Should College Athletes Be Paid?

The student athletes at most universities can be compared to employees, yet receiving no wages (Cooper 12). Along with time in the classroom and being a full-time student, athletes are expected to spend just as much time on their respective sport. In an article “Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid,” Dave Anderson explains that a college athlete spends just over 43 hours a week devoted to their sport. Those hours are spent with mandatory lifting workouts, conditioning workouts, watching film, position meetings, and practice. As I stated earlier, all this time that is spent on their sport is in addition to the time spent in the classroom with homework and studying. All of that added up well surpasses the time of the average work week at 40 hours and these athletes can quite honestly be looked at as workers for their universities.

college athletes are rewarded with and the actual revenues the NCAA is collecting. For this discrepancy college athletes need to be rewarded for their effort and should be given stipends. Television broadcasting contracts, shoe and apparel deals, and commercial advertising rake in billions of dollars for the NCAA because of the participation of college students in sports. Last year alone, the NCAA’s total revenue was $777 million. Although the NCAA claims that 98 cents to every dollar is redistributed back into schools athletic programs for things like student services for athletes and

The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) makes over $871 million dollars a year on college athletics. Some studies estimate as much as one billion dollars each year. A college university can make anywhere from several million dollars up to $120 million from their athletic programs. A college athlete gets paid nothing and yet a majority of their time and schedule is dictated by the sport they play. In the book Student Athlete’s Guide to College, author Hillary Abramson says, “If you’ve gotten to the college athletic level, you 're accustomed to making sacrifices to benefit your athletic career. In college these sacrifices only get harder.” (Abramson 8). In Dominic Alessi’s 5 Reasons Why NCAA Athletes Should be Paid, he points out that student athletes schedules are much harder than regular students schedules. “By late afternoon they have already put in a 10 hour work day.” (Alessi). Even though they are considered student athletes, the NCAA actually has rules which allow the athletes to miss class in order to fulfill their team obligations. College athletes should be paid because they spend a majority of their time with their sport, many colleges in the NCAA make a large amount of income from the sports programs, and it would help many athletes learn to be financially stable and help them in the real world as only a small fraction of college athletes turn professional and make a career

College athletes deserve compensation because of the money they make for the NCAA. The market for college sports is extensive and has shown tremendous growth over the past years. Mainly derived from Division I men’s basketball and football, according to economist Maxwell Strachan, the NCAA generated over $989 million in revenue in the most recent financial year and is projected to

College athletes dedicate a large chunk of their time into practicing and playing games for the team that they play on. They do not have the

Every athlete has experienced winning and losing, and most can tell you that money is the last thing on their mind after a win. “About two percent of high school athletes are awarded athletic scholarships to compete in college” (NCAA, 2011). Common sense tells people that it is a privilege to get to play at the collegiate level as well as to be awarded an athletic scholarship. Being given such an opportunity should not be taken for granted. College athletics are driven by passion and desire to succeed, through research this paper will address a lot of different issues, from if college athletes should be paid and why, as well as the consequences of them being paid for everybody

College athletes receive many benefits while playing for the school of their choice. The endorsements for playing a division 1 college sport is obscene. The college athletes receive many compensations for playing a college sport including free tuition, textbooks, housing, and meal plans. Therefore college athletes should not be paid a salary for playing a sport.

Imagine if you were told that you had to work 43.5 hours a week, but you were not being paid for the work by your company or business. Would anyone be okay with that? Even if they love what they do, nobody would want to work that long for free. That is exactly what college athletes are being held asked to do. An investigation following a lawsuit by two former University of North Carolina students uncovered that most student athletes spend more than 40 hours per week in practice, the weight room or training room of their facility (Jacobs). Add on to those hours the hours of playing time, and it seems clear that student athletes deserve to be paid to play.

