Essay Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

1146 Words5 Pages

Imagine being told that you are getting a full-ride four year scholarship to play a sport at a college. You attend this school for two years. Your junior year you do not do too well on the court / field. You are called in to your coach's office. Who tells you that because of this your scholarship will not be renewed. You now have no way to pay for your senior year of college. This is what happens to more college athletes than you think. Paying college athletes has been a big debate topic in the sports world for a long time and doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon. Vanderbilt University's professor of economics John Siegfried says, “The incentives to overuse players and the stark disparity between coaches and players will remain.” (Entman). College athletes should be paid because they bring the National Collegiate Athletic Association money, it is a full time job, their scholarships are not guaranteed, and it just makes economic sense.
College athletes are …show more content…

How they perform on the court/field is. Athletes are offered a four year scholarship by recruiters. However, this is not allowed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Athletes scholarships have to be renewed every year (National College Players Association 71-74). Therefore, a coach can cancel a players scholarship after a year if they do not think the student is playing well enough. They can so this no matter how well the player is doing academically (Blackistone 57-61). The National Collegiate Athletic Association has even admitted that a “Full-ride” scholarship is not enough to cover the necessities of a student athlete (National College Players Association 71-74). Not only can the scholarship be canceled for poor performance on the field; it can also be canceled if the player is injured and can no longer play (Deutsch). To sum up, athletes are treated more like employees who can be fired at any time rather than a student