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Should College Athletes Be Paid For Their Athletic Participation?

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There is an on-going debate over whether college athletes should be compensated for their athletic participation at universities. Under current NCAA policy, college athletes are compensated via scholarships. Scholarships are payments that are placed towards a student’s education. These provide athlete’s food, board, and cover all education expenses. The NCAA provides approximately 1380,000 scholarships to Division I and II sports each year (US News).The majority of athletic scholarships must be renewed each year. In other words, colleges can drop an athlete’s scholarship after the academic year. This puts pressure on students to not only perform well in their sport, but also academically. Also, college athletes must perform well on the …show more content…

Their basis for considering athletes amateurs is that their education comes before sports. Others believe it is an out for the NCAA to get by without compensating their athletes. The NCAA is not the only other sport association to use the amateurism defense. The Olympics used to also not pay their participants either. After frustration from athletes, the Olympics dropped amateurism entirely. The United States now pays athletes $25,000 per gold medal, $15,000 per silver medal, and $10,000 for a bronze. More importantly, players use their likness to sign large endorsement deals. Michael Phelps, one of the most notable American Olympians, earns $10 million a year off his endorsements alone. Those against paying college athletes say it would be too difficult to implement such a system because of Title IV. Title IV, signed Richard Nixon, declared, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance (US Department of Education). Though there are exclusions to the rule, college athletics does fall under Title IV standards. This, in effect, means all collegiate sports programs, if compensated, would have to be compensated equally across the board. Even though college football and basketball bring

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