Should College Student Athletes Be Paid?

The hot topic in amateur sports has been as to whether or not college athletes should be paid. The NCAA amateur rule states that an athlete in college sports cannot be paid other than their athletic scholarship. These athletes spend a tremendous amount of time at school practice and then working on schoolwork after practice. The NCAA is an organization that oversees all of the athletes that make up the basic unit of intercollegiate sports. The success of the NCAA whether it’s through the sale of merchandise, game day revenue or NCAA tournaments that each individual sports has, despite the absolute success of these tournaments these athletes receive any monetary compensation .Some of the main reasons why the NCAA lack of payments are that it wants to maintain its amateur status and

Collegiate sports have turned into a billion dollar industry and are probably just as popular, if not more popular than professional sports. College athletes put their bodies on the line to play a sport they love, many with hopes and dreams to one day make it to the professional leagues. Athletic facilities are the major money makers for all universities. Colleges bring in billions of dollars in revenue annually, yet athletes do not get paid. Some fans believe athletes should not get paid due to their sports level being “amateurish.”; however, this is far from the truth. There is much more to being a college athlete than just practicing and playing games. These student-athletes must practice, weight lift, go to meetings, travel, go to tutoring and study groups, all the while maintaining sufficient grades. This is very tedious work and is very time consuming. College athletes have a high standard to live up to (Frederick Web; Huma Web; Patterson Web ).

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

Furthermore, where should the money come from? Is it the responsibility of the school to pay these athletes or the NCAA? Other questions include how much should students-athletes be paid, how often, will it work in a similar way that professional contracts work, etc.? All these questions reveal how difficult it would be to change the college athletic system to compensate college athletes. Regardless of what number of individuals feels that athletes ought not to be paid for their ability, there is pretty much the same number of individuals whom feel they ought to. There are numerous reasons why individuals think a student athlete ought to be adjusted. Some of those reasons incorporate; individuals feel that frequently the college utilizes these athletes as boards for their school. Additionally, the universities are "offering the athletes' names and achievements for the schools own acknowledgment. “Athletic organizations are utilizing college athletes to offer their items, along these lines the athletes ought to see a portion of the money that is earned. It has even been demonstrated that promoting through understudy athletes extraordinarily impacts more youthful

These players have extremely hard practices, and so very intense games, and usually put in another 40 hours plus without counting practices. Their total efforts each year lead to at least 11 billion dollars each year for the collages. Each day for the men 's basketball players the average is about 5 and a half hours each day.(Peter Jacobs) Why is this business model--unpaid labor, mostly by black athletes, generating riches for white administrators--still treated. (Donald Yee) For football they usually have about 10 games and then they have playoff games if they make it around 13 games. After all you can see that these players put in a tremendous amount of time for their sport.

The student athletes at most universities can be compared to employees, yet receiving no wages (Cooper 12). Along with time in the classroom and being a full-time student, athletes are expected to spend just as much time on their respective sport. In an article “Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid,” Dave Anderson explains that a college athlete spends just over 43 hours a week devoted to their sport. Those hours are spent with mandatory lifting workouts, conditioning workouts, watching film, position meetings, and practice. As I stated earlier, all this time that is spent on their sport is in addition to the time spent in the classroom with homework and studying. All of that added up well surpasses the time of the average work week at 40 hours and these athletes can quite honestly be looked at as workers for their universities.

College sports is a multi-billion dollar industry. Each year thousands of high school students are recruited to play college sports, but under strict conditions. Students are required to do well in athletics while keeping up with their academics. College athletes spend up to forty five hours per week on practices, training, and games. In addition, they spend roughly forty hours on their academics. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) does not think it is necessary to pay these athletes because they want to maintain the “amateur sport” status. According to Stanley Eitzen in his “College Athletes should be Paid, “The universities and the NCAA claim their athletes in big-time sports programs

Whether or not student-athletes should be paid has been a hotly debated topic since the 1900s. College athletes spend just as much time, if not more time, practicing and devoting time and energy to sports as they do academics. For this, many athletes are rewarded with scholarship money. However, many people believe it is not enough. Should we pay student-athletes a slice of the wealth or is a full-ride scholarship enough? (Business Insider). What if the athlete gets injured? Where does the money come out of to support each athlete’s salary? The huge amount of money being generated from college sports has led some people to think that the athletes are entitled to some of that revenue. While, some think that student-athletes should be paid, others disagree for various reasons.

