Essay on Paying College Athletes

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) makes roughly $1 billion in income annually and the athletes do not receive any of it. This topic has been debated for many years and is still being debated. The debate dates back to the 1980s and now athletes are demanding that they deserve to be paid since profits are made off of them. Some athletes such as former and current basketball and football players came together with lawsuits to federal courts asking for rewards from profits NCAA makes gets of them. Research has opened several different opinions on this matter. There are many pros and cons for paying college athletes. College sports provide a huge source of the university’s income. The athletes, however, receive their scholarship

Without the sport, you have no money coming in. You simplify it to no players = no money. This model also takes into account the fact that college sports are completely different now than they were when the NCAA was founded over 100 years ago. Economically, the decision by universities to not pay players is a genius method of exploitation. Let’s take the University of Texas for example. Currently, a nonresident business major pays a little less than $17,000 dollars. A Texas resident for the same major pays a little more than $5,000. A four-year degree would cost less than $70,000 and $20,000 respectively. These are the 2009-2010 statistics which is the same year the Longhorns football team went to the BCS National Championship game. The very same year the reported revenue from the football team alone was 69 million dollars. Out of the 120 players on the team only 8 were from out of state. That means (assuming 100% of the players have a full scholarship) that the school paid $736,000 for scholarships. What this means is that because of the football teams success, over 68 million dollars was generated as pure profit because of the players hard work. After looking at the facts the idea that a scholarship is sufficient to reimburse the players is a pretentious one. If the universities whole goal is to ensure that the students get a proper education then the stipulations on the scholarships should be enough to refute that. If an underclassman student-athlete

College athletics have been incredibly profitable businesses for many years. With the advent of televised sporting events, the profit margin has increased exponentially. The Texas Longhorns’ football program alone grosses 104 million dollars annually (forbes.com). So, where is all that money going? Most of it goes right back to the school. The athletes who practice for endless hours and devote their lives to the sports get nothing but the satisfaction of winning. So, should Division One college athletes be paid? Division One athletes should be paid because they generate a significant amount of revenue for the school.

Have you ever heard of a business that made billions of dollars, yet did not pay their employees? Seems pretty remarkable doesn’t it? Well this business is known as the NCAA. According to an article in the New York Times, the NCAA made $770 million from just the three-week Men’s Basketball Tournament, but how much did the athletes who participated in said tournament receive? If you said zero then you would be correct. The athletes that poured their blood, sweat and tears into practice everyday and into the 30 plus game regular season did not see a dime. It is hard to fathom how an industry of

Even though an additional $2,000 a semester does not seem like a lot of money, for some smaller market colleges this extra expense may create problems. That is why I suggest either requiring the NCAA itself to provide the extra money to the players or allowing the players to make money off of jersey sales, autograph signings, etc. By potentially taking this financial burden away from the schools and transferring it the NCAA you avoid putting undo stress on smaller schools and instead ask the NCAA, a multi-billion dollar industry, to barely dip into their huge expanse of funding/profit. Furthermore, the NCAA itself is considered a non-profit organization so instead of hoarding the billions of dollars a year that it earns it should be giving money back to the student-athletes who have made the NCAA what it is today (SOURCE). Even though many schools would not be able to pay student athletes the extra scholarship money many larger schools could easily provide this additional scholarship money. For instance, some schools already pay their head football coaches millions of dollars a year. One specific example of this is Alabama Head Football coach Nick Saban. Saban makes six million dollars a year and also receives other

58 percent of people believe that college athletes should get paid to play compared to the 42 percent who think they should not get paid to play (Debate.org). This clashing of whether or not college athletes should get paid to play has been a hot topic throughout the nation for quite some time. Many believe that paying players will not help the players, but will cause more negative energy than positive. Of course all college athletes believe they should be paid because they are looking to make some type of profit for bringing in so much money into the school. Not only are they bringing in money for the school they are also creating a good image for the school and getting the schools name out there. Maybe even interest other young athletes

College athletes generate millions of dollars for their schools each year, yet they are not allowed to be compensated beyond a scholarship due to being considered amateurs. College athletes are some of the hardest working people in the nation, having to focus on both school courses and sports. Because athletics take so much time, these student-athletes are always busy. College football and basketball are multi-billion dollar businesses. The NCAA does not want to pay the athletes beyond scholarships, and it would be tough to work a new compensation program into the NCAA and university budgets. College athletes should be compensated in some form because they put in so much time and effort, generating huge amounts of revenue.

Colleges make a plethora of money off of the sports teams and the players do not see any of that money at all but if they do then

The issue of pay or no pay goes beyond athletic or academic scholarships. The money would be used for additional pay completely separate from the costs the school covers for the athlete already. Just as professional athletes receive a paycheck for the efforts they put in, so would student-athletes. The NCAA has opposed this idea since it came into existence. All officials of the Association believe that college sports should, “preserve the status of amateur athletics” (Mondello & Beckham, 2002), and

College athletes should be paid because the NCAA and the colleges that the athletes attend collect an extremely large amount of money from the athletes bringing in revenue. According to, Stephanie Boyd, the NCAA makes approximately $10.8 billion annually (9). The athletes are the number one reason the NCAA is a multi

Many people believe that college athletes should be paid for how much revenue they bring to their school. However, there are also people who think they should not get paid because they already have numerous advantages that other students do not have. Student-athletes at the Division 1 level that play men's basketball and football should not necessarily be paid a salary but should be able to make money off of their accomplishments, especially if we hold them on a high pedestal as we do now.

Here is a number for you, $814 million. That is the average amount of revenue the National Collegiate Athletic Association currently makes per year (Gerencer). How much are the NCAA athletes compensated for their hard work, sacrifices, and effort? That 's right, $0. NCAA events such as March Madness and the Football Championship Series (the college national championship), attract massive crowds, national TV coverage, and sold out venues. When is an athletic scholarship no longer enough to support and reward the athletes? Because division 1 athletics attract new students, excite alumni, and earn revenue for their schools and coaches, all without being able to secure a job, therefore, the athletes should be paid.

The bigger colleges with more money are the ones that need to be playing their players more money. Colleges can afford to pay their athletes, just not all colleges can afford to pay their athletes at the same price tag. Colleges could easily just take a percent of their money they made and split it up to distribute amongst their players based on stats and production. It could give them a little financial boost that could be very useful to players who don’t have time for jobs or don’t make it to the pros. Although this would be complicated, it definitely would not be

Another argument in the case for college athletes to be paid would be that the scholarships that are offered to athletes aren’t enough to cover the lost wages they would gain from working a job. Even though some athletes are offered full ride scholarships to great universities, they aren’t enough to pay their rent and other bills that they have. With athletes committing so much time for sports they do not have the time to get a job and pay for their bills and other things they need. This puts more strain on the athletes and can cause them to drop out of their respective sports and when that happens they ultimately lose their scholarships. College athletics are more demanding than a full-time job should pay their athletes for their services provided to the university they play for. The wages lost by athletes at universities are even greater than those working typical eight-hour days. Since athletes, football in particular, commit an immense amount of time to their sports they could be obtaining a wage far greater than the amount of the scholarship they obtained for attending and participating in sports at a university. Another point to be made would be that only a small portion of the people associated with college athletics receive full scholarships. This means that not only are athletes committing so much time and effort for sports, they must pay out of pocket for the portion that their respective

Since 1957, student athletes have been given scholarships to further their career in the sport that they excel in. During the late 1970’s, college basketball became more popular and more profitable. ("Paying College Athletes"). The controversy surrounding student athletes revolves around financial compensation specifically concerning the position that college student athletes should either be paid, not paid, or paid via scholarship.