Essay Why College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

One subject that has unarguably growing and fast in popularity and importance in our everyday lives is the subject of sports. Not only have athletics been growing in those ways, sports are growing profoundly in the amount of revenue they generate as well. Associations, leagues, teams, networks, and many others which are involved in sports are making loads of money of the success of these sports. One of the thousands of groups which are heavily benefiting from the growth of sports is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The NCAA had made $989 million in the 2014 fiscal year. After counting the expenses, the NCAA made a net of $80.5 million (Upadhyaya and Mattison). This number doesn’t even include how much individual college athletic
One argument against the compensation of collegiate athletes is that scholarships and perks are compensation enough for college athletes. “Take the University of Utah for example. A freshman nonresident taking a full course load would pay $11,770.24 per semester. For a four-year degree, assuming tuition rates stay relatively the same, that is a value of $94,161.92. Throw in the free or discounted room and board, meals and cost of attendance awards from the NCAA typically ranging in the low thousands per year…” (Grossman and Garahana) This argument tries to justify not paying college athletes by saying they their scholarships cost thousands of dollars, not including the perks they receive and that is their compensation. However, this is still not close to what they are worth. “The average Division I player is worth $170,098 per year, with each of the 351 D1 basketball programs taking in more than $4.5 million in revenue on average each year.”(Procter and Bellford) Just one sports athletes are worth Hundreds of thousands more than their scholarships and perks offer, so it is unfair to assume that a scholarship is compensation enough for how much athletes are doing for their programs. Another argument claims that there are many children and adults who want to attend college, but cannot afford to do so. Athletes are able to go to highly accredited colleges for little to nothing for playing the sport they love. This is enough compensation for collegiate athletes.(Procter and Bellford) However it has been discovered that “Sometimes, athletes aren’t involved in academics at all. At the University of North Carolina, over 3,100 students, almost all of whom were athletes, enrolled in fake classes that never met and required no work, designed to boost their GPAs and allow them to focus more