Should College Athletes Be Paid?

College athletes are taken advantage of and deserve to be compensated for their services while playing sports. These students are exploited and used to make money and out of everything that particular school makes, the athlete never given a penny of it. All of the hard works, blood, sweat and tears that they put into that

These amateurs sign a contract forbidding them from receiving any kind of monetary compensation as a college athlete. In short words, they cannot receive any direct funds or sponsorships. The NCAA believes that through scholarships, grants, and financial aid, college athletes are more than able to cover the costs of their tuition, living/traveling expenses (Green 6). Also, playing sports in college leads to future opportunities upon graduation. Essentially, college athletes are paid through scholarships and promotions and in return they represent their school through with their athletic talent. According to Institute for College Access & Success, in the state of Pennsylvania, 71 percent of students leave a public four-year institution or private non-profit four-year institution in debt. The average debt is $32,528 (McCauley 6). That is an enormous burden for kids who may, or may not have a job awaiting them upon graduation. When you look at it that way, plenty of college students would be happy to play a sport for four years if it meant they did not have to take on that financial hardship (McCauley

For years now there have been the argument if college athletes should be paid to play or not. It is an ongoing debate between many people including the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA), athletes, coach, and other various people. The has debate has gone far enough that a lawsuit has started over it. There are many arguments for college athletes being paid such as; the athletes do not have time to work, their images are being used without any type of pay, and how the NCAA and coaches make millions of dollars off of the players while the players do not make anything. On the flip side of this, arguments that the athletes should not be paid include; they get paid in other varies ways, the average college athletic department loses enough money already without paying the athletes, and the fact that not all college athletes are in school to become professional athletes anyhow so making money from their athletic abilities should not be an issue for them at all.

Student athletes should not be paid. A misconception is that all athletic programs in the NCAA make head-over-toe profit. There are three divisions of intercollegiate athletics, and frankly division three athletic programs don’t make as much or have a profit when compared to division one programs. “Critics of paying college athletes note that only a small number of them compete in sports or on teams that actually generate revenue”. (Paying College Athletes) The truth is only a fraction of athletic programs are actually profitable, while most pose a cost to the institution. The question arises primarily in division one programs and typically in the sports of basketball and football. The argument is made that these institutions receive millions of dollars from their student athletes’ performance, in return they should be paid.

The NCAA Football Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has finally arrived, and the National Championship awaits the semi-final winners. What also awaits, is about a 50 million dollar payout from the NCAA, to the winning university. This is just a very tiny portion of the amount of money the NCAA earns in revenue each year from 23 different sports and over 150 universities. On the other hand, the players competing for these titles will earn no money whatsoever. Is this Fair? At first glance some may think it is not. Sure, these athletes are the cows truly bringing in the cash, but there are many compelling reasons why the college athlete is not and should not be paid. The facts are that the money earned from the NCAA is redistributed to the universities each year for many beneficial reasons, college athletes already earn compensation for tuition and school expenses, and paying these athletes would be far too complex and unequal to all players, sports, and universities.

How in today’s society is it equitable to have a person perform labor, benefit off of their actions and that person not being compensated? Each year over 400,000 collegiate student-athletes both male and female, compete on 3 different division levels nationwide. During the lifespan of these athletes’ careers a select few become the face of their respective universities, who in turn generate uncountable amounts of revenue. Over the past couple of years the debate of paying college athletes has heated up and has been argued whether paying student-athletes would take the amateurism out of the game. Both ways they are involved and providing illegal services for cash to survive in a financially strapped economy. At what point does the NCAA

The top-notch athletes produce a plethora of money and popularity for the school, which exceeds the cost the school pays. Schools can sell marketing items with a players name and use their popularity for people to buy. On average a full D-I scholarship is $25,000 per year” (Hartnett). Now even though this may seem like a lot most athletes don’t spend all four years at a school; there are injuries, transfers, rules and regulation violations, etc. Yet the scholarship only covers the general basics: thousands of dollars in mystery fees, housing, tuition, a low cost meal plan, and a few hundred dollar textbooks.The scholarship is not money in the players pocket, athletes are usually broke. “The NCAA currently produces nearly $11 billion in annual revenue from college sports” (Edelman). This amount exceeds the revenues of the NBA and NHL. And just the University of Alabama alone reported $143 million in athletic revenues, that is more than all NHL teams and 25 of 30 NBA teams. But with all this money generated by the athletic programs, what do the actual players who make the money receive? Nothing. “The annual economic worth of an average football player is $435,000 and worth of an average men’s basketball player is $587,000” (Kruckemeyer). If just each athlete was paid $2,000 over the semester, they would have a little spending cash, and an opportunity to manage their own money. When the NCAA was created paying coaches was frowned upon, but now they receive millions.

