Should Student Athletes Be Paid?

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Warrant: Some might say that regardless of all the benefits student athletes get they should be paid because they are the ones making all the money for the schools.

Refute: The only two sports that make the big money are football and basketball. Baseball, hockey, volleyball, soccer, swimming, fencing, and other varsity sports play many games and travel quite a bit, but these sports do not have the large fan base the other two sports do. The sports that lack the fan support cause universities to lose money, so the larger sports have to make up for the money that is lost.

Transition: In addition,

Claim3: College athletes play because of the love of the sport and that is what is so great about it; they play for pride not a paycheck. This is a crucial reason why college athletes should not be paid because sooner or later it will turn in to a professional business and then players will start to hold out and not play because they want more money, exactly how it happens on the professional level.

Evidence: taking the amateurism out of collegiate sports would create a draft out of high school for colleges to make bids on top players in the same fashion as the NFL. This would further destroy students focus on academics as now their prime concentration in high school would be athletics.

Warrant: People might argue that athletes need to be paid because the time they spend practicing or traveling is all for the higher goal of making it to the professional level.

Refute: Allen Sack, a professor at the University of New Haven writes on his own experiences as a scholarship football player at the University of Norte Dame. “Not receiving additional payments for my performance on the football field showed me that education was the real reason I was in college and that we are not professionals, because the majority of us are not going on to play at the professional level” (Sack). This shows us that because he did not collect any sort of extra payment athletes can survive without getting more than they are already get. Sack, also goes on to mention that because he was not getting paid it made the competition that much better since he was playing because he genuinely wanted to. College athletics have to stay at the amateur level in order to keep it different from the professional level and the only way to accomplish this is to not pay the athletes.

Transition: Summing it all up

Conclusion: Athletes do not need paychecks in order to perform at the best of their ability. The unique privilege of a college education and all the extra perks athletes receive free of charge are enough to convince most players to play in college. The foremost reason an athlete decides to attend a college for sports is because of the scholarships. By paying student athletes we take their prime focus away which is their education.

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