Whether College Athletes Should Be Paid?

The purpose of this paper will be to show you why college athletes should be paid Participation in college sports should be considered a profession and athletes compensated for their work. Paying college athletes is not about being fair, but it is a start.

The NCAA rules are so binding, fairness is many years and many reforms down the road. By paying players, though, the NCAA could improve a flawed system. Many athletes come to college to study their sports, hoping to land a job in their chosen field.

Universities used to have athletics to provide recreational and social opportunities. Today college ball is just a stepping-stone to the professional leagues. Football and basketball do not have minor leagues like baseball Universities, then, offer experience to athletes and a close to professional level product to the public, and the public eats it up. In November of 1999, the NCAA signed a $6.2 billion contract with CBS Sports to televise the mens basketball tournament. This is commonly known as March Madness. They also have a contract with ABC Sports for the Bowl Championship Series for football. ESPN also pays to televise the womens basketball final four.

So you can see that there is a great deal of money going to the colleges and conferences for television contracts. In addition to this, the colleges sell tickets, t-shirts, hats, and copyright their logos. The more successful their athletic programs the more donations they get from their followers.

The coaches are also able to cash in on the college athletes. In 1997, Steve Spurrier, head football coach at Florida signed a six-year contract that pays him $2 million a year. In addition to this he also gets two new cars a year, clothing allowance, 24 tickets for each home game, plus a house. Just this month, George OLeary of Georgia Tech signed a new contract that pays him over a $1 million a year. The coaches, in addition to their salary, also get money for radio/TV shows, shoe contracts, and other endorsement revenues.

You can see that college athletics generate a great deal of money for the institutions. Now it is time the athletes were paid something for being the meal ticket. An athletic scholarship is a form of payment, but it is not enough. Athletics agree to play for their school for an education in return, but often they are not able to get their degree.

Life would not be quite as hard for many of these student athletes if they were allowed to hold part-time jobs, but NCAA does not allow scholarship players to be employed during the school year. They can only eam a maximum of $2,500. The student athletes live an entirely different life than other scholarship students on campus. The academic scholarship student is not denied the opportunity to find other work on campus. Journalism students, for instance, are often paid to work for their school papers. Engineering students can seek employment with local companies in a related field often this is done through paid internships. But again college athletes are not allowed to hold a job during the school year. When they do have a job they may not be paid more than the minimum wage without jeopardizing their scholarship and athletic eligibility.

Athletic scholarships are for only one year. If the athlete does not play well enough, his/her scholarship may not be renewed. If while spending his/her time practicing and playing their chosen sport the grades could suffer and the athlete could become academically ineligible. This could cost the athlete their scholarship and often force them to leave school.

So now it is time to give a little back to the athletes who have made all this possible. The most common idea for now is for the NCAA to start handing out stipends of approximately $1.000 a year to all athletes. This could be about the same amount that regular students make from the campus work/study jobs that athletes are prohibited from having. This would cost the NCAA about $140 million a year or about 25 percent of their CBS Sports contract.

Even the United States Olympic Committee has acknowledged the reality of todays lucrative sports market and established a system of compensation for athletes representing our country. It is time to acknowledge that student athletes have become employees for universities, and they should be compensated more equitably than current NCAA guidelines allow. Sticking to current rigid rules toward college athletes will simply cause more cheating and make a lot of good kids look like bad ones for trying to take care of themselves.

It is time for NCAA to pay for play, Stop the hypocrisy and do what is right. Give the college athletes their dues. Show them the money!

Cite this page