The Arguments For Paying College Athletes
The debate on whether college athletes should be paid or not has been a controversy since the late 1900’s. A point of disagreement has been whether or not college athletes should be paid for all the work, effort and time that they put into their sports. People argue that college athletes have little to no time to work and thus they should be receiving an income, while others say that college athletes already receive their pay because they do not have to pay for college tuition. Today’s most successful college athletes will not even complete college before they go pro yet the university’s, the NCAA and various corporates such as Nike, Adidas and Reebok will make around $1billion off the athlete’s name and advertisement. The most reasonable approach would be to pay the athletes a set income each month for what they do for the NCAA and colleges, seeing as they are the ones making the colleges one billion dollars each year. College athletes should be paid because they work extremely hard and put a lot of investment into the game but they are more prone to injuries instead of money.
People could say that athletes are not considered to be actual employees like the NBA or NFL players but yet they still put in just as much work and time that any other working person puts into their job. The athletes are required to train for endless hours and days it is their job but they receive no real benefits besides free food, clothing, and transportation.
Even more interesting is that students are reporting they spend just as much time on their sport in the off-season as they do in-season. Sune Agbuke a women's basketball player says “I don't need to be in the gym six days a week to stay in shape”. College athletes train for hours, weeks and months straight. They attend classes, have homework, and then train for the rest of their time. An athlete has one hundred sixty eight hours a week and more than forty hours a week is put towards the sport they play, but that is not including the amount of time sleeping, studying, and time for homework. From all of the training and preparation for each game, they can eventually run out of energy. This leads to players becoming exhausted and not even getting the amount of sleep needed which can result in problems both mentally and physically.
A physical effect would be when the athlete is completely drained from workouts or practice and will not have the motivation to do his or her homework on time. This is because they are always on the road traveling whether it is being on the road or just running around at a practice. A mental effect has two components, it can affect drive by increasing the perceived effort necessary for a given task by saying “I can not do this because I am too exhausted” or by decreasing the value of the reward that can be received by saying “I do not want to do this, it is not worth it. ” If an athlete is going to a game out of state he or she may be on the bus or plane for hours. This may be the only free time that an athlete has to be able to do some homework or even study for their tests. There are also times where the athletes have to miss class if they make it to march madness or bowl games because they require even more time and work to be put in. This could result in bigger problems like having their grades drop because they are not concentrated and energetic enough to study and complete their homework on time.
Most NCAA athletes will not move on to compete professionally in their sport. According to NCAA facts fewer than 2 percent of the student athletes go on to be a professional. That means they need to graduate and obtain another job after graduating that might require a degree. These men and women have committed an enormous amount of time to their sport and the best that they will get is a scholarship which may not even lead to graduation or future employment. Realistically, there are some college athletes that graduate at a far lower rate than normal students do. “It was found that men’s Division I basketball players have a 23 percent lower graduation rate than other students”. The colleges and professors need to consider being more lenient toward student athletes as they are required to put in more time and effort into finishing their assignments on time.
The amount of injuries to athletes is becoming more common. “There are over 3. 5 million sports related injuries that occur each year”. Most sports injuries are due to concussions which are caused by a fall or blow on the head and it affects the brain in many ways including chronic fatigue, balance problems, and several others things like severe brain damage. According to CPSC data, there were an estimated 446,788 sports-related head injuries treated at the hospital rooms in 2009 (CPSC). Concussions are just one of the several hundred injuries that an athlete can obtain while playing. Leg and knee injuries like MCL or ACL are also a common injury that can result in a player having to go through intense rehab or even a career ending injury because the knees and legs are a vital part for competing in sports. Once you obtain a serious injury like that the body will never feel the same and you will end up playing more cautiously.
How could it be fair that a player can obtain an expensive and life threatening injury while putting their health at risk and receives no reward. If a college athlete gets a concussion he or she may have to stop playing the sport which can result in a loss of their scholarship. Most athletes attend the school they are at because they received a good scholarship to a good school, but if they lose the scholarship they may have to drop out of school due to it being extremely expensive. Under the NCAA rules the scholarship football players can be stripped of their scholarships after getting injured and are generally responsible for their own long term health care for injuries that they sustained while playing.