Participating in athletics is essentially a job for college athletes. These athletes spend countless hours on the practice field, studying film, working out, as well as traveling for games. Robert McCormick who was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board said “There are more demands put on these young men than any employee of the university.” The athletes are under complete control by the coaches and must follow what they demand from them. The physical demands that are placed upon the athletes should also make what they do be considered a job. The athletes must work out and practice to become better players as well as perform well in games. Those athletes who earn a scholarship can lose them at any point in time. Scholarships are given on a yearly basis so athletes must work to keep their scholarship

Whether you are on a college campus or listening to a sports talk radio show, the question of should college athletes be paid seems to have been discussed forever. One of the major arguments for paying student athletes is that the colleges use the athletes to generate revenue for the college. “There are also those that argue that athletes should be paid for the hours that they often put in their respective sports and classrooms” (Jung, 2013).

Most college athletes spend most of their time practicing or studying. College students sometimes have to get jobs to help them pay for school, or to even help them live on their own. College athletes, however, don’t have time to get a job because they are either studying or practicing. On top of going to class, the students also have to have time to do homework and attend group sessions.

“The Chronicle of Higher Education recently estimated that college athletics is a $10-billion marketplace” (Suggs). With huge sums of revenue generated from college sports teams, players for the successful teams appear to be very marketable. “The National Collegiate Athletic Association, the largest collegiate sports organization in the United States, oversees much of the business of American college sports. For 2011-12, the NCAA reported $871.6 million in revenue-- 81 percent of which came from a broadcast rights agreement with Turner/CBS Sports. Another 11 percent came from sponsoring championships, such as the annual March Madness basketball tournament. No college sport generates more money every year than football. In 2012, Business Insider reported that the University of Texas ' football program generated more than $95 million the previous season, the most of any college in the United States. These revenues come largely from broadcast rights, ticket sales and merchandising” (Morgan). With all the grand amounts of money dealt and discussed through college athletics, student athletes being to wonder if they should be paid or not.

Major athletic programs at universities are content with their “student-athletes” spending more time in the gym or on the field than in the classroom or hitting books because success in athletic competition is what makes these institutions money. Anything or anyone that wants to be the best in their respective area takes time spent working on that goal. You can only get better through repetition and committing to the different skills needed to get better. That is why the best athletes are the ones who spend the most time in the gym and on the field outside of practice. Athletic programs use as much time as they can to get the best out of their players. These are student-athletes which means outside of football they have the responsibilities of a student as well. Which leaves no time for the athletes to obtain a job and work the hours needed to receive pay. On campus jobs for students average a pay of slightly over minimum wage, and generally feature a cap of 20 hours a week. Student-athletes often spend more than that amount of time in practice and training. How do you know this???There is not enough time in the day for athletes to complete all these tasks. Let alone the fact that the players need mental and physical rest to be able to maintain it all. From practices to dealing with school then having a job all takes a toll on these

They’re still there to obtain an education to work at a future career. It would be inequitable to the student body if athletes were waged while they spend years in school studying late at night. Most students, not e having a scholarship while the majority of college athletes do. There are more essential careers than a professional athlete. Medical students and engineers are crucial in our world today. The betterment of our nation is more important than entertainment. Everyone has a choice of what they desire to study and work at in college. With that said, athletes choose if they want to play a sport in college, it is not mandatory.

The line between college and professional sports continues to blur where college sports now acts like the minor leagues for professional organizations like the NBA and the NFL. But unlike the minor leagues where players are paid to play in their respective sport, players or student-athletes in the NCAA receive $0 for playing for their school. They do however receive scholarships, some being worth up to $60,000 to pay for tuition and room and board. These athletes are able to obtain a free education through these scholarships but it is not enough. Two of the biggest sports in college athletics, football and men’s basketball, earn millions of dollars in revenue for schools around the country and for the NCAA, yet these athletes do not see one penny of it. The top coaches in these sports earn seven figure salaries with six figure bonuses depending on how well they do in the post season but the players that are generating the money are not being compensated for their efforts.