Summary: College Athletes Should Be Paid

The NCAA is focused on education as it states, but when athletes are struggling to survive, and in some cases, going to bed starving, one has to wonder how focused the NCAA truly is on the student and his or her education. With all of the money generated through the college athletes in the performance of their respective sport, it would make sense that these

Due to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules and regulations no college athlete is able to receive any compensation or endorsement while participating in college athletics. These rules have long been challenged, however, the NCAA does not make any changes. With universities grossing close to $200 million a year, college athletics has turned into one of the top industries in the world. The NCAA, a governing body of college athletics, currently holds all power in college athletics. Without people questioning the NCAA and demanding changes to the monopoly that the NCAA holds nothing will happen to the unfairness to college athletes in college sports today. College athletes deserve to receive compensation in some way for the

Since 1957, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has allowed schools to pay the room, board, tuition, and other fees of college athletes (Sack, Allen). Fast forward to 2016, the most recent year NCAA revenue statistics are available, the NCAA brought in $996 million in revenue. Out of that $996 million, not a single penny went to a student athlete. To put that number into perspective, you could purchase this island, Apo Island, a 2147 acre island located in the Philippines, which costs an estimated $72 million, 13 times!!! Or, maybe you want to watch Shrek on Blu Ray DVD, which goes for $14.99 at Target, you could buy over 66 million copies!!! Are you hungry? Well, if you are, go to McDonald’s with the NCAA, and they can buy

The NCAA needs to protect the overall well being of the athletes because they are the bread and butter of the school and NCAA’s income. The NCAA needs to start paying the athletes, allow the athletes to receive money from an outside source, provide a stable living environment for athletes who qualify, provide the proper nutrients the athletes need in order to excel on the field, and the NCAA needs to ban colleges from pulling the athletes scholarship after an injury. The athletes can’t get decent jobs due to their overload schedule, and the food proportion the athletes receive isn’t nearly enough for their bodies to be healthy and run properly. Many student athletes don’t come from the best backgrounds, which means financial support from the families aren’t always there. Student-Athletes attend big colleges to get an education while playing a sport they enjoy. Regular college students have the opportunity to get a job that pays decent because they have much more time on their hands, and sometimes that isn’t enough. Now imagine how hard it is for athletes who have to

Although college athletes receive a far superior scholarship to attend a college than do non-athlete students, the athletes should still receive extra income from the billions of dollars the NCAA generates per year.

But why haven’t the athletes been able to see some of that extra revenue? After all, without the players there wouldn’t be any revenue. The thought that college sports can be so extremely profitable, especially for the NCAA seems a little ridiculous. Why are they able to keep this much money while also finding a way around paying the athletes who actually bring in the revenue? It is a question that doesn’t seem to have an answer. Athletes are making money and the NCAA doesn’t want to share. One stance that the NCAA has is the argument that “They (college athletes) are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses. Collegiate sports is not a career or profession. It is the students ' vehicle to a higher education degree”. (Mitchell) It is an easy stance to have when the NCAA doesn’t have to pay for the free education, the universities do.

There has been a long standing controversy over college athletes and their ability to be protected by the NCAA, which is the organization that governs college athletes. In particular college athletes believe that they are being taken advantage of by the colleges for the entertainment they provide. The National Collegiate Athletic Association makes about $871. 6 million per year. College athletes do not receive any of this money directly. The NCAA has the authority to say how many athletic scholarships are available for each sport in Division I and Division II schools. These scholarships are quoted as being “miniscule” and barely enough to cover the full tuition of the various schools. So, the athletes are the ones that pay the price;

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is the governing body for college athletics. They currently oversee twenty-three sports in over 1,200 institutions encompassing more than 460,000 student athletes (NCAA About Us, 2015). Revenues are at an all time high nearly topping $1 billion in 2014 with a record setting surplus after expenses of $80.5 million (Berkowitz, 2015). And yet, the athletes who play the sports that generate that income see none of those dollars despite the sales of broadcast contracts, jerseys, posters, and almost any other type of merchandise you can imagine with player names and numbers on them.

