Analysis: Why College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

An adult goes to work in the morning, usually receiving motivation to get through the day from the thought of getting paid at the end of the month. College athletes, however, go to practice every day, knowing they will get paid nothing. Everyone expects them to play for the fun of the game, but in our capitalistic world today, is that really enough? Even though college athletes are considered amateur student athletes and colleges might have a few problems with money, college athletes should be paid because they earn the colleges billions of dollars, others profit off of them, and students need the money to survive. College sports, specifically men’s football and basketball, make billions of dollars for colleges. Players help universities

They reason that paying college athletes would make a mockery of their education, meaning the athletes would only focus on sports and not on schoolwork. Academic work, however, is already secondary for most collegiate athletes (Gregory). In addition, one should think twice about even considering these athletes to be amateurs. Generally, players and coaches in amateur sports are unpaid or the coach is paid modestly. With college coaches’ paychecks amounting to over a million dollars in some cases, it is obvious that this “modest pay” does not apply to college athletics. Also, in amateur sports, players do not spend a great deal of time practicing because they are playing for fun, participating in simple, friendly competition, or they have work or school full time (Furth). Even though college players too have school full time in addition to their sport, they can spend anywhere from forty to sixty hours a week on football related activities (Simpson). One could not say all athletes are just playing for the love of the game with a higher goal of getting a degree either. If a star receiver would decide to focus on academics and cut back on football practice, the coach would drop him from the team and he would lose his scholarship (Furth). In this way, collegiate athletes are not