no title Essay

Submitted By hannahnoah
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College Athletes Many of the college sports’ fans enjoy watching strictly college sports because they are in favor of them staying amateurs and having passion without payment. Should the NCAA consider the possibility of paying college athletes for their partaking in college level sports? Payment for actual gameplay is the fundamental difference between professional and amateur status. Therefore, college athletes should not receive anything more than scholarships. Overall, fifty-four percent of all respondents believed student-athletes should be paid for intercollegiate athletics participation, (Raymond 232) so why should the universities not pay their athletes? “It makes since, but the NCAA and Title IX supporters would never go for it,” Schlabach wrote. “If you are going to pay your starting quarterback a thousand dollar stipend for every game, you are going to have to pay your school’s women’s field hockey goalie the same amount. Title IX is a federal law, not an NCAA regulation (Dawson).”
A large amount of time for a college athlete goes into his or her respective sport, an average of fifty hours a week (Roberts 23). From the moment the full-scholarship papers are signed, each participant’s role is very clear: Schools accept the responsibility of the student’s tuition, meal plan, and boarding, while the athlete is provided with the opportunity to earn a degree, engage in college life and play their favorite sport in a well-organized, and often high profile fashion (Johnson).
Major ramifications would take place if college athletes were paid such as the competitive disadvantages for smaller schools. How would the smaller schools and conferences afford this? The bigger conferences make way more money than the smaller conferences through their huge television deals (Admin). More issues can occur by only wanting to pay athletes from selective sports. Let’s be real here; men’s football and basketball teams are usually the programs that make the most money for universities, so if football players and basketball players got paid, does that mean that the men’s lacrosse and baseball players would get paid too (Admin)? Also, paying athletes will not stop them from still taking “under the table money.” Increasing scholarship amounts to cover living expenses may keep some of the kids from accepting money, but it’s not going to keep them all from doing it. The students getting an extra five thousand dollars or so from their universities would not keep the agents, boosters, etc., from offering those cash and benefits (Admin). Another ramification would be incoming students have less scholarship money from the university because the lack of money that is going to the current athletes, which in most cases have a full scholarship to begin with. Also, a major long term issue would be college sports being corrupted due to loss of passion for the game. If they are receiving payments, who says that they are playing to their full potential anymore? They could easily just be going through the motions of the game, because why care for competition when they are being paid either way.
The opposing side of this argument states that athletes are professional entertainers who aren’t getting paid nearly a fair share of the box-office receipts (Kiplinger 11). This may be true but these “professional entertainers” are college students first and are only obligated to the right to earn a college degree because that is why they are there in the first place. Plus all the money goes back to the athletic programs (Cohen 24). Also the opposing side would like to think that the best way to provide payments for the athletes is getting funds from the NFL and the NBA, (Lincoln 201) but this would be a violation of the Title IX law reasoning that it forbids sex discrimination in all university student services and academic programs including, but not limited to, admissions, financial aid, academic advising, housing, athletics, recreational