Student Athletes Should Not Be Paid

The controversy of deciding whether or not student-athletes should be paid for playing is one that has continued to keep the interest of people on both sides of the argument. Throughout this paper, I will prove that paying athletes is the fair way to go about this issue by briefly hitting the points of time managing, marketing, the changing times, and the opposing viewpoint on this topic and how it can be overlooked. Student-athletes should be paid beyond their full scholarship for the work, time, and effort that they have, do, and will continue to put in for the universities. [100 words]
Annotated Bibliography
Anderson, Dave. “Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Not Be Paid.” Top 10 Lists / Listland.Com, 17 Mar. 2016, www.listland.com/top-10-reasons-college-athletes-not-be-paid/.

In an article on Forbes titled, “21 Reasons Why Student Athletes are Employees and Should be Allowed to Unionize,” reason number eleven states, “When the NCAA was first founded in 1905, the opposition to paying student-athletes was akin to the opposition to paying coaches” (Edelman). Fact of the matter is that this is no longer the case. College “coaches today get paid, and handsomely too” (Edelman). If society has changed the way that they look at college sports now, realizing that to keep a winning coach at a university there must be some kind of incentive for them to want to stay. The athletes should have been done the same way. Paying them for their work that they offer day in and day out would be beneficial because they would feel like the hard work and effort that they have continued to put in is appreciated and that it is paying off. [183

As everyone is entitled to their own opinions, there are reasons that prove all of these disagreements should be overlooked. First, people may bring up the argument that paying college athletes could cause, “a number of complications” (Zimbalist). Yes, student-athletes would have a complete new, “introduction of a labor market” (Zimbalist), but Zimbalist also addresses the fact that, “today’s top college football and men’s basketball teams do exploit their star players.” That being said, it is completely unfair that players are treated that way. Another argument is that scholarships are the best option. Madison Martinez writes, “Those who opposed paying college student-athletes say scholarships are the best option.” These who oppose believe that going about it in another way would lead to other problems such as debt for the students. Martinez says that people who oppose this believe that, “Cash or a salary could be spent on wants rather than necessities, potentially leading the athletes into a debt they would not have with the benefit of a scholarship” (Martinez). Although this could be true, that is how life is going to be eventually so it is better that the student-athletes figure it out sooner than later on in life when they are completely on their own. [222