For many children, professional sports is their dream job. They spend much time learning and improving their game to follow their passion. But before they can advance to the professional level, prospects must spend time in college to improve academically and athletically. Unfortunately, many players go through hard times during these years. Players receive little to no money for scholarships, and usually cannot work because “in addition to training and playing in games, they are full-time students who must earn passing grades to stay in school” (Birkenes and Bagaria). But ever since the NCAA became profitable, they have made sure that athletes cannot make a salary. The term “student-athlete” was coined in 1964 to prevent players from being …show more content…
Medical bills can pile up, and players may end up dropping out of college due to the accumulating costs. While some athletic departments have health insurance, “student-athletes are not afforded worker’s compensation protection if they are injured” (“Compensation for College Athletes”). A severe injury can also seriously hamper an athlete’s already slim chances of going pro, losing out on a massive deal. A player’s academics also suffer from the lack of insurance. Student-athletes must spend a large chunk of time studying, practicing, and playing their sport. This time spent on sports makes focusing on grades virtually impossible. As Salim Furth puts it, “if a star receiver decided to focus on academics and scale back football practice, he would be dropped from the team and lose his scholarship.” Many schools instead choose to enroll athletes into “paper classes”, classes that require almost no effort to get an easy A. The way that the NCAA currently works, players can leave college with no scholarship, no professional contract, and no …show more content…
Because they are amateurs, college players are not allowed to make any money from their image or performance as an athlete. This means no autographs, jerseys, etc. A few years ago, former Georgia player A.J. Green was suspended four games for selling his jersey, despite Georgia profiting off similar jersey replicas. The NCAA and college teams constantly use players’ likenesses to make money without paying them. The NCAA Football series was canceled in 2014 because they were successfully used for using player likenesses without compensating those in the game. Players are also not allowed to receive gifts, which is to prevent corruption by recruiters. This rule usually works, but is sometimes taken to the extreme. Jameis Winston was suspended from the FSU baseball team for 5 days after admitting to stealing $32 of crab legs from a store. Later however, he claimed that he was given the crab legs for free. The reason he would not admit to this is because that is an NCAA infraction, meaning he would have forfeit his eligibility to play any sport for the rest of college. In Winston’s case, claiming theft was better than claiming it as a gift. With these rules in place, it makes it virtually impossible for a player to make money in any
They do not face problems of debt and tuition to the extent that the normal college student faces. Student-athletes are fairly compensated through publicity and financial benefits, and the NCAA should continue to refrain from paying them. The varying size and interest levels of universities makes it almost impossible to fairly pay all athletes. In order to avoid problems like those exhibited by Northwestern’s football team, who recently tried to unionize, all athletes would need to be paid equally. The excitement brought on by college sports is immense, and problems created due to paying athletes would only hurt the tradition and charisma that college athletics offer. In conclusion, College athletes are students and amateurs, not employees. “Remember student comes first in student-athlete”
Some feel that by not paying college athletes that college institutions are thereby exploiting their athletes free of charge, which is unfair. However, this article feels that college athletes are paid very favorably by the large amount of money they receive for schooling through scholarships. Also, since college athletes don’t pay to play or go to school they are receiving a free college degree whether or not they decide to stay in school for four years or not. With the training that they receive from professional trainers and nutritionists for a professional controlled diet they save possibly thousands within the 4 years they attend school and perform in collegiate athletics.
The players have become employees of the NCAA as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.
Fans have such a love for college football, completely different from NFL but paying athletes just like professional ones would change that different environment for both players and fans completely. Fans love the idea that they are watching these young men play with passion and love for the game. University alumni like to see these players have the same loyalty to the schools that they had when they attended. It resembles a big family, which is so different than a professional team that is technically playing simply for money for the organizations. Collegiate sports is not a career or profession. It is the students' vehicle to a higher education degree (Mitchell). Like many say, “you play for the name on the front, not the back.” It is a common argument that that professio...
College athletes are manipulated every day. Student athletes are working day in and day out to meet academic standards and to keep their level of play competitive. These athletes need to be rewarded and credited for their achievements. Not only are these athletes not being rewarded but they are also living with no money. Because the athletes are living off of no money they are very vulnerable to taking money from boosters and others that are willing to help them out. The problem with this is that the athletes are not only getting themselves in trouble but their athletic departments as well.
Playing a sport in college is equivalent to working a full-time job (Thomas). There are rules that allow major-college football coaches to only demand twenty hours of the players time each week (Wieberg). However, studies show that those athletes are doubling those hours per week during the season (Wieberg). Other sports are putting in the equivalent of a full time work week (Wieberg). Some NCAA officials are concerned with the amount of time spent stating that beyond forty hours is inhumane (Wieberg). Most of the athletes compete and do whatever it takes to succeed, so they enjoy spending countless hours on sports (Wieberg). Many athletes even have struggles in the classroom because they do not have enough time to study. Student-athletes at top Division I schools think of themselves as athletes more than students (Wieberg). Less than one percent of college athletes actually make it professionally (Wieberg). That means these kids should focus more on their education than on athletics. In reality, these official...