Throughout the years college sports have been about the love of the game, filled with adrenaline moments. However, the following question still remains: Should college athletes get paid to play sports in college? Seemingly, this debate has been endless, yet the questions have gone unanswered. The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) plays a vital role in this debate. The NCAA is a billion dollar industry, but yet sees that the athlete should get paid for their hard work and dedication.

(Attention Getter) What if I told you that for decades, students have worked over 40 hours a week and received absolutely no pay. College athletes are expected to balance the immense workload of school work and represent their school well in athletics.

Salaries for 8-5 individuals are based on approximately 40 hours a week. A division one NCAA college football player dedicates more than 40 hours a week to their sport. Therefore, they are bound to receive direct financial compensations just like a full-time working American (Karaim, p 20). It is important to note that the NCAA maintains that college athletes should attend classes and participate in sports. Therefore, their 40 hours of practice acquires an additional 11 hours of classes on a weekly basis (Karaim, p 21). I go to Passaic County Community college as a full-time student and work 40 hours a week just to live life. These college athletes are doing the same thing I am doing. The college athlete needs to maneuver their schedule smoothly to ensure they do not fail to attend classes and sports' practice. College athletes skip classes to travel and go to tournaments. Spectators purchase tickets to watch games which are made up of the college athletes. It is not only decent but sensible to pay the people who are the life of the

People claim that if these students have to work on their game all the time, then they deserve a reward. On average, college students spend 10 hours a week in class and 4 hours of studying for each class, so that means students spend 90 hours a week between class and sports(“Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid.”). If these kids work so much and take so much time to focus on their game, how are they going to finish their homework and study for tests. But that is what these kids signed up for when they committed themselves to a college to play a sport. During interviews when deciding to go to that college, coaches tell you that you will be doing that sport day in and day out and there will be little time for extracurricular activities.

So, when you really think about their schedule they probably spend close to 40 hours a week with extra practices and workouts.(A) College athletes also have to keep up with school work so they can keep their scholarship, so that's another 30 hours in class and studying a week.(A) So, looking at a calendar of a college athlete they have no time to get a part time job. While college scholarships give athletes most things they would need such as, room,board,tuition,books,and a basic meal plan they don't consider the appetite of a huge football player that needs more food that what the meal plan offers. But because of their crazy schedule they can't pay for that because most college athletes come from poor backgrounds and can't rely on their parents to support

Not to mention that practice is a requirement; if somebody misses too many practices, there’s a high chance they will get kicked off the team. The equivalent to a job, someone could say that they are being fired. Along with attempting to be the best at the sport an athlete performs, comes the struggle of maintaining a minimum grade point average to actually play. This means adding another 10-20 hours a week of studying, not to mention the time spent in class. The usual college football team requires a minimum of a 2.0 grade point average. Now, that might not seem like too hard of a challenge, but add in the exhaustion from said sport and the temptation of wanting to have a social life. Another thing to mention is that certain sports require student-athletes to miss class for away games. For example, the NCAA championship required Florida State University (FSU) football players to miss the first day of Spring Classes. When comparing the workload and pay between a coach and a collegiate athlete, the difference is absurd. At the moment, these students are only compensated with free tuition, free room, and free board. In the event that times change and college students begin to earn an hourly minimum wage, the estimated amount of money they would receive is $330 dollars a week, not including the local and federal taxes taken out. Universities refuse to acknowledge the thought of a minimum wage. According to them it is tradition to not pay college athletes

            If college students are spending their time playing these sports and not working, they should be getting paid for it. Not only are these students forfeiting their time to study, talk to friends, and even relax after classes, but they are missing an opportunity to have jobs. “Players’ relationships to the school they play for should be spelled out in an individualized pay-for-service contract rather than an NCAA-standardized letter of intent that impinges on basic freedoms” (Marx, 475). The NCAA requires that students are enrolled full time and play football to gain the scholarship offered. There is an argument by Hartenstine on this subject that “Some 15 percent played professional football as a first career, but 15 percent were corporate executives, 13