Summary: College Athletes Should Be Paid

In the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) there is one major question that surrounds the athletes as well as the administration of the organization. Should athletes receive compensation for their duties as college athletes? For the past decade it has been said that the NCAA athletes are the “work horse” for bringing in the majority of the money and recognition to college athletic departments. If these individuals do happen to take money from anyone in return for their athletic participation they can be severely punish even as far as getting expelled from the team and getting their scholarship revoked. These athletes feel as though they should be reimbursed for the sport memorabilia being sold on their behalf. Many of these athletes

Well, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary an amateur is “a person who does something poorly: a person who is not skillful at a job or other activity”. These athletes are far from an amateur by these standards. They are hand chosen from high school, given a scholarship worth thousands of dollars all because they don’t have any skills? If these athletes played so poorly than they wouldn’t be able to bring in the billions of dollars that they do annually and no college would pay so much money to bring them there. The college athletics departments have many of the same resources that pro teams do. For example, they have their own television network (SEC) just like the pros have ESPN. College athletes also have playoff competitions just like pro athletes (Ramey). These playoff games generate mass amounts of money and bring in a crowd of thousands if not millions of fans; far from amateur status. So, if these athletes don’t really fit under the amateur bracket what is stopping them from getting

This term is abused to the fullest extent when it comes to the issue of athletes getting paid. The NCAA’s major debate is that these athletes are given a free education in return for their participation in sports. They also claim that as a student athlete, student comes first. While students are in school they spend the majority of their time practicing, watching film, playing games, preparing for games, working out and participation in other sports related events. In all reality students spend the least of their time working towards their education and the majority of it is spent dealing with athletics. Players do not take their education serious because they were not recruited to worry about school they were recruited to play sports. Cardale Jones, Quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes tweeted, "Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS." (Ramey). A major issue following the student athlete debate is that universities have a tendency to falsify classes and work to give the players better grades when in all actuality they aren’t even doing half of what they are supposed to. Many at major collegiate programs never get a degree, the NCAA's own statistics show. Former players who did graduate may be less inclined to think they were "employee-athletes”. (Cooper) They never receive these degrees because they