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Summary: Should College Athletes Get Paid

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Do college athletes get taken advantage of by colleges and universities? Do you think that student athletes deserve to receive payment? In the past, college athletic programs’ main purpose was to provide a way for amateur athletes to gain exposure and to get recruited to a professional team. Today, with how popular the sports industry has become many question if these athletes should still be considered amateurs. This change leads to the question of whether or not college athletes should receive compensation, in addition to their scholarships, for their participation in sports. This topic has become more prevalent recently because of the shift in the landscape of modern day college athletics. As a result, the NCAA has been contemplating changing …show more content…

In our current society, the industry of college sports has grown and become more prominent. People spend their money not only on tickets to attend the games of their favorite teams but also on the apparel and gear to support them. Carey Hughley, a professor at North Carolina Central University, comments, “athletics is an auxiliary enterprise whose product is commercial entertainment” (11). Society’s interest in the sports entertainment industry results in an increase in revenue for these athletic programs. Since, these programs are generating millions of dollars a year they should be able to pay the athletes that they are profiting off of. Even after the money for scholarships in taken out of the total profit, these programs are still making a substantial amount of money. In the book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, James Shulman and William Bowen examine the effects that intercollegiate sports have on the college campus, the students, and the athletes. It is inferred from the statistical results of a graph provided in Shulman and Bowen’s book that the athletic department at Division I university such as Duke University has made as much as fifteen million dollars in one year (Shulman and Bowden 232). The graph also shows that it only costs about 3 million to pay the scholarships of all of the athletes (Shulman and Bowden …show more content…

These Division I sports teams are receiving a lot of publicity and a lot of money from companies to wear their brand. Vanderford states, “Nike pays Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo $400,000 a year under a shoe and apparel contract. In sum, major college football and basketball can hardly be considered amateur athletics” (806). Since these teams are being given money to wear a certain brand, the players are being treated more like professionals then they are amateurs. Overall, it can be concluded that since athletes are treated like professionals with their endorsement deals, athletes can no longer be considered amateurs and deserve to receive compensation for their participation on a sports

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