Persuasive Essay On Paying College Athletes

Collegiate sports have turned into a billion dollar industry and are probably just as popular, if not more popular than professional sports. College athletes put their bodies on the line to play a sport they love, many with hopes and dreams to one day make it to the professional leagues. Athletic facilities are the major money makers for all universities. Colleges bring in billions of dollars in revenue annually, yet athletes do not get paid. Some fans believe athletes should not get paid due to their sports level being “amateurish.”; however, this is far from the truth. There is much more to being a college athlete than just practicing and playing games. These student-athletes must practice, weight lift, go to meetings, travel, go to tutoring and study groups, all the while maintaining sufficient grades. This is very tedious work and is very time consuming. College athletes have a high standard to live up to (Frederick Web; Huma Web; Patterson Web ).

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) makes roughly $1 billion in income annually and the athletes do not receive any of it. This topic has been debated for many years and is still being debated. The debate dates back to the 1980s and now athletes are demanding that they deserve to be paid since profits are made off of them. Some athletes such as former and current basketball and football players came together with lawsuits to federal courts asking for rewards from profits NCAA makes gets of them. Research has opened several different opinions on this matter. There are many pros and cons for paying college athletes. College sports provide a huge source of the university’s income. The athletes, however, receive their scholarship

In his article “The Shame of College Sports,” Taylor Branch (2011) describes how universities are focused on advancing and receiving money from major athletics and having star athletes, but how the universities are not caring for the “student athlete.” The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has made college sports into an unmerited business. However, as years progress more athletes are getting smart and are taking the NCAA to court. The more students that challenges the rules by the NCAA and take them to court, the secrets and undermining values of the NCAA come out and the closer the NCAA comes to an end.

College sports are one of the largest and fastest growing markets in today’s culture. With some college sports games attracting more viewers than their professional counterparts, the NCAA is one of the most profiting organizations in America. Recently there has been controversy in the world of college sports as to whether the college athletes that are making their universities and the NCAA money should receive payment while they are playing their respective sport. Many believe that these athletes should be paid. Others argue that they are already receiving numerous benefits for playing that sport from their universities. Many of the proponents of paying college athletes are current or former college athletes who believe their hard work and hours put into practice and competing go under appreciated. They feel that while the athletes are making the university money, the athletes do not receive any cut of these profits. Opponents feel that athletes already receive numerous perks and should not receive extra compensation on top of the perks they already receive.

NCAA, short for National Collegiate Athletic Association, is a “non-profit” organization which over watch all the athletic related activities on college level. In the early 20th century, President Roosevelt created NCAA because he wanted to insured college athletes from injuries and even deaths. Despite the original purpose of the NCAA is not about money, it has become one of the most lucrative companies in the USA. According to Taylor Branch, “big-time college sports are fully commercialized. Billions of dollars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young athletes” (Branch). Besides the tremendous fortune these college athletes made for the NCAA, it is also a vital source for university entertainment, enrollment, and money. Although these athletes generate great fortune and put up great shows for society, they do not receive proper pay back. To balance the current unfair compensation system to the athletes, in addition to free tuition, college athletes should be treated as workers in a business market system and paid depending on their own performance.

As for myself being a college football player, I know what it is like to struggle with income in college and not having money to pay for certain/basic needs of the college life. Stating this, being a football player and attending school enrolled as a full time student as well, we are basically putting forty-plus hours of work every week. By putting so much time and effort into the love that we have for this game, we cannot possibly find time to get a minimum wage job to help pay for the necessities of college life. I haven't even mentioned the traveling factor that we go through, that’s another stressor of being a college athlete. “Because of the amount of hours we put in and the dedication we have to our sports, a lot of us don’t have enough time to go out and get a job like normal students do. I know we are not professionals, but we have expenses to worry about and don’t have the same amount of time or opportunities to make money

Athletes are giving it there all both on the field and in the classroom. College athletes are brought to the school on scholarships to play sports. These athletes are giving it there all going back and forth from classes, to the weight room, to studying, and to practices. But they mostly spend a lot of time practicing rather than going to classes. ““These young men are laboring under very strict and arduous conditions, so they really are laborers in terms of the physical demands on them while there also trying to go to school and being required to go to school.” Says Robert McCormick (2011, Kenneth J. Cooper). What Robert means is that these students have a huge amount of work load on them while also being required to go to school at the same time. These athletes aren’t like every other students. Even before the school year starts, athletes have to come to schools weeks early. Having a summer off is what normal college students have

With the universities pulling in more than twelve billion dollars, the rate of growth for college athletics surpasses companies like McDonalds and Chevron (Finkel, 2013). The athletes claim they are making all the money, but do not see a dime of this revenue. The age-old notion that the collegiate athletes are amateurs and students, binds them into not being paid by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This pay for play discussion has been talked about since the early 1900s but recently large steps are being made to actually make a change. There are many perspectives on the payment of collegiate student athletes coming from the NCAA, the athletes themselves, and the university officials.

