Student Athletes Should Be Paid

According to John Brill, a retired professional ice hockey player, “the NCAA makes over 6 billion dollars yearly.” All this money goes to support championships and programs that benefit student athletes and for building operations. The NCAA is supposed to be a non-profit organization but they sell jerseys with the star athletes names on them. The “student-athletes” get none of the money that is made by selling their name on the jerseys. Even though they get a free education with their scholarship, college athletes should be getting some compensation for their hard work and abilities because they are expected to play as a professional, a full ride scholarship does not cover every expense, they do not get the full education that they should,
Division 1 is where the top athletes go for example, Duke, University of North Carolina, University of Kentucky etc. Division 2 is smaller than Division 1, and usually finance the students education with a combination of athletic and academic scholarships. Division 3 is the smallest out of all divisions in the NCAA, and they are not allowed to offer athletic scholarships. Then you have the NAIA, which stands for The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, and these schools have the same level of competition as a division 2 school (NCAA and NAIA). All of these schools are filled with “student athletes.” A student athlete is a person who plays in an organized competitive sport sponsored by the educational school in which he or she is enrolled in. Also notice that student comes before athlete and that is the main emphasis. A “student athlete” is a student before an athlete. All of these athletes are considered amateur. U.S. News and World Report Andrew Zimbalist defines amateur as someone who engages in the activity for
Well according to the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago college athletes are technically employees. They define an employee by: 1. under contract to hire; 2. perform services for another; 3. subject to employers control; 4. return for payment. Region 13 director explains this a little further, “Letter of intent and scholarship offer is the employment contract, the hours of practice and play that generates money for the school is employer’s benefits, coaches rules are the control, and finally the scholarship itself is the pay.” Now if the students are going to bed hungry, and they have a full ride scholarship then that is basically saying that they are working for less than minimum wage. So the NCAA should give them more money that is fair enough for as much time and hard work they put