In opposition, there are people believe that athletes should not be receiving an income. This is because some athletes already receive a full ride to college which can reach upward to $250,000 and they are not considered to be employees. An athlete may receive a fully paid scholarship, yet if they fail a class they have a possibility of losing their scholarship. There are even coaches in the NCAA who have threatened to quit coaching if the athletes were to be paid. Dabo Swinney the coach for Clemson Football says “We try to teach our guys, use football to create opportunities, take advantage of the platform and the brand and the marketing you have available to you.
As far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that's where you lose me. I’ll go do something else”. It can be very difficult for some athletes to stay on top of their grades while they are constantly on the road. They go to practice and film and possibly working to earn some income. This can result in students becoming stressed out about losing their scholarships and not being dedicated to education or their sport. Josh Rosen the quarterback for UCLA states “No one in their right mind should have a football player's schedule, and go to school. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full time jobs'. Athletes are not only worried about losing their scholarships, they are also worried about making enough money to afford their living essentials. It’s time to put a change to the NCAA and start paying their athletes for what they do so that they can live a healthy lifestyle.
With all of the controversy and talk about college athletes being paid the state of California has become the first state to pass a bill which allows student athletes to be paid through endorsements deals. When California passed the Fair Play to Pay Act the NCAA threatened to sue the state and prohibit California colleges from competing in tournaments. It doesn’t make any sense why the NCAA will not let athletes make any sort of income and instead just want all the money to go straight to them, how would you feel in this situation? This bill will not be put into action until 2023, so this puts more pressure on the NCAA to change their rules. The NCAA has always had the view that athletes should be spending their time earning a degree and not making money. The NCAA also threatened to drop colleges from certain tournaments if they let their players make money. Colleges and coaches having been making a surplus of money in recent years with the highest paid coach being paid $8. 5 million and the lowest paid coach earning $1 million.
The players that are performing are making nothing. This lead to a new law put into place where NCAA athletes will be allowed to receive compensation for their names and images being used in their video games. A student athlete's photograph, name, autograph, and jersey can be used by a university and the NCAA for advertising without allowing the athlete to gain anything from it. However, over the years there have been more and more athletes trying to seek alternative paths on their way to go pro. This is particularly true in men’s basketball. Players like Kobe Bryant, LaMelo Ball and most notably Lebron James who has became one of the greatest basketball players to play have made the decision to not attend college and instead either train for the NBA draft or play overseas. There was a law established in 2005 where a college basketball player must complete 1 year of college before they can enter the draft and football players must wait 3 years after highschool to enroll in the NFL draft (NCAA).
Forcing the most popular kids to play at the college level seems like a publicity and money stunt to get the colleges more money. If the player is capable of playing at the pro level but is forced to play in college can result in the player becoming injured and preventing them from being drafted and even obtaining a life threatening injury where they may never be able to play again. Why do college athletes deserve to get paid? The typical Division I athletic scholarship provides tuition, room and board and books (NCAA). For many athletes that is where the scholarship ends. College athletes should be receiving some form of payment or compensation from the universities they attend or from the NCAA itself. Denying them the ability to make money and not paying them, the NCAA is putting them at a disadvantage to finish their college education and putting them at risk for developing major debt.
Many of the top athletes face hardships at home coming from low class families and living in poverty. The students who were lucky enough to receive a scholarship, still face guilt of needing to drop out to help provide for their families. If they got paid for their talent and commitment, they would be able to send money home to their families who have invested their time and effort into getting the student where he is today or even saving it for the future if they don’t go pro. Aside from the hardships these athletes face, there’s also controversy of their names and images being used to advertise and market big games which the athletes see no compensation for. College athletics has turned into a big money business that some believe the NCAA is more concerned about making money then its student athletes.
The NCAA prohibits athletes from being paid for playing their sport but also from receiving any outside income from sponsors and endorsers. There are also student athletes who say that they are not provided the education they are promised. There has been speculation and reports of athletes having access to an “easy class” list which puts student athletes in classes that are easy to pass with little work that needs to be done. The classes on the list were “always chock-full of athletes and very easy As,” said Kira Maker, a women’s soccer player, who used the list her freshman year. These classes do not even meet the college general education requirements. They implement these classes for athletes because they need to retain a 2. 0 grade point average in order for them to remain eligible to play. This can be a difficult thing to do with all of the activities, games, and practices going on in their life. Most athletes put most of their focus on a sport but also have to retain good grades which is very tough and puts a lot of pressure and stress on them because they have to balance their school work with their sport commitment.
