Should Athletes Get Paid

Athletes Shouldn’t Get Paid
58% of college coaches think that there athletes should get paid for playing sports at the college level. Even though they are marketing athletes on merchandise, athletes should not get paid because they are student’s first and athletes second. Colleges don’t have a huge budget for paying athletes and the students are required to go to school. The students are at the age where they won’t budget the money and they will waste all of it. They are already be taken care of by the program by using the equipment, facilities for whatever sport they play , get the spotlight on them, people look up to them, and they still want money. Even though schools have money, they would need a better budget to pay every athlete that plays a sport. What would happen to the other schools that didn’t have a budget like the top ones? “Colleges have to pay every student athlete that attends the college and they would lose money. This means they would have to set salary caps for everyone” (Caplan). Setting salary caps would limit how much you could give each player and limit the amount that the college gets to pay the athlete. It would be a good way to pay athletes, but hard to pay every athlete on the roster. Also, you wouldn’t be able to keep track of paying every athlete different amounts of money based on how they played. “Not all NCAA teams are as profitable as others” (Lewis, 2010). An example would be big schools like Arizona State University, Florida, and Texas they have enough money in there budget to have a higher salary cap. Smaller teams like Western Michigan and Highlands won’t have a good enough salary cap to pay their athletes quality money. That would mean they would be getting paid less than the big schools just because they don’t have the money to pay their athletes or take care of them the way they want to. “You cannot give every player a full ride scholarship. There is just not enough money” ("Why paying college," 2011). This is the same because you are paying every athlete and that is what happens when you get a full ride scholarship. They pay for you to go to school, get your books for free, and sometimes pay living expenses. If they were starting to pay athletes, it is the same as giving them a scholarship of some sort because they are getting the money through compensation. Not every athlete deserves a scholarship because one may not be the one that deserves one. Other than the money, with paying athletes would mean they would have to pay every athlete in each sport.
There are multiple sports that have tons of athletes that would have to get paid. “You cannot cut checks to certain players because they bring in a lot of money to the university” ("Why paying college," 2011). Just because the merchandise has a certain players name on a jersey doesn’t mean he or she should get paid more because of it. It wouldn’t be fair for the other players to get paid a regular salary and have the starting point guard or quarterback getting paid double that. If you notice most of the merchandise that has the players name on it is a well known player and is a starter which is not fair to the other 30 players on the team. “There are so many problems with the idea of paying college athletes; I won't even be able to name all of them here. The first and main issue is that it is inherently unfair to pay certain athletes and members of teams more than others” (Geisler, 2011). If people want to pay the athletes that bring in money, how are they supposed to do that? You cannot pay the one or two athletes that bring in the money and have the rest of them just not get paid. That would look bad. You also can’t pay them more than the others because even if they are bringing in money, what if the others are performing better than them. “These people are already getting a free education and sure they give up having a regular college life to play the sport, but honestly, they're already getting paid with the full ride” (Geisler, 2011). It is there choice to give up there college life for something else, so it is there choice to play in that case, they don’t need to get paid. The athletes that do play, a lot of them have a full ride which in that case is there way of getting paid. They are going to school for free which a hand full of athletes can’t do so they should be satisfied with what they have. They would be asking for too much. Yeah, sports mean a lot to athletes, but school is way more important. School is more important than collegiate sports; it comes first. “A students athletes job, however, is to be a student” (Lange, 28/S). That is there main priority if they were to go to school just to play sports, then they wouldn’t be called student athletes. Most athletes get to go to a good college for sports only because they had a good GPA and got a scholarship for it. Without that GPA or scholarship they wouldn’t be able to play at the top level. “The concept of a student athlete is that the person is a student first athlete second” ("Why paying college," 2011). There are certain standards into being a student athlete. One is you have to have a certain GPA to play a sport and maintain that GPA. If you get lower than that standard you are suspended from that sport for a game until you get your GPA up. School does affect you in your sports because if you mess up in school, than you’re not allowed to play that sport. “During their time at school, students should make academics a top priority” (Lange, 28/S). Why are you going to pay athletes, when it is an incentive for them rather than a job? There job is going to school and hopefully graduating and getting a diploma. There incentive would be playing that sport. That is there free time off of school. They don’t get kicked out of school, if they do badly in a certain sport; they get kicked out if they don’t get the grades in school. You would be paying athletes just to pay them, not because it is considered a job. If it was, they wouldn’t need to go to school. All in all, paying athletes would cause colleges to go bankrupt and be in debt.
Even though they are marketing athletes, they still should not get paid because colleges don’t have the money to pay athletes and they have a priority to go to school before anything, and they are called student athletes. Colleges don’t have the type of money to pay every athlete in every sport. They go to school to get a degree, which will help them get a job, and they are too young to handle the money. What makes college athletes better than any other college students that go to that university? Not everyone has talent to play sports. Others are talented at other hobbies as well. They are going to pay these athletes only because they are playing a sport. Yes, these athletes may bring in money to the college, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to get paid in return. There reward should be a championship at most and that is it. If they are playing for the money, than they are playing for the wrong reason, because then anyone could play and would make college sports basically like the NFL. There is no reason to pay college athletes no matter what they do to contribute to the team or money because in the end it would cause a huge mess.