Should College Athletes Be Paid Essay Example

Have you ever wondered if college athletes should be paid to play sports in college? In this essay, there will be people supporting this cause that has gone on for too long, while there will be people who are against this. Even professional sports players are now coming about as they dealt with this issue when they were in college. As well as sports reporters giving their own opinion about this situation that has crossed our minds plenty of times. College athletes should be paid because they put many hours of hard work into the game they play, but they shouldn’t be paid because it throws the whole fun out of playing sports in college and they are also students before athletes. 

College athletes who should be paid because they might not have money and come from harsh backgrounds and also the NCAA is making massive amounts of money off of them and they have not earned any and they can’t advertise themselves. It is hard for a college athlete, even with scholarships, they still need to be able to keep with their diet, as well as pay for their dorm rooms and apartments they own. Kareem Abdul Jabbar,a former professional basketball player in the NBA, writes an article about student athletes who are not getting paid, and got a quote from a current NBA player, Shabazz Napier.  “Portland Trailblazer Shabazz Napier described his experience as a college point guard in 2014 that was eerily, and sadly, so close to mine: "We do have hungry nights that we don't have enough money to get food in. … Sometimes, there's hungry nights where I'm not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities." The only thing that has significantly changed is that the NCAA, television broadcasters, and the colleges and universities are making a lot more money.” (Abdul-Jabbar, 2018) As we can see, both Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shabazz Napier support college athletes getting paid because they help give money to the universities and to the college TV broadcasters. There are also some athletes who have little money and their families have financial issues, it is a necessity for everyone to have money in this world, but they waste it very fast, as little as things like groceries. So it makes sense that the college athletes should be getting paid as they are giving everyone else money by playing. For the supporters, Kareem Abdul Jabbar next states that the NCAA makes billions of dollars off of the players still they obtain nothing. This is actually miserable, as they are being used for their talent, on things like, betting, as well as other stuff that depends on them. “Top college coaches make between $4m and $9m per year, plus outside fees. In 40 out of the 50 states, they are the highest paid state employees. Of course, coaches in less profitable sports, such as baseball, make far less. And only a third of Division I men's basketball programs are profitable. These facts are tossed in our faces like sand to blind us to the awareness that other programs, like football at the University of Texas made $92m in profit in 2015, making it more profitable than most NFL teams. Yet, their players made nothing.” (Abdul-Jabbar) Once more, college players that play in teams do not even receive money, but college coaches obtain much more money that shouldn’t be given to them. Even in the NFL, the coaches are making more money as all they  do is call timeouts as well as do things like make game plans. While the players are fighting trying to win a game that will supposedly give them money and in that very likely chance they are injured so it is a risk or reward that is not happening in the college sports world and professional sports organizations like the NFL. 

We have seen one side of why college athletes of the world should be paid. So far we have seen things like colleges making money off of them and ex-college players talking about their experiences in college as an athlete. As we have seen, it is honestly hard to be an athlete and a student, and still have their own school and social life outside of the courts and fields.  We will now see as the NCAA takes money that is supposed to go to the players and the NCAA uses it for other things. Let’s take a look. “The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its corporate partners make billions of dollars from college athletes. Those players should be compensated for their hard work, sacrifice, and dedication, and they should be free to profit from the licensing of their names and likenesses.” (“Paying College Athletes, 2021.”) “Supporters of paying college athletes argue that the NCAA is a huge, profit-making enterprise that gets rich off the labor of student-athletes. Players who help generate billions of dollars for a wide array of companies and organizations, they contend, deserve a portion of those profits.” (“Paying College Athletes.”) As we can see, in both of these quotes, Players put in countless hours of hard work and time in to win games and the NCAA takes money out of them that should go to the college athletes they have earned, not just people just watching the game and making money by owning it. They should also be able to make money off their name as they struggle as is. The NCAA is basically a sports organization taking advantage of the talent and hard work of the student athletes. And some of these athletes put an abundance of time into getting where they are. They could have possibly turned down jobs that could’ve given them money. As you can see, the supporters got many incredible reasons on why the athletes in college should be paid, but now let’s take a look at what the opposition has to say about this question.

As we have seen why they should be paid now let’s see what the arguments are going to say about why college athletes should not be paid. Adele Birkenes and Akash Bagaria state their opinion of why student athletes should not be paid. “I think college athletes should not receive direct payment from schools for several reasons. College athletes already receive numerous benefits. Many get scholarships, which help pay for their tuition, supplies, housing, and sporting equipment. According to the NCAA, college athletes often receive grants worth more than $100,000. They also have the benefit of being the first choice for professional leagues, which draft college athletes at a higher rate than they select others.” (Birkenes and Bagaria, 2012) As we can see from this article, college athletes should not be paid as they already have attained numerous sponsorships which will help with all the basic necessities for college. They shall not need any more money because they already secured $100,000 and that is plenty for someone in college. They also most likely make the NBA or NFL or any other professional sports organization, which they will achieve a great deal of money from. So there is no point in giving them money in college if they will receive it in the future. Here is the second quote from the article. “Second, college athletes should be considered students first. By receiving direct payment, they would be more similar to employees or professionals than students. College athletes should not forget that their main purpose at school is to learn and study, not to receive money.”(Birkenes and Bagaria) That comes from the student athletes hence they are students before athletes and should be treated like students. It is very unfair that if someone is a genius that is struggling with money to go to college, but if someone can do something related or plays sports for the college they land additional money and a free ride to college.

Another article gives their own reasons for why they believe athletes aspiring to be pro athletes in the future should not be paid. “And yet I believe that the drive to pay college athletes is a grave mistake—not because it misdiagnoses the disease but because it suggests that the only cure is to put the patient out of his misery. It fails, first of all, to recognize the value of sports as a part of education.” (Yankah, Ekow, 2015) “In some dispiriting cases, the students are so unprepared that academic failure seems inevitable. In worse cases still, their scholarships are cynically undermined by the schools themselves.” (Yankah, Ekow) What we learned from these quotes, was that it is a waste of money as they might not have the talent or the motivation to make it to the pros. This is a growing problem as money is given to an athlete that is hyped up by everyone to be the greatest player ever and doesn’t even make it to any professional sports organization. If they score money, all they will think about is sports, and if they can’t think about school they will fail out of school and their scholarship will be revoked. It will make it harder for them to find a job after some time.

As we have seen from all the articles, all the quotes we have seen, this is becoming a big issue in the world. There are many good reasons why they should be paid. Like they earn after working hard for a tough and rough season and the NCAA is making money off of them when they do all the heavy and hard work. As well as incredible strong arguments for why they should not be paid because they might make it to the big leagues however they are students before athletes. They shouldn’t be paid because it throws the whole fun out of playing sports in college and they are also students before athletes, but college athletes should be paid because they put some much of their hard work into the game they play and they are getting robbed.