College Athletes Should Be Paid

With college athletes practicing and playing in the games, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA should be paying their college athletes to play. College athletes spend the same amount of time on their sport as a full time job, college athletes are struggling to make ends meet, and a salary would help the athletes to manage their money. For all that they do these college athletes definitely deserve to be compensated for what they do. These college athletes spend an average of 43.3 hours a week dedicated to their sport. This is equivalent to the amount of time a full-time job requires. Even if the athletes were paid minimum wage they would be making $7.23 an hour. With the NCAA being an $11 billion dollar industry, there would
These athletes have to balance school and their sport at the same time which can be a large feat. Even not playing a sport, college gives students a lot of stress and anxiety and I cannot even imagine balancing a sport that takes up over 40 hours a week and all the other responsibilities that come with being a college student. “Their (college athletes) schedule also includes a full-time college schedule that they must maintain if they want to stay in the school and continue playing college sports. If a student has 10 hours of class each week and puts in the recommended four hours of study for each hour of class, then athletes spend 50 hours each week studying and attending mandatory classes and study halls.” (Listland) If the NCAA would pay college athletes for playing their sport, the athletes would be properly compensated for what they are
For these athletes that means that their career could be over before they have even been paid to do their job. A career-ending injury leaves so many students with emotional, physical and financial instability. Many college athletes imagine their whole lives playing the sport and when an injury occurs where they can no longer play, they don’t see themselves in any other career. Once a player is injured to the point that it is career ending, the NCAA will cancel their contract and the association does not pay for their medical bills. Professional athletes represent their team and make fame to their team; college athletes do the same thing. The only difference is that the professional athletes are getting paid to do so but college athletes are not. The NCAA should definitely be compensating the players for what they do, without the players there would not be a NCAA. The NCAA coaches are paid based on their rank just for coaching, they are not the ones risking their career every time they go to play or trying to balance their sport and school, they are coaching. Nick Saben, the head coach for the University of Alabama, was paid over 7 million dollars last year. When the top coach for college athletics is being paid, especially so much, why are the players not getting paid at