College Athletes Should Be Paid

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The issue of whether we should pay college athletes or not has been widely debated in our community recently. It is important to many athletes as they struggle through their college years in socio economic battle in pursuit of graduating in four years. A variety of reasons have been put forward in this regard. College athletes must be paid because ncaa makes money, so should players, players need to make money when young as career is too small and most of all, they give up their bodies to playing careers. NCAA and its most popular teams, the schools, the coaches and even the staff make a lot of money, hence there players should also be allowed to make money. One basic question is whether NCAA can afford to pay athletes. There is clear evidence…show more content…
Rules that govern when to fund for all the four years in college are many. And there are many reasons why an athlete may not meet those criteria during those four years in college. Student-athletes land on a team where they don’t mesh very well personally with the coach leading to many small conflicts turning eventually into bigger problems with playing time and attitude. This affects their academic performance and playing time to indirectly affect scholarship. Many athletes don’t take their college education seriously in hopes of making a professional team in the future. They are not student-athletes, but just mere athletes who are inconvenienced by going to classes. An article by Nick Robinson, states that athletes have lower grades than non-athletes (Robinson). Also, not all majors are for all. If an athlete is in an engineering, chemistry or physics program, that demands time in classes and labs, they can fall back in academics due to sports involvement. So choosing a wrong major as an athlete can drop their four year scholarship chances. According to an article by Mark Dent, Michael Sanserino and Sam Werner, students who took tougher majors struggled to be athletes and had to shift majors to a less demanding one (Dent). Once their academic performance drops below a minimum requirement, there scholarships amount also fluctuates. The…show more content…
Injuries make athletes unhappy and many end up not focussing on studies even though they have added free time, and do nothing. Per Matthew Green, the players could potentially lose their scholarship if they are injured as these scholarships are evaluated yearly (Green). It’s very expensive to pay the insurance bills, when college athletes get injured. It’s often a debate as to who covers the bill. Often times colleges do not provide health insurance for these athletes, resulting in huge bills. According to Mark Emmert, NCAA requires athletes to have their own medical insurance, which means the cost is covered by the players or their parents (Emmert). The injuries could put potential long term health risks on student athletes, thereby rendering them unable to work to earn a decent living. Jim Ritter, mentions in his article (Ritter), that medical sports medicine physician, Dr Pietro Tonino, warns that “College athletes are putting themselves at risk for health problems that could persist long after they graduate”. Again, one could argue that once the student athletes graduate or make a professional team, their fortune is made. But there is still the 50-50 chance that they could very well be injured, which means paying them salary while they are student athletes is a fair thing to

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