Argumentative Essay

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Title: Should College Athletes be paid?

Every year, college sports generate revenue of millions of dollars in the United States. CBS commits to pay billions of dollars per year for broadcasting NCAA, and for the first time in history, the value of March Madness is placed at about $1 billion per year. There is a continuous gashing conversation on the topic of should college athletes be paid or not. Chiefly, the question arises on two main sports, football and basketball, since these two sports bring most of the money to the college, and arguments for and against are many. College athletes ought to be paid by college and outside agencies because sports bring billions of dollars in revenue; it is no higher than players can earn in the free labor market, and it is a full-time job.

The fact is, they currently are paid in a way, and they get free tuition. Surely, that is a valuable thing, but unfortunately, most student-athletes do not care a lot about their education. That is the reason that they tend to choose "easy" majors so that they can coast by while focusing mainly on athletics. Beyond the fact that their education is generally worthless, there is one huge, huge factor in this opinion. As a whole, student-athletes bring an immense amount of revenue to a university, and in the biggest schools, athletics brings in hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It is borderline disgusting to think that the actual people who are responsible for bringing in that money do not see a cent of it. Besides, administration, coaches and university presidents get multi-million dollar pay-checks per year. There are video games that use the likenesses of college players (but without using their names, generally), but players receive no remuneration for the efforts. The NCAA as a whole is a racket aimed at making money at the expense of student-athletes. It is an exploitative business that pays its money-earners $0.

To be more precise, universities should have the option to pay their athletes. At present, many universities take it upon themselves not to offer athletic scholarships at all or not to offer scholarships to athletes playing less lucrative sports, and that's fine. They can't build a powerhouse Division 1 football or basketball program like that, but there's nothing wrong with it ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"9gI5Hk9Z","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Shaffer)","plainCitation":"(Shaffer)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1339,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/5NEFVFFQ"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/5NEFVFFQ"],"itemData":{"id":1339,"type":"thesis","title":"Should Division I Football and Men’s Basketball Student-Athletes be Paid?","publisher":"figshare","author":[{"family":"Shaffer","given":"Colin"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Shaffer). It should be easy to see that many athletes' total compensation is less than it would be if there were a free market for their labor. This is corroborated by a few things, schools (and people whose incentives are closely aligned with the schools) continue to violate NCAA restrictions on athlete compensation despite the history of programs being debilitated for similar acts.

Most of the players at big revenue-generating programs earn exactly as much as they are allowed to earn i.e., a full-tuition scholarship. One is almost certainly underpaid when there is an artificial limit on how much compensation one can receive, and they end up earning exactly that much anyway. Moreover, Violations of NCAA regulations don't often seem to rise to the level of being illegal in the outside world. In a quest to be consistent, the NCAA has had to come up with incredibly complicated laws to ban many straightforward actions simply because they can be equated with monetary payment relatively easily. Not only are they not illegal, but they're not even things that we'd find immoral in any other context. NCAA regulations are not laws: they're just conventions that schools agree to because they don't trust each other not to pay athletes.

It also raises a number of questions, such as are college sports providing some good to society that they couldn't provide if players were being paid? Is that good adequate justification for suppressing athlete compensation artificially? There is no argument that one can found convincing. Thus, for Division 1’s basketball and football, since they are, the majority of the time - the only profit centers under debate. For some schools, maybe some other sports would make money for them as an exception. As long as the sport is a profit center, it makes sense for the athletes to share in the spoils.

In addition, college athletes should be “allowed to be paid” by outside agencies, such as pro teams or sports agents, if not by the colleges themselves. There are many reasons for that; first, not all college athletes should be paid. For most of them, scholarships are more than equal value. However, for some NFL and NBA prospects, these kids bring in millions of dollars to the school, and THAT is not an equal exchange of values. Secondly, NCAA and colleges always claim that they are interested in creating student-athletes. It is true in most cases, but they do recruit hard for basketball players and some college players who have no intention of graduating. Some say that having pro scouts and agents on campuses will ruin the purity of the game. Instead of trying to enforce rules that cannot be enforced, make it legal and have the star players get the money that they deserve.

Furthermore, Pro teams should be able to draft college and high school players and still allow them to play in college, with a guaranteed pro contract. If creating student-athletes is what the colleges are going after, providing financial security will allow these kids to stay in school longer without the pressure of chasing the money. Besides, providing payment to all scholarship athletes make the athlete's employees of the university, and can create several legal problems. 1) Scholarship money the students receive has to be taxed as an income. 2) If a student gets hurt, he/she can sue the university or file for worker's comp.

College sports is also a full-time job, and these athletes cannot have a job on the side. It is impossible. The fact that these athletes are not paid is beyond ludicrous. College players also need the freedom to deal with the schools and NCAA. Payment would be part of deals, but that might not be prime for many of them. Education, food, housing, medical insurance, life insurance, etc. are all items that could be subjects of deals. Due to the young age of these players, they would need rep either individually or in groups like unions or specific sports groups to counter the overwhelming power and money that schools and the NCAA have. A lot of athletes, especially those who are a part of developing countries, usually face a lot of financial problems back home ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"0pMjuWTZ","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Parent)","plainCitation":"(Parent)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":1340,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/RI5HLEWW"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/orkqtrjP/items/RI5HLEWW"],"itemData":{"id":1340,"type":"article-journal","title":"Forward Progress-An Analysis of Whether Student-Athletes Should Be Paid","container-title":"Va. Sports & Ent. LJ","page":"226","volume":"3","author":[{"family":"Parent","given":"Christopher M."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2003"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Parent). Their parents most often encourage they are into sports so that they could help themselves by expecting some monetary benefits or special talent quota for education and their sports career. Any form of support or funding would put less pressure on their parents as these athletes turn out to be self-reliant.

Sports in this generation have become more advanced compared to that of how it was back in the days. There are the most efficient ways of training, which give all the athletes the ability to grow faster. Nutrition, too, has advanced a lot. There are varieties of authentic supplements that are available in the market. These supplements are very expensive and usually would last for only a month or so. Nutrition and Diet are a major key to success in most of the sporting fields; funding college athletes would help them to have easy access to high-quality nutrition, which is essential for the growth of an athlete. It would help in improving the quality of any sport in especially an underdeveloped country. The more any college sport is being funded; there is more chance of quality players joining that particular sport. With the rising cost of youth sports, talented athletes tend to back off without even going to the next level as they tend to quit initially. So with the help of college funding, there can be a fall in sports dropouts and give a chance for underprivileged athletes to prove themselves.

Nonetheless, some of the common arguments against paying them include, they are provided with scholarships, & free room & board, College is a sort of an internship where you get to learn, hone, and showcase your talents. In addition, NCCA is a nonprofit organization; the revenues are redirected to helping millions of student-athletes and athletic departments. Besides, money tarnishes the sporting aspect of it. All of which makes no sound position. The question should be on what the best way to remunerate these college athletes is. Should Basketball athletes be paid more than the track & field ones? Do the starters get different pay scale than the bench players? Can we do this without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? Work-study is federal aid, and every institution does not make money on their athletic program. Some institutions are struggling to field competitive teams or to have a team at all. The solution needs to take that into account, as well as schools small enough not to offer athletic scholarships and still compete under the NCAA flag of sports.

Works Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Parent, Christopher M. “Forward Progress-An Analysis of Whether Student-Athletes Should Be Paid.” Va. Sports & Ent. LJ, vol. 3, 2003, p. 226.

Shaffer, Colin. Should Division I Football and Men’s Basketball Student-Athletes Be Paid? figshare, 2015.