College Athletes Should Be Paid Analysis

Majority of the sports world knows about College basketball’s biggest event, which is March Madness. They could probably tell you how many points, rebounds, and assist their favorite player has each game. However, what they don’t know is that most of these college athletes go hungry every night throughout the season. While many college athletes are given a scholarship and other grants they are only provided limited meal plans. For example an excerpt from an Internet article states that “The semi finals—broadcast exclusively through Turner Sports' family of networks including TBS, TNT, and Tru TV grossed 16.4 million viewers total. Kentucky versus Wisconsin became the most-viewed college basketball game of all time on a cable network.” ("7 Common Sense Reason Why College Athletes Should Be Paid (According To Jay Bilas) ", 2015
The article also states that both CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting alone paid more than 10.8 billion to the NCAA back in 2010 for 14 years of rights to air their games. This is all the while many college Athletes don’t have food to eat while these big name events aren’t going on. Furthermore the head of Duke’s University
basketball team Mike Krzyewski and Bo Ryan of Wisconsin, made a combined salary of 12,628,032 during this season alone.
Even video game makers are profiting off of college athletes by making videogames of the player likeness and attributes off of such games like NCAA College basketball and NCAA football. To sum it all up that is coaches, colleges, television, and the video game industry profiting off of the students. Future college athlete should be paid because of these simple facts alone. They bring money and attention to these schools and they are the ones who are being overlooked.

Some would argue that aren’t students awarded scholarships to play for these big name colleges. But, scholarships is the dollar amount that is transferred from the athletic department to the school. Therefore it is like the school is paying itself because the money is coming right back which does not make any sense. Journalist Michael Wilbon has written that these big name colleges can stand to pay college athletes since they bring in a lot of money from television broadcast events. He writes that “seeing the $11 billion deal between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024 prompted him to change his mind about paying student-athletes.” Keep in mind that college athletes put their bodies on the line just as much as pro athletes or even more simply because they want to go pro. For example back in the n the 2013 NCAA tournament a Louisville player by the name of Kevin Ware underwent a terrible injury to his lower right leg while trying to block an opposing player’s shot. Six months later, Ware was healed and back to practicing due to the love of the game.
That’s not all there have been several instances of players becoming paralyzed by hits or tackles on football fields or other injuries that have ended college player’s careers before they even get started. Which helps the state that these athletes are surrendering their bodies and physical health just to have a chance to play a game they love, and possibly make it to the pro level. On the other hand some people don’t feel the same way about this issue. Some would say that since many students are going to school while on a scholarship they are already benefiting more than regular students who are attending college and would have to pay on a large amount of debt after college.
College athletes are already getting rewarded things to help towards books and other basic needs and remember that this is money that does not needed to be paid back. So people would argue that student athletes already have it easier if You are looking at it from a financial point of view. Plus, arguments are also being made that it would also be too difficult to pay those who play sports in college. College athletes also do not just play sports they also have class as a full time student so they have to go to class on top of working out. Plus they have to work 90 hours per week just to maintain a scholarship. Which equals to two full time jobs with a side job on the side just to pay their bills. On top of all of this keep in mind that many college athletes do not come from a rich family, and doing well in sports is one of the many chances they have to go to college.
But the NCAA has stated that paying athletes would kill the competitiveness of the sport. But some people would this makes no sense because the NFL pays players based on their worth and performance so why not paying athletes the same respect in college. If the NCAA paid college athletes students would not have to worry about having the anxiety of worrying about where they are going to pay for things like their next meal. If they did not have to worry about money they would have more time to study and focus more on their game and their studies. Which in turn help prevent the player from being burnt out on having to work so hard during the week. According to Jeffrey Dorfman, only a few collegiate sports actually bring in money.
College football, as well as men’s and women’s basketball, are the money makers as far as collegiate athletics is concerned. Most other programs are actually cash strapped. Therefore, the issue becomes should only football and basketball college athletes be paid? (Patterson, 2016). Also, how would you choose who gets paid what and where does the money come from? Who should pay the athletes the colleges or television networks or does it come from an outside source? In my opinion just like I stated before they should be paid but I do think that it might be hard to accomplish this because what about the students before them and the ones before them. What do they have to say if colleges start paying players and left them out of the
loop?