"The best argument against paying players is that it diminishes the value of an education" (qtd. in Zimbalist). State University has breached its academic standard by allocating unnecessary expenditures to athletically advanced students. Student athletes should not be paid at State University, because it focuses on an extracurricular activity as a means of profit, praises athletic ability over merit/ scholastics, promotes a bridge between players and regular students, and creates hierarchy between universities.
College athletes receive scholarships based on the fact that they can play. What happens when they get injured and they are ultimately dropped from the team? They are left unable to pay for college, with hospital bills and the dream of becoming a professional athlete is flushed down the drain. Some might argue that they can get an academic scholarship, after all school should have been their priority. That sounds great, but in actuality a lot of them have been pushed through school and will not qualify. They spend so much time practicing that they do not have much time or energy to put into schoolwork. Then there are the off campus/out-of-state games that they attend. Those do not just take place on the weekends; they are during classes too, and they will almost always be considered an official excused absence. These coaches and other people in charge of athletes do not have the student’s best interest at heart. All they care about is that they can get out there and win. In my first year of college, I found out that a couple...
There has always been a lot of debate on whether or not college athletes should get paid. With as much money as college sports makes from these student athletes, should these student athletes be getting paid? There are many different stances on why I feel like these student athletes should be getting paid. I will talk about some of the reasons on why they should get paid. Being a student athlete is a very stressful thing in life at that age as they are attending school full time and working extremely hard at being the best athlete they can on the field.
People believe that paying college athletes will ruin the tradition and innocence of the game. However, people forget that Olympians get paid, and most of them are amateur athletes. "Gold medallists from the United States receive a minimum of $15,000 for their success (from the U.S. Olympic Committee and the national governing body of the winner's sport), USA Today, Final Ed." These Olympians can also capitalize on endorsement deals and other additional bonuses, most of which are illegal in college athletics. The innocence of the game is already in jeopardy, in a June 24th, 1996 issue of The NCAA News, " Studies indicate that 75 percent of underclassmen have received cash or gifts from an agent." That’s a pretty high number, three out of every four are involved in illegal activities involving agents, and 90...
A question that has been rising to the surface lately is “should college athletes be paid a salary?” One cannot get on the internet now a day and not see some kind of college sport headline. The world of college sports has been changed greatly the past decade due to college athletes. These athletes make insurmountable amounts of money and an unbelievable amount of recognition for the universities. The athletes that provide and make a ton of revenue for the colleges also spend a huge amount of their time practicing and staying committed to sports, and have to maintain good grades in school which requires quite a bit of overtime. Because college athletes generate massive amounts of revenue and put in massive amounts of personal time for their individual universities, colleges need to financially compensate players for their contributions. The colleges that these superstars represent are reaping all of the benefits of the accomplishments the athletes have, yet the big named players are making nothing from what they do.
The proposal of payment toNCAA student-athletes has begun major conversations and arguments nationwide with people expressing their take on it. “This tension has been going on for years. It has gotten greater now because the magnitude of dollars has gotten really large” (NCAA). I am a student athlete at Nicholls State University and at first thought, I thought it would be a good idea to be able to be paid as a student-athlete.After much research however; I have come to many conclusions why the payment of athletes should not take place at the collegiate level.The payment of athletes is only for athletes at the professional level. They are experts at what they do whether it is Major League Baseball, Pro Basketball, Professional Football, or any other professional sport and they work for that franchise or company as an employee. The payment of NCAA college athletes will deteriorate the value of school to athletes, create contract disputes at both the college and professional level, kill recruiting of athletes, cause chaos over the payment of one sport versus another, and it will alter the principles set by the NCAA’s founder Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. Under Roosevelt and NCAA, athletes were put under the term of a “student-athlete” as an amateur. All student athletes who sign the NCAA papers to play college athletics agree to compete as an amateur athlete. The definition of an amateur is a person who “engages in a sport, study, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons” (Dictonary.com).
College athletes juggle busy academic and practice schedules all throughout their stressful weeks, so why shouldn't they be compensated for their time dedicated to sports? NCAA rules strictly prohibits players from being paid for all the hard work they do to protect “amateurism”, but are you really an amateur putting in over 40 hours a week between practice and other activities? Although students earn a college scholarship, that doesn’t cover living expenses, and access to a degree at the end of their career, players should be paid because schools, coaching staffs and major corporations are profiting off their free labor.
According to the NCAA regulations an athlete will lose his/her eligibility if they are paid to play; sign a contract with an agent; receive a salary, incentive payment, award, gratuity educational expenses or allowances; or play on a professional team. The word amateur in sports has stood for positive values compared to professional, which has had just the opposite. The professional sport has meant bad and degrading; while the amateur sport has meant good and elevating. William Geoghegan, Flyer News sports editor writes, “Would paying athletes tarnish the ideal of amateurism? Maybe, but being fair is far more important than upholding an ideal” (Geoghehan 1).
Another reason that college athletes should not be paid is because they are, under NCAA rules, to be considered amateurs. In the National Collegiate Athletic Association Rules it states, “College athletes are not to be paid, not to cash in on their prominence, never to cross any kind of line of professionalism.” Steve Wieberg, of the USA Today, studied the rules that the NCAA has placed on paying college athletes. He concludes that, “Athletic programs are meant to be an integral part of the educational program” (Weinberg). The reoccurring theme here should be obvious now —education is the most important part of the student’s time in college and being an athlete should come second.