College Athletes Should Be Paid

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Paying collegiate student-athletes has been an issue within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and has been discussed extensively over several years due to multiple factors. The time involved in college participation and competition does not allow athletes ample time to hold side jobs. Also, some proponents of payment for college athletes believe that they should be rewarded for their efforts, which, in many cases, generates income for the college/university. There are several arguments for and against the idea of paying athletes. Until recently, the NCAA placed a rule that stated collegiate athletes are not allowed to work during the academic year. However, that changed when members of the NCAA committee voted to allow athletes…show more content…
Paying college athletes may seem like a radical concept, the large profits made by successful, big-time sports programs, including high-profile coaches with endorsement contracts, are hard to overlook. The players are the ones that are working hard for the coaches and schools to earn them the contracts and the money they receive from final four and bowl bids. Many schools make a lot of money due to the participation of their athletes. Even Walter Byers, a defender of amateur principles during his 36 years as the NCAA’s executive director, has said that he favors athletic compensation. He said, “In the light of the hyper-commercialization of today’s college athletics, dramatic changes are necessary to permit athletes to participate in the enormous proceeds” (Lee,…show more content…
First of all, they believe the large sums of money earned through scholarships should be sufficient. In many cases, college athletes earn $20,000 a year in scholarship money alone (scholarshipstat.com, 2014). The idea of paying college athletes may cause many problems and questions. First, if athletes are paying for their efforts, it must be determined whether they will be paid on the basis of skill or not, and this may create a problem. Secondly, there will be questions about payment of athletes in major (revenue-producing) or minor (non-revenue-producing) sports: will they be paid the same? Will athletes participating in minor sports be paid at all? Next, it must be determined if paying athletes will use funds for equipment, facilities management, or other areas: what will suffer due to the use of funds paid to athletes? Other questions will be concerning the ability of these athletes to participate in certain activities that are now not allowed: could these athletes have agents and sign endorsement contracts? Finally, the most important issue that skeptics have about paying college athletes: if a school could not afford to pay the “going rate,” would it lose out on recruiting? This issue could eventually create a dilemma for those that are for paying student athletes. (Corrigan,

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