College Student Athletes

Introduction
Did you know that college athletes are shorted million of dollars in monetary value? Of course, the obvious argument would be the athletes are receiving an expensive, high-quality education and that is sufficient. However, when really looking at the factual numbers, there is a huge discrepancy. College student athletes should be monetarily compensated in direct proportion to the revenue that is generated by the program’s university. Athletes are clearly being taken advantage of and exploited for hundred of millions and it must stop. According to the NCAA, college student athletes are not paid because of the fact the athletes are so called “amateurs.” Sounds a decent argument right? Wrong, these athletes all range anywhere from
NCAA case, O’Bannon “sued to end the NCAA's control over the rights to college athletes' names, images and likenesses (Martin and Ganim, “Judge rules against NCAA on compensation”). Ed O’Bannon believed he was taken advantage of during his collegiate basketball career at UCLA. This case began in 2010 and in 2014 O’Bannon won the case by “persuading a federal judge to authorize payments of $5,000 per player per season (Munson, “High court passes on NCAA case, but players still could get paid”). This ruling by U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken did not last long as the NCAA quickly appealed in which the ruling was reversed (Munson, “High court passes on NCAA case, but players still could get paid”). In response, O’Bannon appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they denied it and the minimal salary cap that was fought for was now gone (Munson, “High court passes on NCAA case, but players still could get paid”). The reason the NCAA quickly appealed is because of the possibility the cap be lifted someday (Munson, “High court passes on NCAA case, but players still could get paid”). If this happened, athletes would receive unlimited payments from those lucrative TV contracts and the NCAA cannot allow that. Instead, the NCAA’s constant argument is that, “college athletes are amateurs, rewarded with an education”(Martin and Ganim, “Judge rules against NCAA on compensation”). This may be true in the NCAA’s eyes, but to everyone else, including the players, that makes no sense. How could these athletes be just amateurs, yet “they devote forty to sixty hours per week to their sport most of the year”(Johnson, “The NCAA Makes Billions and Student Athletes Get None of It”)? Americans around the country that work forty hours a week receive a paycheck so why should the athletes not receive one? They are Americans too. These athletes are being denied American economic rights and being taken advantage of by the