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Don't Pay for Play!
Does someone who gets to go to college for free, never having to pay a penny deserve to be paid for playing college sports? No, paying college athletes is just a bad idea. “There are way too many logistical, economic, and legal hurdles that would have to be erased before college athletes could ever be paid” (Ryder). The numbers that ESPN gives can be a little deceiving. Although popular sports such as football and basketball bring in millions of dollars, for most universities that money is hardly enough to cover their department cost (Ryder). College athletes are playing their favorite sport at state of the art facilities in front of thousands of fans and get an education for free, so why would they be paid?
Powerhouse schools such as Ohio State get tons of revenue every year and that doesn't even cover the schools budget. “There are many schools that lose money every year so how could they pay their students on top of giving them free tuition” (Ryder). So therefore the more money the school has the more money the athletes would get paid and that would be unfair in recruiting.
With the ridiculous amount of time college athletes spend on school and their sport they have no time for a job and not every kid has wealthy parents that can just send them money every week. This makes it hard for some athletes to pay for living expenses and entertainment such as bills, clothes, entertainment, etc. (rose 48).“My solution of providing student athletes $2,000 per semester will at least offer these kids a drop in the bucket”(rose 48). There are many reasons why college athletes feel like they need to be paid and some of them have a valid point, but there are just too many things that would be unfair in the payment of college athletes. Football and basketball are obviously the favored sports on most campuses, but kids work just as hard in other sports and their programs don't make enough money to pay them the stipend that the major sports could pay their athletes (Pheifer).
Certain players are more popular than others and certain sports are more popular than others so people know there would be a lot of arguing and controversy. Schools like USC and Stanford have all the money so in theory all the kids would go to schools like that wouldn't they? One of the major reasons paying players to play is because of what it would do to recruiting and competition. If the rich schools kept getting great players and winning then they would keep getting richer and the other schools would keep getting poorer. Students earn a free tuition which over the course of 4 years can exceed $200,000, they are also provided with housing textbooks, food and academic tutoring. When they travel to road games, they are given perdiems for meals (Davis). “They also get coaching, training, game experience and media exposure they earn in their respective” (Davis).
So you can talk about how they can’t have a job with their low amount of free time but they have so many benefits that it over rides all those arguments. There is an argument between the value of a scholarship and what a student-athlete actually needs (Davis). There is a gap between this and many people in college sports think that the scholarship model should be met to close this gap (Davis). The problem is this gap is in all sports, for all athletes so it would have to be fixed. This fix would be very timely and expensive. But at least people are thinking of ways to make college athletes needs be met without straight up paying them. Let’s talk about how unfair it would be to pay certain players and sports more money again. The football team brings in more revenue than the volleyball team, but that’s why NFL players get paid big bucks and there is not a professional volleyball league to be found (Geisler). “Picking one sport over another is fine when you’re working in the free market as an entity, as professional sports teams and leagues do” (Geisler). You cannot give players