Paying College Athletes Essay, Research Paper

Should college athletes be paid? Many have different opinions on this subject. Some feel that a fully paid scholarship is enough for these talented individuals. But for the athletes it s not enough. Allen Sack, a former football player said: No matter their economic circumstances, college scholarship athletes, almost universally agree that there needs to be a way for money to find its way into their hands ligitimatley. But what most the public doesn t know is that intercollegiate athletics is a primary source of income for colleges and universities in the United States, and the athletes aren t seeing a penny of it.

The N.C.A.A. is what s keeping the athletes from seeing some of the money they deserve by calling it Amateurism. Rule 2.9 says: The principal of Amateurism Student athletes shall be amateurs in an intercollegiate sport, and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and the physical, mental and social benefits to be derives. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and student athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises. These rules show you how the N.C.A.A. controls the actions of the student athletes, only to allow them to be manipulated by their universities and take away their freedom to earn money on their own.

College athletes who come from low-income families have little or no money, leading them to accept money and gifts illegally. Presidents of division I schools are allowing boosters to offer big money to talented athletes for competing on the fields of play, and try to attract wealthy TV networks to commercialize the sports and make Billions off the consumers. College athletes are young and na ve and maybe that s why they accept money and gifts. Maybe they feel they deserve it and lack the fear of any consequences or maybe they truly need the money since they can t make it elsewhere. Athletes know they have a scholarship, but they also know that a scholarship doesn t give you any money for normal everyday spending. For whatever reason student athletes accept money, whether good or bad, they still take it and they always will as long as it s offered.

The star athlete is basically hired to bring success to a certain sports program, regardless of his or her educational goals or intellectual background. Technically it is a phrase describing an individual student who engages in a sport for the academic institution they represent. But the problem that haunts the N.C.A.A. is the realization that the student athlete is truly two different words, describing two different groups of people and one day they will have to admit that they are separate.

The bottom line is winning, and winning requires talented athletes, but some athletes realize their value and demand some compensation for their efforts. With all their long hours of hard work and endless practice, they put everything on the line. They risk life and limb for the university they represent and for what? Why undergo the stress and strain of a season, year after year, to only be tossed aside after their eligibility or talent is used up? Obviously for some, it s that small possibility one day turning professional, but for others it s the question of why can t I get paid for my work now?

Universities realize that they take in millions of dollars in revenue, and in return all the athlete gets is a scholarship. It all adds up from grants-in-aid to student athletes which generates about 5 million dollars a year. Add that to the millions spent on travel, housing, equipment, health care and other costs, pretty soon were talking about real money. According to the Bureau of Census is that the free education a scholarship athlete has, typically generates an extra $500,000 or more in that persons future. An education is priceless, and the student athletes at American colleges and universities reap the benefits of the finest higher education system in the world. So the knowledge that a student athlete gains in the classroom is something that will never depreciate.

What paying players would do is free them from a system in which they do most of the work and assume all of the risk, yet are prevented from sharing in the results of their labor. This in effect, would terminate any forms off corruption and exploitation of intercollegiate athletics. It would also benefit the universities, while still profiting from their athletic programs they would also be scandal free and have the pressures of winning taken off their shoulders. The majority of the pressure would be carried by the already high paid coaches and soon to be high paid athletes. The N.C.A.A. could benefit by engaging in more high profit venues and would be relived of enormous amounts of pressure due to an employee situation within the system. Overall, a system of salary paid athletes put into intercollegiate athletics would change the views of many. Whether it would benefit society depends on such a proposal. I see no reason why such a proposal could not be created.