Personal Narrative: Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

I’m going to start by saying that I am a college athlete and it’s very interesting the number of people fighting and defending the topic if players should be paid. The price for college has never been higher and will only continue to grow as time goes on. Going along with that college athletics have never been more popular. The most prominent example would be a division 1 football program. Back in 1906, when the NCAA was created, a law was put in place to prevent exactly this. This law is called the “Amateurism clause” which states that no athlete may receive a salary for participating in athletics or engage with professional sports teams while in the NCAA. The clause goes on to say that the player(s) may not receive any profit from autograph
It goes against everything athletics is about," said Fairfield Director of Athletics Eugene Doris. "I'm not opposed to students receiving some sort of compensation because they can't get a job because of their time commitment to their team. Compensation to some extent should exist"(K. Anderson). “It goes against everything athletics is about”, that’s a very interesting way to think about that. Athletics are always described to have fun and meet new friends, but today, as the players age it isn’t about fun anymore, it’s about money or compensation. Sure, the sports are still fun to play but they are being played for a different reason as the students grow up. "I think they [athletes] are already paid, and they get enough," said women's volleyball head coach Jeff Werneke. "When they sign a letter of intent, they get a contract - books, classes, room and board, stipends if they live off-campus. I think they are paid through the value of education and their coaches' hours of help to make them better players and developing their skills." Many people agree with this line of thinking. These athletes are “paid” over $30,000 a year depending on the school, which for any student in college, is a very large amount of money. They aren’t handed a pay check that they can spend on anything they want but they are handed a college education for little to no cost to them or their families. Which in the long term is arguably more helpful than an
If you add in amount of time per class as well as the amount of time needed outside of class to get all that work done, you are looking at a high amount of time between just those two obligations. If you added any kind of job you would be crushed by all your commitments. Another one of the reasons Anderson brought up was the fact that the reason that so many school have a surplus of money is because of their sports teams. This is very true because people go to games which cost money to get in, buy merchandise, and buy food. All of those combined per game would come out to a large sum of money that the school wouldn’t be receiving if it wasn’t for their sport teams. “College coaches make millions, athletic shoe companies make millions, universities with big-time programs gain national exposure and prominence” (Shropshire). This brings up another interesting situation where the coaches make a lot of money doing what they are doing because it’s their job. The equipment companies will prosper because these high-profile athletes are wearing their gear, and the school will do phenomenally if they have a quality sports program to attract fans around the country. College athletes preform at such a high level to make