Essay: Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

2007 Words9 Pages

Imagine earning a football scholarship from a large, in-state university. It’s the first day of school and you’re excited for the season to start. Weeks pass, practices go by, and you notice that you’ve been working harder than most college students, juggling classes, practices and workouts, and a minimum wage job to be able to eat and buy necessary items. You find yourself struggling to keep your grades up because practices and your job are taking up time you could be using to study and prepare for some tests. Barely holding on, you finish your first year with low grades and a great season. The hours taken up by the job had brought you close to losing your scholarship, which is only paying for your tuition, and your busy schedule keeps building up, making your college life more …show more content…

According to USA Today College’s article on this issue, they stated, “First, who pays the athletes? The school, the conference, or the NCAA itself? Second, since most college athletics programs don’t generate money, who deserves to be paid? Each individual athlete, or just the ones who bring in the dough? What about the schools who don’t have big money-making programs? Should they be subsidized or not? If an athlete can go to a big name school and be paid, why would they ever consider going to a smaller school where they can get a better education? Would ‘The U’ be able to keep up with the demands of student-athletes?” (USA Today) With this argument, the main point which is being explained is the source where the money would come from to pay the athletes. There are many sources, such as the NCAA and the school itself, which can help the students out. Since the NCAA makes about one billion dollars a year, and college sports, in general, makes 12 billion, there’s plenty that the association can do to supplement these student