 billion in annual revenue combined; more than the amount the National