The Need for Reform in Collegiate Sports Essay

Do student athletes make the most of their opportunity to obtain a post-secondary education? Do they have the same academic success as those students that are not athletes? Are student athletes just “dumb jocks?” The answers to these questions might surprise you. Much research has been done to dispel the myth that athletes going to college are only there to play sports with little regard to their education. Programs have been created to assure that colleges and universities hold athletes to the same standards as the everyday student. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has decided that the “magic number” to put the “student” back into “student-athlete” is 925 (Hamilton).

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 ).

In his article “The Shame of College Sports,” Taylor Branch (2011) describes how universities are focused on advancing and receiving money from major athletics and having star athletes, but how the universities are not caring for the “student athlete.” The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has made college sports into an unmerited business. However, as years progress more athletes are getting smart and are taking the NCAA to court. The more students that challenges the rules by the NCAA and take them to court, the secrets and undermining values of the NCAA come out and the closer the NCAA comes to an end.

The current athletics systems in many large colleges are no longer beneficial to student-athletes or the academic premise the schools were founded under and are in need of intensive restructuring. Ernest Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching said, "I believe that the college sports system is one of the most corrupting and destructive influences on higher education" (1999). In fact, it is widely acknowledged that there is corruption by many college coaches in the areas of recruiting, eligibility, degree progress, and academic integrity of athletes. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), the national governing and accrediting agency for college athletics, possesses the duty of

With the universities pulling in more than twelve billion dollars, the rate of growth for college athletics surpasses companies like McDonalds and Chevron (Finkel, 2013). The athletes claim they are making all the money, but do not see a dime of this revenue. The age-old notion that the collegiate athletes are amateurs and students, binds them into not being paid by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This pay for play discussion has been talked about since the early 1900s but recently large steps are being made to actually make a change. There are many perspectives on the payment of collegiate student athletes coming from the NCAA, the athletes themselves, and the university officials.

The ugly truth behind the money machine that is college sports is that, every year, college athletes are deceived by the institutions the compete for into making them millions of dollars, with relatively little in return. Athletes are said to be given a chance to attend college and to attain a free college degree. However, research has shown that this is not completely true for two reasons. For one, the student athlete will spend most of their time in preparation for competition. Secondly, what education the student athlete does receive hardly serves them outside of maintaining eligibility just so

In the United States, college athletics are growing larger by the minute. College athletics contribute not only to the recognition of colleges and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), it also contributes to the income of colleges and the NCAA. Without student athletes, these colleges and the NCAA would not reap the benefits of college athletics, such as: increased awareness of colleges, higher application rates, and of course the revenue brought in from game and event tickets, apparel, and contracts for licensing and television rights. Since the student athletes, who devote a great deal of time to their sport, are the cog in the machine that is the NCAA and college athletics, they deserve the fair and rightful compensation that they certainly do not currently receive. Here is exactly why student athletes in the NCAA should be compensated for what they do for their colleges, on and off the field of play.

Black student-athletes are taught to value sports over academics at a young age because it is seen as the “only way out”. Black student-athletes are heralded for their athletic prowess from middle school up, so they begin to focus less on their education and more on their sport. Unfortunately, so do the teachers. Black student-athletes are more often than not just given passes, as schools value what their athletic abilities could do for them over the academic success of the athlete. Even normal black students can be seen the same way just because of the perception that they might be an athlete. The sad truth is that the athletes that don’t make it to the professional level are left without the education needed to be successful.

