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Why Do College Athletes Get Paid?

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Around eight million high school students participate in athletics within the United States, and more than 480,000 will progress to compete as NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) athletes during college. However, a study from ESPN found that male basketball and football players at a major university who were deemed criminal suspects were either not prosecuted, had charges dropped, or never faced charges at all– 56 percent of the time. These players were treated better than others and therefore have an advantage over them, thus is preferential treatment. Many coaches and athletic administrators believe that athletes are treated equally compared to their peers, but that is not true. Athletes receive preferential treatment by receiving higher grades in school along with …show more content…

When high school students that play high-profile sports are applying for college, they have nearly a thirty percent advantage in getting admitted compared to non-athletes in the pool of applicants, despite having SAT scores that are around one hundred points lower than average. A study collected from football and basketball players at the University of North Carolina found that nearly sixty percent of these students could only read between a fourth- and eighth-grade level with ten percent only able to read as well as a third-grade student. This culture has been cultivating for several years. During the first intercollegiate game documented between Rutgers University and Princeton University in 1869, it is said that four of the players on the winning team (Rutgers) were failing classes. Nonetheless, this Rutgers and Princeton game is idolized. Athletes are conditioned to believe if personal physical performance is high enough, then expectations for academic performance will be lower. This ideology proves to carry on into many other aspects of the players’ life, including the judicial

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