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Paying College Athletes

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Paying College Athletes
Paying College Athletes Year after year, they put the madness in March. They bring traditions unlike any others to the network every Saturday of fall. They make millions upon millions of dollars for their respective universities. Yet, today’s college athletes see absolutely none of that money. Rod Gilmore, a football analyst for ESPN, in the article, “College Football Players Deserve Pay for Play,” claims that athletes should have a share in money in this multibillion-dollar entertainment industry. In fact, if they are given some sort of payment or gift, they risk suspension, expulsion, or even punishment towards their university. If the NCAA would revise rules that were set decades ago so that they would apply to the collegiate athlete of today, many problems that exist would be solved. There are many that are against the idea of paying college athletes. The most important of which is the NCAA. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), created in 1906, is the governing body of college athletics in the United States and parts of Canada. Currently, the NCAA has rules in place that prohibit any sort of compensation to student athletes whether it be actual money or something such as a vehicle or a house that the player can live at without paying for it (Rush). There are reasons to get rid of these rules besides to just make it easier on the NCAA. Many that are against paying the student athletes argue that if a player needs extra money, he/she could get a part time job like every other normal college student. But with all of the offseason training that today’s programs put their players through and then on top of that, doing school work, there is no free time for a student athlete to also have a job (Lewis). So if a player needs some spending money under the current rule structure they are out of luck because they would have to sacrifice something else to get that money. Even if the universities would be permitted to sit aside a hundred


Cited: "Business of College Sports." ESPN.com. Ed. Marc Stein. ESPN, 3 Dec. 2009. Web. 8 Oct. 2010. Lewis, Michael. "Serfs of the Turf." New York Times. New York Times, 11 Nov. 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2010. Rush, Sharon Elizabeth. "Touchdowns, Toddlers, and Taboos: On Paying College Athletes and Surrogate Contract Mothers." Academic OneFile. Gale, 1989. Web. 2 Oct. 2010.
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