College Athletes Should Be Paid

College sports attract thousands of fans to games every weekend. This used to just be the people who bought tickets to view the game from the stadium. Recently, the amount of fans that can view games has dramatically increased due to television deals that allow games to be broadcasted all over the nation. These deals generate lots of revenue for the NCAA and its members. In 2012, the NCAA generated $797,598,000 of revenue. Television and marketing rights made up 90% of that amount and that doesn’t include the money that individual universities made from ticket and apparel sales. With all of the money that college sports generate, the question arises, “Should the athletes be paid?” This question has caused great controversy because of all of the differing views on the subject. Many believe that athletes are already fairly compensated through scholarships and don’t deserve to be paid but there are many others, especially outside of the NCAA, that believe college athletes should be paid in some way.
The NCAA is a non-profit organization that governs college athletics. They set up the rules that college student-athletes must abide by in order to compete in college sports. These rules require that the athletes receive no compensation for their talents outside of an

athletic scholarship to the school that they attend. These scholarships can pay full tuition, room and board, and fees for the athlete. Many believe that is more than enough compensation for student-athletes as Barbara Osborne points out in her paper, “The Myth of the Exploited Student Athlete.” While the average college student graduates with almost $30,000 in debt, many student-athletes graduate with none due to their scholarships (Osborne). She states that why they not only receive partial if not a full scholarship, they also receive many other things such as equipment, clothing, training and access to state-of-the-art facilities (Osborne).
As mentioned earlier, the NCAA raked in almost $800 million in revenue in 2012. While this amount seems absurdly large, most of this money, over 80%, goes back to support the NCAA and its members (Osborne). However, many still argue that with that kind of money flowing through college sports it would be easy to pay athletes but when individual athletics programs are looked at only 7 out of 230 Division I programs were actually profitable in 2013 (Osborne). Osborne says, “Providing athletics participation opportunities is expensive […] to claim that student-athletes only receive compensation in the form of [scholarships] grossly underestimates the overall tangible benefit of athletics participation.” The schools pay for so much to allow the athletes to compete. Large amounts of money pay coaches, provide academic support, build stadiums, pay for facilities, and top-of-the-line equipment. Students who are not athletes do not receive these kinds of benefits even though they pay the same tuition and fees as the student-athletes so athletes already receive more compensation than it seems.
For a person to compete in college athletics, there is one requirement that goes before all others.

One must be enrolled as a student at whichever school they wish to play. This status as a student is what many hold as the biggest reason college athletes should not be paid. They are students first and athletes second. However, because student-athletes generate so much revenue for their respective schools, some believe they should be considered employees and be paid as such. Osborne refutes this by saying, “[…] student-athletes do not generate revenue […] spectators do not change the nature of what student-athletes do, nor does it make them revenue generators. The sports are the revenue generators

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While Osborne makes strong arguments, there are strong arguments on the other side as well. Dave Zirin’s “The Shame of the NCAA” and Jonathan Mahler’s “College Athletes Should Be Paid Exactly This Much” highlight many of these points. Zirin begins by attacking athletic scholarships. While these scholarships do pay for a lot, they are one year renewables and could be taken away if the athlete no longer gives a benefit to the program because of injury or even just a falling out with the coach (Zirin). If an athlete is released, they may have no way of paying for school anymore and may not be able to finish. Zirin suggests that student-athletes should at least be guaranteed a four-year scholarship or receive worker’s compensation for injuries. This would protect athletes from being punished for things outside of their control.
The next argument arises from the fact that college sports generate so much money. Whether it is through television deals or bets being placed in Vegas, billions of dollars are connected to college sports. In 2009, with commercial rates upwards of $1 million for the Final Four, the annual March Madness tournament accounted for 90% of the NCAA’s budget (Zirin). The athletes receive none of this and many attribute it to greed rather than high expenses. The NCAA’s top fourteen executives earn a combined $6 million salary and spent $35 million expanding their headquarters (Zirin). Zirin included a quote from Desmond Howard who played college football for the University of Michigan which said, “[You] see everybody getting richer and richer. And you walk around and you can’t put gas in your car. You can’t even fly home to see your parents.”
While extreme, college sports and the NCAA has even been compared to slavery. The NCAA stands on the idea of “amateurism” to keep from having to pay the athletes which generate the large amounts of money that the NCAA and universities collect (Zirin). Most student-athletes do not go on to play professionally and therefore never make any money for all of the work they did while in college sports programs. The fact that the majority of student-athletes are African American and from a low socioeconomic status makes this comparison worse (Zirin). While no one actually believes that it is actually slavery, they do believe it is a civil rights issue. This is where the comparison comes from and is supported by the fact that companies and schools make large amounts of money off of those who cannot profit themselves (Zirin). This problem could be solved by opening college sports up to the free market. Allowing players to sell their likeness and signatures would give the athletes the opportunity to make money from their hard work and would also not require the schools to pay them (Mahler).
Mahler points out that now with the introduction of the College Football Playoff the NCAA and schools will be making more money than they were with the BCS by about $310 million. This increase in revenue makes the NCAA seem even better equipped to pay its athletes. The argument against this is that most athletic programs are not profitable and cannot afford to pay their athletes (Osborne). However, in a lawsuit against the NCAA over athlete compensation, called the O’Bannon Case, plaintiffs showed how schools use accounting tricks to make their programs seem less profitable than they actually are (Mahler). Schools may actually be able to afford to pay their athletes and just not want to.
The views on this issue all revolve around the fact that college sports generate a massive amount of cash. With that amount of money involved it is difficult to agree with Osborne and believe college athletes are currently fairly compensated for what they do. Osborne makes many compelling arguments but the strongest one is refuted by Mahler’s exposing of the accounting tricks used by universities to obscure profitability. It is also very difficult for me to believe that the athletes do not generate any revenue. Many of the apparel items sold are representative of specific athletes. Winning programs are also more profitable and that requires the best athletes so I do not see how the athletes do not effect revenue. I believe college athletes do deserve more compensation and should be allowed to receive it. The NCAA is in need of reform because too many young athletes are exploited for their talents and thrown to the side when they are no longer beneficial to the university.