Should College Athletes Get Paid?

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in his article, “The Myth of the “Student-Athlete”. “Student-Athlete” is defined Branch by stating, “college players are not students at play (understating their athletic obligations), nor are they just athletes in college (possibly implying that they are professionals).”. The NCAA created this word back in the 1950s and as a result now athletes could never be compensated, for anything more than a scholarship to the school. I believe that the way the NCAA approached this word was using arguments of evaluation. They created a way to get around paying the students by creating a warrant that backed the claim so well. The claim being the definition of the new student athlete, while the claim is backed by evidence showing that student athletes cannot be paid. I see this as a loophole that the NCAA recognized and took advantage of.

The NCAA generates over $6 billion dollars a year just between men’s football and basketball as stated in the article, “Pay college athletes: yay or nay”, by Drew Hunt. Not to mention the other huge sports like baseball, are also gaining profit, not included in this substantial number. With this huge amount of money, it seems unfair for the players to not receive any bit of money. They deserve it, being the workers after all. The top 15 paid college football coaches have a combined salary of $53.4 million. Even the coaches, that don’t even play get paid huge amounts of money. It just seems unfair that kids can’t even have the money to fly their family out to watch them play. If someone pays for a player’s family or friends, it would be a huge NCAA violation, which seems like a frivolous rule. He presents nothing but facts throughout his article. Attempting to present the reader with some of the huge numbers that the NCAA is pulling. He didn’t ever make a conclusion on his side of the manner, but I believe that he gave the facts as an effort to make the reader think about the tremendous amounts of money not given to the players.

The University of South Carolina’s head football coach, Steve Spurrier, feels strongly about this matter. "We’re trying to get extra money for living expense, academic expense, game-related expense to our players because of the tremendous amount of money -- billions -- they’re bringing" in, Spurrier said. He even went as far to say that he is willing to pay our players out of his own pocket, showing his seriousness on the matter. If the coaches in the SEC conference are willing to pay the players on the football team, this shows that they believe that these athletes deserve a little more than what they have already received. Schooling isn’t enough according to Spurrier. He believes that since they fuel this billion-dollar industry, they should be compensated fairly. This argument that Steve Spurrier holds is one that falls into the proposal part of the stasis theory. He is asking for some kind of action. The claim is NCAA needs to allow players to be compensated is all that needs to be done. This is believable because Spurrier as well as all the other SEC coaches volunteered to pay the players out of their own pockets. Obviously this shows that the argument has a solution that is feasible.

There are so many arguments that differ from each other pertaining this topic. Not many people fully agree on this issue; some people think they should be paid and others do not. I, personally, am on the fences. A part of says they should because of the amount of money they bring the school and the NCAA, but another feels that they shouldn’t because they are students first and athletes second, basically not professional athletes. For these reasons, I cannot whole-heartedly choose a side.