Should College Athletes Be Paid?

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-ncaa-athletes-be-paid

Paying college athletes has become a huge debate and is something that should really be taken into consideration. As a biased person towards the opinion that college athletes should be paid, I will mostly explain my reasoning to why I believe this should be the case. But, if you disagree with me, as I know many people will, there are better explanations by people who know what they are talking about that may convince you to believe the same. In addition, I have also, read articles on both points of views so I am not making my case based off of articles focusing on why athletes should be paid, but instead, I have made my inference by looking at both points of views.

First off, college sports has become a business. Most people argue that athletes are going to college and getting a free education so they are receiving compensation. In reality though, MOST of these athletes are not going to college for a good education but instead an opportunity to go pro. Athletes if given the opportunity to go pro, will most likely choose that decision instead of getting a Bachelors degree. Plus, the main athletes who are generating money for the school don't even graduate! If you watch college sports, there are always those guys on the court or field that you watch for and enjoy seeing. If you like a certain team, this person may change from year to year. The point is, there is someone you are paying attention to that is off your interset. No one watches Boston College play basketball except students and alumni but when they handed Syracuse their first loss in basketball this year, it was all over the news.One does not just watch Boston College play basketball if they are not a fan or there is no player of interest playing. Thus this makes my point that people watch the big stars in the sport. Like I said before, these big stars usually don't even graduate! (Doug Mcdermott is an exception) Another thing to take note of is that college sports is not the same as it was many years ago. College sports has become very corrupt in the past couple of years with it taking advantage of players not being paid and taking all the money made as profit. For example, March Madness alone makes $6 billion dollars in just one year. This does not include the money that ESPN, or any other business involved with college athletics makes. Next, one thing that really upsets me is when events outside the control of a person can affect them in a very negative way. For example, if an athlete gets injured, he may potentially lose his whole scholarship. This is not something that is uncommon, for there are rules that one must obey buy in order to have their part of the deal. The same is true for even a high school. At Creighton Prep High School, if a student attending the school does not reach a certain GPA threshold, he loses his scholarship. This is the exact same in college except that we are discussing it involving athletics. Without the college athletes, March Madness, football bowl games, or anything involving athletics would not be as popular.

Being open, I decided to include articles that argue that we should not pay athletes. But their voices make evident the things I am trying to stress about the whole issue. The first article says that college athletes should not be paid but real scholarships need to be brought back. The man who wrote the article played football for Notre Dame way back with the dinosaurs in 1973. He said, when he went there, the NCAA changed its rules allowing one year renewable scholarships for athletes so that if an athlete failed to meet requirements, they could get their scholarship taken away. This is absurd! The scholarship should be for all four years if an athlete is dedicated in participating in the sport. He also believes that since athletes act like employee for their respective school, they have an argument to ask for money. But, another man touching on this says, if athletes were to really earn how much they deserve, the amount of money they would receive would be too much for a college student to be able to handle wisely. Although these men do not think that college athletes should be paid, they both agree on the fact that college sports has become a business. Business means employees, and employees means pay.

Feel free to leave your thoughts and let John Richter know that college athletes should be paid! I am always open to different points of views and would love to hear your comments.