An issue that has been a well-known topic of conversation recently is the subject of college athletes getting paid or not. This issue has been circulating amongst sports fans throughout the country. Everyone from the fans, players, parents, and media groups all have opinions on this matter. Over the past ten years college athletics has gained an enormous amount of popularity and income from American audiences. As a result of this, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been debating about collegiate athletes getting paid for their participation and I am going to discuss the reasons for why people are for it and why people are against it. The real questions most people are wondering is: Is it ethically right to pay college

The NCAA started back in March 31, 1906 and hasn’t even paid no athlete since. The net worth of the NCAA in 2014 was 989 million. All the money made is being kept for the NCAA who just organize the events but doesn’t entrain the fans. The president of the NCAA said “Paying Athletes would destroy college sports” this why they don’t pay the athletes. Also the president for himself he make 1.6 million a year. As well the only athletes that would get paid would be division 1

During the 2014 fiscal year, the NCAA, also known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, had total revenue of nearly $1 Billion. How much of that went to the 460,000 NCAA student-athletes, you may ask? Zero dollars and zero cents. The debate on whether or not student-athletes should be paid, specifically college football players, continues to grow. With this, it becomes increasingly more difficult to deny the fact that college sports are a multi-billion industry and coaches are being paid out multi-million dollar contracts over several years as a result of whether or not their players succeed on the field.

In the last few decades a crucial question raised around collegiate athletics and the student athletes who compete within the NCAA. Some argue that college athletes should be paid because of how valuable they are to their school, and because of how hard they work to manage both their sport and school work. However, others believe college athletes don’t deserve payment because of the many benefits they already receive due to playing sports. Therefore, supporters of paying college athletes say they deserve compensation due to their dedication and amount of revenue they bring to their universities; yet, the opposite side argues athletes already enjoy many luxuries along with their scholarships that other college students do not receive.

Many athletes spend lots of hours dedicated to their sport of choice. They do this by practicing in their free time, team practice, team meetings, and traveling. Then, they have to study for their classes. This to me is like working a full time job with a heavy load ofn classes you have to attend to and do well. Dave Anderson stated, “College athletes spend an average of 43.3 hours per week dedicated to their sport” (Anderson 1). Also, Anderson stated, “This means that college athletes have to work 90 hours per week just to remain in school on their scholarship. This is the equivalent to working two full time jobs with a side job on the weekends just to pay their bills” (Anderson 2). Sports can put a lot of stress on a student’s school work achievement goals. People should know that college for student athletes demands a lot out of them and basically drains them physically as well as mentally. This is based on all the time they spend on sports and

Is an athletic scholarship really enough of a “payment” to reimburse athletes for the billions of dollars made by the NCAA every year? This issue of paying collegiate athletes, especially football and basketball players, has been around for many years. Athletes, students, bystanders, and NCAA analysts and authority figures have a strong opinion about paying college athletes. Whether college athletes should be paid or not is a debate topic that is more prevalent today than ever.

In my previous essay, I chose to address one of the biggest debates in collegiate sports; should college athletes be paid. For decades now school administers, alumni, boosters, and student athletes have been torn between the two sides, and I, for one, am in agreement with the idea of student athletes be compensated financially for all their time and dedication to their respectable sport. As you can imagine, there are many who oppose the idea, but as I stated in my previous essay there are great benefits for allowing student-athletes to be compensated. However, this is easier said than done. Deriving to a solution that fairly compensates all student athletes on every level of competition is no small feat, and will possibly take a few years of deliberation before actually being implemented. In this essay, I will make attempt in providing solutions on how student athlete can be compensated for their hard work. My proposal will include what actions need to be done first, and by whom could assist in the issue. Along with my resolutions, I will provide financial statistics to give support to my proposal and the realness of how compensating college athletes can actually be made possible.