Should College Athletes Be Compensated

  While NCAA executives make millions of dollars, the athletes who actually play the sport aren’t paid a penny of the fortune. Compensating college athletes has become a controversial topic these past few years. The NCAA has refused to pay the athletes. This issue has been everywhere from US News to ESPN. Many people think that college athletes should be compensated and many think they shouldn’t. After contemplating this issue thoroughly, it is evident that college athletes should be compensated for their play because payment provides athletes with financial security, creates a less hierarchical system, and acknowledges the athletes’ hard work.

      Scholarships aren't enough to provide college athletes with financial security. Many people think that college athletes don’t need to be paid because they are receiving scholarships. However, this is not true. John Oliver from the show LAST WEEK WITH JOHN OLIVER said that, "in the event of a serious injury, an athlete can be dismissed from his or her scholarship, and for some athletes the result is having to withdraw from college because athletics was their only source of funding." This indicates that scholarships do not provide financial security.  If the NCAA is allowed to continue this practice of discontinuing scholarships in case of injury, the NCAA at least needs to give the students financial compensation in case of injury, if not ban the practice all together. Nevertheless the NCAA’s excuse for this practice, which is that players are covered by injury insurance, is not validated by the facts. The Daily Caller reported that "although the NCAA has an injury insurance policy up to $20 million on each individual athlete, they rarely qualify for it.” It does not make sense that the NCAA has this policy if no one can use it. The fact that, according to Oliver, "scholarships are a two year agreement that universities sometimes abuse when deciding whose scholarship should and should not be renewed,” demonstrates that scholarships do not provide the financial security that athletes need.

      The NCAA has too much hierarchy and inequality in the system. For example, by 2013 “40 coaches from the 50 largest public universities in each state were that given state’s highest paid state employee after total compensation was factored.” However, without the players there wouldn’t be jobs for the coaches. Some coaches, such as Nick Saban, make over 7 million dollars a year.   It is unfair that for all the coaches make the athletes don’t make anything for all they do. As a matter of fact, college athletics is a full time job. As an illustration, an NCAA poll reports that “college athletes are spending more than 40 hours a week in uniform.” This doesn’t give athletes the time they need to study, do homework, or have a paying job. John Oliver notes that, “In the 1950’s the then Executive Director of the NCAA put forth the amateurism/student athlete model as a means for universities to avoid covering athletes for workplace compensation.” He later follows this up by calling their bluff, saying “If it is really all about the romance of amateurism, that’s fine. Give up the sponsorships and the TV deals.” This shows the hypocrisy of high-ranking, high-earning college athletic directors arguing for amateurism. meanwhile, some people say that if the athletes are compensated they will not work as hard. All you have to do is look at the NBA or the NFL to see players who are making loads of money and play extremely well.

          Currently the NCAA doesn’t adequately acknowledge its athletes’ hard work. The NCAA makes more than 11 billion dollars in annual revenue.  Furthermore, the NCAA uses these funds to build “lavish facilities to woo the latest and greatest high school recruit and high salaries for administrators and coaches.”  This demonstrates that universities have the money to compensate their athletes but choose not to use their resources to acknowledge the people doing the work. Alexander LaCasse writes in the Christian Science Monitor, “Where does this enormous revenue stream leave the athlete, whose performance and results on the field bring glory and massive amounts of money into their respective institutions?”  Although some people argue that college athletics isn’t a career and therefore the athletes should not be compensated. However, the definition of “career” in The American Heritage College Dictionary is “a chosen pursuit; a profession or occupation, the general course or progression of one’s working life.” This definition proves that being a college athlete is part of a career and therefore the athletes deserve compensation as an acknowledgment of their work.

It is time for the NCAA to develop a system for compensating college athletes.  The executives must acknowledge that their profits derive from the athletes and pay the people who are doing the work.  While the opponents’ strongest argument not to pay students for their labor is that the students receive scholarships for their education, frequently students don’t receive scholarships that have been promised them due to injury or for other reasons. Many times scholarships don’t cover the full expenses of students, leaving them financially insecure. The disparity between the pay of executives and the financial status of the athletes is unfair.  Can you think of another sector of American society in which people who create billions of dollars in economic value receive no payment for their work?  Profits from college sports are continuing to increase. It is only fair for the people who make that possible to be compensated fairly and treated well.