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Essay Why College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

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If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, or so they say. In this case the phrase holds true, as it would be foolish to change a wildly successful college athletics system. Currently, athletes are able to earn their degree for free, while playing the sport they love, in a harmonious reltionship between amatuer athlete and college sports. Nonetheless, critics call for colleges to pay athletes a portion of the profits generated off of their services even though college athletes are already paid in the form of scholarships, free housing and other benefits. Furthermore, changes, such as sharing profits with student athletes could ruin a system that sucessfully supplies us with the ameteur sports that we love, while providing athletes with a free college education.
Colleges should not pay athletes as they are already justly compensated through scholarships, Cost of Attendance payments (COA), free housing, facilities, academic advisors, and numerous other benefits (Student-Athlete Benefits). When all of these expenses are considered, it becomes clear that college athletes are already given most of the money that they generate. For example, in an analysis conducted by USA TODAY, the …show more content…

With the current system, most of the profits of the NCAA make their way back to the athletes, as explained above, but if athletes were to be paid, interest in college sports would suffer. Currently, fans of college sports, myself included, watch college sports as opposed to professional sports largely because they realize the players are playing for the love of the game as opposed to for profit. If college players were to get paid, this reason would be moot, and college sports would essentially turn into a minor league for the professional leagues. As a result, college sports would lose most of their viewership and earnings

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