Student Athletes Should Be Paid

1848 Words4 Pages

Time for Compensation Everybody loves to sit at home and watch college sports on their televisions. The aspect that they do not look at is how much money is circulated around that event. The people that are watching do not watch college sports for the coaches, they watch it to see their school succeed and for the players to perform. The NCAA and its partners receive revenue from all of these players performing, but the players do not. Some people may agree that the athletes deserve compensation, but some people think otherwise. NCAA Division 1 student-athletes are deserving of compensation from their Universities and the NCAA due to the amount of money the organization is making off of them. The NCAA has turned into a business and it is time …show more content…

First, the players are the ones who are putting their body in harm’s way and not a cent comes to them (Hamilton¶2). College sports at the division 1 level are full time jobs (Dudley ¶4). Usually full time jobs pay quite a bit. But these full time jobs, there is no pay. JJ O’Brian from SDSU said, “The main thing I tell people is all we really need is enough to buy our groceries and be stable. Enough so that my mom doesn’t have to help me when she’s already struggling.” (Gold ¶14). The athletes only need some money to get by. NCAA needs to realize that and help them out. No one wants their mom helping them out in college. However, the main reason why the athletes should receive money is the contract that the NCAA has with television for NCAA Division 1 popular sporting events. The NCAA makes a great deal of money off of the men’s basketball tournament especially. In 2014, the organization received a decent amount of $912 Million (Karaim P. 590). Most of that money came from television. The 14 year TV contract is worth $10.8 Billion. Yes, billion with a b. The other absurd fact is that the athletes are getting the exact opposite, $0.00 (DiPrimio ¶5). It is not just the basketball tournament either. The new college football playoff will produce a substantial amount of money due to there being three games to receive the championship, compared to the old version of one game. That means more …show more content…

Other people strongly agree that college athletes are still kids, and they do not deserve any kind of compensation from the NCAA. The strongest argument is probably that if the athletes want to make money, go to the big leagues. Purdue’s head basketball coach had a strong statement on the topic, “If you want to get paid, or think the system is wrong, go pro” (DiPrimio ¶1). What if a career ending injury happens and puts the ability to go pro in jeopardy? Eric LeGrand, a Rutgers University football player, put his life on the line to hopefully make money and fulfill his dream to get into the NFL or any other professional league. Sadly, he did not accomplish his goal. He got paralyzed during a kickoff and will never walk again (CQ Press P. 595). Another firm argument has to do on the school size. In George Dohrmann’s article, he a discussed a multitude of Division 1 budgets. Oregon is generating millions of dollars while Ole Miss says they have spent every dime (Dohrmann ¶13). Athletes that have schedules packed with events could use the money, but the concern is which schools could provide it (Dudley¶10). Because of this, people and experts think that big name schools like Oregon would pay more for a recruit then a small school like Akron or Ohio University. Yes, that is a stable argument, but the NCAA could cover some of the budgeting problems that schools have. The

More about Student Athletes Should Be Paid

Open Document