The NCAA does a lot good for the United States of America but the manner in which it compensates athletes for their performance and time is not ethical. In a business, all those who contribute to the final product need to be rewarded ethically. This does not mean every NCAA athlete should be paid the same amount of money, but performance and revenue generated off a specific athlete should be reflected in an athlete bank account. The NCAA is not run like an amateur organization, so to equate athletes to this standard is not proper. The NCAA needs to change this mentality and I hope for me being a student athlete it can start rewarding student athletes who are essential to not only the present state of the school, but also future development that will come about. It is not suggestive for athletes to be paid to extravagantly, but athletes need to be paid for the labor they put into the entertainment on display. The NCAA needs to compensate athletes and maybe even ponder if it can pay them through having a salary cap so athletes appreciate the dollar they are getting and have a motivation to work for great money in the professional

Currently in present day, the NCAA sees all of its athletes as “amateur athletes”, meaning they are not allowed to receive compensation for their sport. Even though that TV deals between NCAA conferences and

The main issue at hand is that the NCAA is currently benefiting extremely well financially from the top powerhouse conferences (Southeastern Conference, Pacific 12, Big 10) and its billion dollar a year athletic programs (LSU football & baseball, USC football, and Michigan football & basketball for example). The Association has full control over these student athletes, and through various legal loopholes, they exercise this power to exploit their unrecognized workforce to generate billions of dollars in revenues. In doing so, the Association restricts the amount of compensation athletes may earn, rather paying them semester stipends for school related purchases.

The first and foremost reason student athletes should receive some form of payment is simply because there is plenty of money to go around. As previously stated, the NCAA makes over 11 billion dollars annually across all their sporting platforms. This is no way a modest amount of money. The problem today is how that money is distributed among those within the NCAA system. For example, Alabama’s head football coach, Nick Saban, is slated to make more than 11 million dollars this year alone. Additionally, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany is said to be receiving a 20 million dollar bonus at the end of this year (Armour NP). And this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to higher-ups in the NCAA receiving outrageous salaries while players get nothing. In 2013, the average salary for a BCS eligible football coach was 2.05 million dollars, and in today’s 2017 world that figure would only be higher. Additionally, the average salary of a division I men’s

The NCAA plays nice guy by expressing how much scholarship money they give to schools but in reality it’s not a lot compared to their revenue “It is estimated that over 600,000 high school seniors play head count sports. An even larger number play equivalency sports. About $1 billion in athletic scholarship money is awarded annually to approximately 130,000 student- athletes”. A lot of students rely on scholarships to pay for nearly all of their schooling only to realize they may only receive half or a quarter of it paid for during the year “only about 25,000 scholarships are available for incoming freshmen. The math isn’t promising. Therefore, it may not be wise for a family to rely solely on the possibility of their child being awarded a “full ride” to cover the costs of getting a college education”. The NCAA has said countless times that the athletic scholarships awarded to athletes is more than

The NCAA’s purpose is to direct competition in a just, safe and sportsmanlike manner, and to assimilate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the experience of the student athlete is the best it could be. It describes a professional team as an organization that provides any player excess amounts of money for involvement on the team.“Because of this paying student athletes would cross the line between professionalism and amateurism and would demolish the spirit of being a student athlete.

The NCAA or collegiate level exploits college athletes by gaining millions of dollars in revenue but restricting their ability to earn or receive money. As stated by Alex Kirshner “ The NCAA will get $857 million from Turner for the broadcast rights to this spring’s Division I men’s basketball tournament, the organization said in a financial statement out Wednesday. A few years from now, the NCAA will clear more than $1 billion annually on that deal.” The 68 teams at their highest will pay 44.2 million dollars in scholarships for players (Kirshner). That’s an 822.8 million profit off of these young athletes who in theory are only receiving 5 % of the profits of the NCAA that the NCAA makes off them (Kirshner). Now, mind you that number is even lower once you add in individual college tv deals and the money the NCAA makes off pre-tournament games. In addition to this, there are restrictions that cause these athletes to get exploited even more. An athlete cannot do anything that will compromise their amateur status while in college ex (taking money from coaches, signing an agent, signing a shoe deal). As a result, this can be smoking gun to kill an athlete’s collegiate career. Such as Lamelo Ball becoming ineligible to play in the NCAA because of his shoe deal with his family’s brand Big Baller Brand. Which is another example of where athletes become a money making a venue for colleges the reason an athlete