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Should College Athletes Be Paid?

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For over a century, college athletics have thrilled generations of fans; from alumni gathered in stadiums to armchair quarterbacks, the fervor of team loyalty reaches spiritual proportions. This popularity is evident from the gigantic economy college athletics have created, with the NCAA raking in nearly eleven billion dollars last year (Edelman 7). A problem overlooked in spite of this boom is the exploitation of the people who make this venture so profitable: the players. Although it has not always been the case, the majority of players now are grossly undercompensated for contributions to their alma maters, the sport, and the burgeoning economy created by the two. College athletes are exploited when universities refuse to acknowledge …show more content…

As Katz notes, only in the 1950’s did colleges introduce the athletic scholarship, when colleges made little from athletics and demanded less from the athletes (1). The NCAA considers college players “student-athletes”, and it contends with the noble spirit of amateur athletic competition by the college scholar. As Taylor Branch wrote in The Atlantic, this term was invented by the NCAA in the 1950’s, and came to prominence in a Colorado court case. A football player on athletic scholarship died from a head injury while playing, and his widow sought workmen’s compensation benefits as a result. The school contended that he was not eligible for benefits, since they were “not in the football business” (State Compensation Ins. Fund 1), and thus he was not an employee. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed, and the myth of the student-athlete was born (Branch 4). Since then, as Branch contends, the term has been used not to protect the “nobility of amateurism, and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor”, but to protect educational institutions from liability arising from injured player’s claims (4). The physical toll taken on the bodies of college athletes must be taken into account as an occupational hazard. In the Colorado case and others, colleges and the NCAA persistently claim that they are not employers and have no responsibility as such, when the players are in fact required to play to pay for their school.

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