College Athletes Debate

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A Historical Lense on the Debate on the Compensation of College Athletes
Introduction
The debate over the compensation of college athletes has been an issue around for years. With this issue being around for as long as it has, there are a lot of precedents that exist to provide evidence to support both sides of the debate. On one side, people believe that we should pay the athletes as they make their respective associations a lot of money. Others even argue that the money given to the college athletes as part of their scholarship isn’t enough to live off of. Shabazz Napier, a now professional basketball player for the Portland Trail Blazers, once said as a college athlete
“We do have hungry nights that we don’t have enough money to get food …show more content…

The side that is for paying college athletes says that the athletes put their lives at risk everyday. These same risks, were however more prevalent during college football's earlier years. During the first college games there were often deaths that occurred. Just during the games between 1900-1905 there were 45 deaths (Johnson and Acquaviva, 2017). This concern for the safety of athletes caused Theodore Roosevelt to ask for reform. This eventually ended up with the formation of the NCAA, National Collegiate Athletic Association. As the popularity of the sport increased, more and more players were scouted, and recruited to join teams. To start off, college athletes were routinely paid, but this of course was at the time when many players on the teams did not go to the college they played for. Since, these players didn’t attend the school, they would be paid for their participation. However, as time went on the college's stopped allowing people that weren’t their students to join, which in turn caused the colleges to stop giving their athletes compensation. This eventually caused the formation of amateurism, which is seen as “the bedrock principle of college athletics and the NCAA” (NCAA, 2014). Amateurism was created to ensure that education was the top priority of the college athletes (NCAA, 2014). The creation of this principle is the main argument used to show why …show more content…

This conflict has lead to lawsuits against the NCAA, usually with the players winning some sort of compensation in the end. While the situation the players are in usually gains them the sentiment of the people, there are rules and agreements set forth that regulate the payment of the athletes. There then also comes the issue with if the athletes were to be paid, how much would they be paid, and would they be paid differently based on their contributions to their respective universities? While these issues have not been solved, some compromises have in a way been reached, again through lawsuits. This compromise of an extra $2,000 allowance has allowed for the athletes to be somewhat at ease, however other writers and columnists are speaking out for them and the debate still exists to today. The NCAA is giving the athletes extra compensation, and the scholarship money that they are receiving allows them to go and get an education that they want. The point of college is to further your education, not your athletic goals. This is why policies like Amateurism exist. It allows players to be more focused on their education than the prospect of making money for their sport. It is for this reason that college athletes are not getting an actual salary given to

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