College athletes undertake quite the journey the instant they make the decision to dive into that pool, shoot that winning goal, or fulfill whatever their heart desires. These talented athletes have to manage their academic life, their personal life, and their athletic life all at once, which can prove to be a fairly difficult task, and considering that the only financial benefits they receive from it are scholarships, its understandable why some might be a bit disgruntled that they are not paid directly. However, paying college athletes is in no way a good idea, as this could lead them to neglect their academic life, and even take a major chunk out of an entire college's funding.
If colleges started paying their athletes, it could cause them
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According to statistics, Division 1 basketball players are worth "about $170,000 or more per year to the schools they attend because of the money their sport earns" (Source 2, paragraph 14). This clearly shows that college athletics are a major player in overall college funding, and that just the elimination of this source of funding to a college will have extremely detrimental effects, let alone spending funds to pay the players a portion of that amount. Additionally, this can be further elaborated on with the consideration of an excerpt from Source 3, paragraph 23, in which it states that at the moment, basketball and football are the only two sports that have the potential to generate income for a college, and consequently, "smaller colleges that do not have basketball or football teams would have no money to pay their athletes in other sports" and that colleges "would be forced to cut other sports" because of this. This is most definitely not ideal for any college, as the cutting of athletics would not be beneficial to the student population or the institution itself, since this consequence would decrease the amount of diversity in athletic options students have, overemphasize football and basketball programs, and even act as a detriment to future applicants for the college because of this. Yet, in spite of this, some criticize this viewpoint, and argue that the financial gain from paid athletes representing other sports, such as gymnastics could allow for representation, which would, in theory, allow the students to advocate for their sport and maintain funding for it. However, this argument is flawed, as there are limits to a college institution's funding, and these limits would eventually overrule a student body trying to maintain funding for their sport, since the college would inevitably be pressured to generate more income through some way in