Why College Student Athletes Should Be Paid

Plus, some colleges offer easier courses to athletes, meaning their education

First, some say that college athletes should be paid because of the fact that the schools and the NCAA make billions. In an article from USA Today, it stated: “NCAA made more than $1 billion for the year” (Mama). On the other hand, they should not be paid because tons of the athletes get scholarships, they are rewarded with a free education, and they are technically getting around twenty-thousand dollars a year. First, in an article from Scholorshipstats.com in statistics from 2015 regarding the amount of scholarship money that was given out was nearly 2.2 billion dollars.

With all that comes with being a college athlete, it should be a requirement for them to get paid. Cultural interaction is represented in the U.S through college athletes. These athletes dedicate majority of their time during the day to either practicing or getting prepared to play in the next game. In the article “Here’s the Insane Amount of Time Student Athletes Spend on Practice”, it talks about how much time on an average that student athletes spend during practice. Author Peter Jacobs says that “Collegiate student-athletes may spend more than 40 hours a week practicing, leaving little time to keep up with academic commitments,

People claim that if these students have to work on their game all the time, then they deserve a reward. On average, college students spend 10 hours a week in class and 4 hours of studying for each class, so that means students spend 90 hours a week between class and sports(“Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid.”). If these kids work so much and take so much time to focus on their game, how are they going to finish their homework and study for tests. But that is what these kids signed up for when they committed themselves to a college to play a sport. During interviews when deciding to go to that college, coaches tell you that you will be doing that sport day in and day out and there will be little time for extracurricular activities.

College Athletes should not be paid to play because the scholarship they are receiving is enough. (Dayton Daily News) College Athletes are not professional this is not their career .(Dayton Daily News) The statements are all very true but the college athletes are practicing the same amount of time as the professionals but they aren't getting paid anything for their hard work and dedication. College Athletes are the main ones that are on a trip out of town for tournaments, ect. So that means that they need traveling,eating,and extra expenses for their journey

Being an athlete is hard enough but when you add the “student” it gets twice as difficult that’s why they need extra money so they don’t need a separate job and have more time for school.

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 ).

College athletes have similar practice schedules similar to a full-time job. The NCAA makes lots of money off hardworking student-athletes, and should pay them. Coaches and executives get lots of money from the hard work of student-athletes. Most of the money the NCAA makes goes to colleges which use that money to pay their coaches and give their students barely enough for tuition, Text 1 states,”Head football coaches at the 44 NCAA Bowl Championship Series Schools received on average $2.1 million in salaries”(text 1

The amount of time and dedication an athlete puts in is enormous, In the Time Cover Story: It’s time to pay College Athletes, Richard Samuel states, “In the fall we would spend way more time on sports than academics”(Samuel3). College athletes spend forty hours per week on their sport, easily. They spend more time on their sport than any other thing. These athletes are essentially working full-time jobs in their sport while going to school, they deserve to be paid more than a scholarship.

College athletes have a very busy schedule 24/7, they wake up and workout then go to school all day then in the afternoon they have practice until very late hours of the night and have to wake up and redo it all over again the next day. These guys spend so much time doing sports and school they don’t have enough time to get a job to buy food or other things that they

Every year, millions of people sit down and watch college athletes play the sport they love. These players are some of the best in the nation, and even the world. They do their jobs on the court or field, while their schools rack up the money. These players practice almost two times every day, go to class, and at the end of the day still have homework. An average student athlete spends about forty hours a week on athletics (Jacobs).

(Attention Getter) What if I told you that for decades, students have worked over 40 hours a week and received absolutely no pay. College athletes are expected to balance the immense workload of school work and represent their school well in athletics.

The NCAA even has rules on the progress that college athletes should be making towards earning a degree. These requirements are set to help universities push athletes to make a decision on the major that they want to choose. This also requires athletes to stay on track to graduate. According to Patrick James Rishe, the percent of college athletes that graduate is actually higher than that of regular students, but for athletes, their education is usually paid for, unlike regular students (409). With all this in place, it should be easy for college athletes to stay on track, earn a degree, and then join the workforce, right? But with long bus rides and hours dedicated towards practice, most athletes have to back down on the number of credits that they take during their season. This can slow down the time that it takes to graduate, but athletes must still stay within the guidelines to graduate. So athletes take classes in the summer, and most athletic programs have summer sessions to help athletes improve in between seasons. Most of an athlete’s time in college is dedicated to succeeding in their sport. Imagine traveling to Maryland for a game, and you have to leave a day early to be able to have a shootaround, and you can’t leave right after a game. So you miss at least three days if not more, and missing

The student athletes at most universities can be compared to employees, yet receiving no wages (Cooper 12). Along with time in the classroom and being a full-time student, athletes are expected to spend just as much time on their respective sport. In an article “Top 10 Reasons College Athletes Should Be Paid,” Dave Anderson explains that a college athlete spends just over 43 hours a week devoted to their sport. Those hours are spent with mandatory lifting workouts, conditioning workouts, watching film, position meetings, and practice. As I stated earlier, all this time that is spent on their sport is in addition to the time spent in the classroom with homework and studying. All of that added up well surpasses the time of the average work week at 40 hours and these athletes can quite honestly be looked at as workers for their universities.

A. On average, College Athletes spend at least 30 hours a week practicing, with many spending more than 40 hours a week at practice alone. Although, the NCAA is supposed to have a rule that limits practice to 20 hours a week in-season, many athletes have reported that it isn’t enforced.