 I am interested in the topic of whether college athletes should be paid because of three main reasons. First, because I am a sports management minor. Second, I got to see first-hand the way colleges handle their student athletes after being recruited, and finally because I have heard personal arguments from athletes at South Carolina dealing with why they should receive benefits for their actions. This research topic also impacts me, as well as the rest of the student body, because sports are a huge part of our college experience. This problem is important to more than just the student athletes, because we, as students, pay athletic fees to have sports at South Carolina. My personal experience with this topic revolves around my senior year of high school as I was recruited by a few unnamed schools to play football. Paying college athletes is a problem, because most schools illegally pay their players anyway, giving them an advantage over the schools that follow rules. I was offered benefits that I would obtain illegally had I played football at these schools, showing that this is a problem that needs to be fixed. Paying student athletes would not only benefit them, but also would benefit the universities and the NCAA.

 The Case for Paying College Athletes, shows the NCAA has gotten the most revenue it has ever received as of late, making it more of a problem that they gain this revenue primarily from the players and their actions. This article goes into detail of the NCAA's history, as well as comparing revenues from previous years, showing that as revenue increases, the need to pay student athletes go up as well. This article revolves around the idea that these players are basically doing a full time job for a thriving company but are not getting paid for it. The writers of this article, Allen Sanderson and John Siegfried, are two economists that did a lot of research with the money surrounding the NCAA in order to produce this article. Allen Sanderson, in particular, is a professor at the University of Chicago, who researches sports related economy.

 Are Athletes also Students?, is an article dealing with the education side of the topic. There have been many cover ups in the education of student athletes, including taking fake classes, and the article goes into detail on these types of examples. They studied the grades of athletes at separate colleges, proving that their grades were significantly lower than those of the average student body. This is important because not only are these athletes not getting paid for the work they put into sports, but they also are not getting the promised free education, which sets them up for failure in their lives after college. This article came from the Society for Social Problems at Oxford University, putting the social problem of paying student athletes right in their wheelhouse. Although this is an old article, as it was written in 1982, the writers do a good job of keeping it more informative rather than argumentative.

Fixing College Sports: Why Paying Student Athletes Won't Work, is different from the first two articles, as it mainly opposes the idea that increased revenue should increase the demand for paying student athletes. It provides a different side to the topic, and it provides clear cut examples as to why paying college athletes may not work. It goes into detail about how the concepts of how to pay student athletes are merely free-floating ideas and do not have any real plans to them. It also opposes the education side of paying student athletes, as the writer brings up that athletes have a higher graduation rate compared to the non-athlete student body. The writer does not use a lot of detailed examples and it is somewhat opinionated, making the writer seem bias. However, he does provide some good points that are easy to understand and can be used to oppose the argument of paying student athletes. 

While only even looking at these three articles, there are a lot of arguments for both sides of the topic of paying student athletes. The second and third article disagree on some points, but do agree that the education system provided to student athletes is subpar compared to that of the rest of the student body. The third article disagrees with the first article, as it says that the increasing revenue should have nothing to do with paying student athletes. This provides an easier chance at forming a more unbiased paper, giving a better opportunity for the facts to speak louder than the opinion.