In today’s society, there are many issues, dilemmas, and scandals that we have to face. After reading Kenneth Jost’s article about college football there is, respectively, many issues in this field. I firmly agree that the Committee of the Coalition of Intercollegiate Athletics, which is an organization that represent roughly half the FBS schools, should search for ways to force college athletes to be admitted into the school before being provided with scholarships to play. Even though everyone loves watching college athletics, the purpose of going to school isn’t to be entertained, it’s an opportunity to better your education. Although many colleges feel like this will decrease their schools win efficiency there are examples that diminish

The world of sports has grown larger than life over the past century, especially in college. Being a collegiate athlete is, without question, the hardest athletic profession in the world. Not only are students devoted to their sport, which requires an obscene amount of time of preparation, but they are also devoted to their school work. And the award they receive for their hard work? Of course there are the great memories, friendships made, “free education”, or national championships, but are theses students receiving their fair share? Should college athletes be paid? It is a question that has been asked, but never truly answered. College athletes should be paid for their work. I even have the perfect system to see

Scholarships do not pay for everything that students require, resulting in students struggling to excel during college. When a student-athlete is financially struggling life can become difficult quickly. Everybody has a limit to their capabilities, and the amount of work required to perform well in class, on the field, and with financials will test those limits. The work required for student-athletes deserves a high bargain to counteract the effort. Sacrificing classroom performance for athletic performance is a risk that has a low rate of reward. Unless a student-athlete becomes professional in his or her sport athletics do not directly lead to a future. If players were paid for their entertainment then a future is possible with start-up or investing. Athletes are subjected to the NCAA’s wrongful rules that control their athletes completely, and the players deserve a chance to receive an income. Student-athletes need an income, they deserve an income, and the NCAA is holding those students back from a future. The NCAA needs to pay collegiate athletes what they rightfully have

College athletes are financially exploited by the NCAA and universities by not being properly rewarded for their services. In the area of college athletics, exploitation should be defined as, “an individual gaining something by taking an unfair advantage of another individual” (Miller). Exploitation in college athletics is especially problematic because student-athletes are not being justly compensated for their services to their school nor are they receiving a true education. Players are compensated for playing with much less than what they are worth because of strict NCAA rules that are in place to protect athletes “from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises” (NCAA). The NCAA protects it’s athletes through its core value of amateurism, which refers to the fact the athletes, “do not receive remuneration for their athletic services” (Miller). The organization is hiding behind their claim of player amateurism to escape the demand for player payment. Although it is a non-profit organization, the NCAA, “has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry where many of the schools’ annual revenues reach above $260 million” (Miller). Universities and athletic departments, “have gained huge gate receipts, television revenues, national visibility, donors to university programs, and more as a result of the performances of gifted basketball and football players” (Rheenen). When there is a surplus, none of it goes to increasing scholarships, it is used to pay for

The “contradiction at the heart of big-time college football,” as Michael Oriard describes it, is the competing demands of marketing and education. The 1890s proved to university administrators that there was an enormous market for collegiate football, which postulated opportunities for university building. Since this ubiquitous realization, there has coincided this blatant, yet unchanging contradiction that academic institutions are permitted to profit off of the services provided by its student-athletes while the athletes must idly accept that they are amateurs, donating their efforts to their respective schools. The schools then direct this revenue toward strengthening their athletic departments, and thus continues this seemingly endless growth of big-time college sports, all while athletes remain uncompensated and academics continue to take a backseat.

Big-time sports in college has become one of the most impactful experience for the college’s fans and students. In the past two decades the boom of college sports such as football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball have grown exponentially. Some the reason why this has happened is the scholarship sanctions the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put into effect a few years ago; what the sanctions established were that the “big” schools such as the University of Florida, University of Texas, University of Alabama among other school similar to them couldn’t offer all of their scholarships to the top athlete coming out of High School, making all the smaller schools more competitive on the national level.

There has been amplified debate on the treatment, education, training of the college athlete. To avoid exploitation of athletes, “The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), formed in 1905, set bylaws requiring college student-athletes to be amateurs in order to be eligible for intercollegiate athletics competition” (Schneider n.p.). Intercollegiate athletics have dramatically changed over the last several decades. Currently, intercollegiate athletics generate tremendous amounts of revenue, remarkably in football and basketball. College sports in America is a