College Athletes Should Be Paid

Imagine a star of a college basketball team. They take their team to the championship game and win the game. Their jerseys are selling like crazy and their school is bringing in millions of dollars off of their work. In any other situation they would be a millionaire with a fancy house and car. But not if they are a college athlete because they don't get paid. Even though their school made a lot of money off their blood, sweat, and tears they still don't get paid one penny. There is no doubt that college athletes should be paid. They should be paid because they work hard and put their bodies on the line, they would make college sports more competitive, and they also bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.

College athletes should be paid because they work hard and put their bodies on the line every game. For example in a 2010 football game, a Rutgers university player was injured on a kickoff and it turned out that he was
paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. That story is sad because his career ended before it even started and he lost out of millions of dollars. He lost his whole career with one hit and his life was impacted significantly. He did this and never earned one penny from playing. This shows that they work hard because they work at their sport for 43.3 hours a week. They are working on their sport for almost 2 days per week. The athletes are working more hours than a full time job. In addition, the athletes still have to go to school 10 hours a week and has to study for each class. That means the athletes are working 40 hours a week on their sport and working about 50 hours a week on school, which adds up to 90 hours a week working between sports and school! A lot of experts even say that the college athletes work harder than the pros even though they don't get paid.

Another reason that college athletes should be paid is because paying them would make the game more competitive.
Even though some people think that paying college athletes would make the game less competitive, even more people think it would make it more competitive. According to expert Joseph M Sofio, says ¨ Paying college athletes would encourage athletes to stay in school longer and not leave for a professional career.¨ That is very true. A lot of the great college players usually leave college after their freshman year of college to leave for a pro career. They do that because in college they don't earn anything but in the pros they earn millions of dollars to help provide for their families. The athletes would work harder to get paid more money, also they might get endorsed by a company or a product. Also if the NCAA paid its athletes, the athletes wouldn't have to stress about how they are going to get money so they could focus on their sport even more. They could put more energy into their sport to make the NCAA more
competitive.

My last reason to support that college athletes should be paid is because the college athletes bring in hundreds of millions of dollars and don't get paid one penny. The NCAA is a 11 billion dollar industry and don't give the people who are working for them any money. That makes me wonder what they do with all of that money. The March Madness tournament is one of the most watched televised events in the whole country and the athletes who bring in the views don't get any money off of it. For example, the University of Alabama makes $143 million dollars off of athletic revenue. The University of Alabama earn more money than each of the NHL teams and earns more than 25 out of the 30 NBA teams. The NCAA forces student athletes to miss out on classes in order to bring in money for their school. Also the students don't have enough money in the first place so why can't the NCAA give some money to the athletes. For example, Former University of Connecticut guard Shabazz Napier often said that he went to bed starving because he didn't have enough money for food. That is such a sad situation because his school didn't help him out even though he brought in a lot of money for them. The schools don't even have to pay the athletes but the athletes should definitely be able to get endorsed by a company or something. For example they should be able to get endorsed by Nike for wearing their shoes.

Clearly, the evidence shows that college athletes should be paid because of their hard work, it would make college sports more competitive, and also the athletes bring in millions of dollars to their school. The NCAA should take this action immediately because it would make college sports more exciting and more people would come and watch.