First, some say that college athletes should be paid because of the fact that the schools and the NCAA make billions. In an article from USA Today, it stated: “NCAA made more than $1 billion for the year” (Mama). On the other hand, they should not be paid because tons of the athletes get scholarships, they are rewarded with a free education, and they are technically getting around twenty-thousand dollars a year. First, in an article from Scholorshipstats.com in statistics from 2015 regarding the amount of scholarship money that was given out was nearly 2.2 billion dollars.

Two heated debates arise when considering faults in modern-day college athletics. The first is in college football whether or not a playoff system should be implemented in order to determine a definite Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Champion. This major issue in college football has been temporarily solved with the approval of a four-team playoff starting in 2014 and ending in 2025 (Dinich 1). Though it remains highly exclusive to the top four ranked teams at the end of the season, there lies an opportunity to grow its structure. Second tier, Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) expanded the playoff from 16 teams to 24 teams by giving the top eight seeds a bye in round one. The second most controversial question recurring in college

During the years prior to the year 2017, there has been thousands of controversial topics that the world or United States has had to deal with. Whether the conflict is over a world problem such as Global Warming, or if it is a country conflict such as abortion laws. Many people have to work together in order to find the right solution to what will work best for everybody. The steps that is taken to come up with a solution is the same steps for any controversial topic that comes up. With that being said a big controversy in the United States today is whether or not college athletes should be paid while attending and playing for the University of their

There are stacks of reasons why people think athletes should be paid. The athletes claim is, they put all their work into a sport so they do not have time to get a job. Another reason is that the NCAA has plenty of money to pay athletes. When an athlete commits to a school for a sport, it is their choice to give up their time during the season to play the event they compete in. Sport seasons do not last all year; they are about a quarter of the year. While you still have yearly workouts, athletes have time outside of their sports season, to get a job or earn money somehow. The National Collegiate

For some time now, the issue of whether college athletes are employees or not has been recurring in college athletics. It has specifically begun at Northwestern University, where Division I football players demanded to be recognized as university employees. They claimed that because of the overload of hours they devote to football and the fact that they receive athletic-based scholarships; they should be recognized as employees. They also pointed out that they are primarily athletes, not students, because football takes up most of their time, including the necessary study time if they were to put academics first (Crouch, Ian). However, as of now, college athletes will remain unrecognized as university employees. Because of this, the issue

All Division 1 athletes put their heart and soul into the sport that they work so hard for day after day, week after week, month after month. For many years, athletes’ passion and hard work for the game that they play has gotten them an opportunity to attend a university where they are able to showcase their talent and ability at one of the highest amateur levels of athletics. When one makes it to the Division 1 level, playing sports is more or less a business. The job that one has as a student athlete is to play sports and make a profit for the college he or she attends. In the past years, there has been one controversial question that lingers in the minds of athletes, sports analysts and fans across the nation. Should Division 1 athletes be paid to participate? Division 1 student athletes should not receive payment or a salary for competing in college athletics.

The way the system is set up, it makes it very hard for a professionally athlete to sustain a typical life. Generally tuition for good colleges is about $25,000 per year, and some people would say “$100,000 over four years is a lot of money for an athlete”. It is but most athletes don’t even last 4 years at their colleges. Athletes have to deal with the shuffling of coaching staffs, who may or may not mistreat the athlete, forcing him or her to transfer to a different school. Additionally, teams may end an athlete’s scholarship following a series of uncontrollable injuries. Athletes in college are putting themselves at the same physical risk as the professionals involved in each respective sport. They need to be insured medically so their bodies cannot develop lingering problems due to injury and stress on the tissue, muscles and bones. Also the

College athletes should not be paid money to participate in the sports they play. Many of the athletes are attending because of scholarships that pay for tuition and other fees that come with going to higher tier colleges. A majority of the only have to pay for meals and items they need like toiletries. My first reason on why they should not be getting paid is the school doesn't have money for everyone. According to theatlantic.com, “The average FBS athletic program ran a 9.44 million dollar operating deficit.” Schools cannot be paying for the athletes that attend their classes and play on their sport teams. With most colleges now having many sports programs and many athletes attending they can't all get what they want.