Student athletes are getting cheated by the college's that they play for as they are getting a falsified degree and are receiving little benefit for the work that they put in. Whether to pay college athletes has always been an issue to talk about in the sports world. It has been thrown around by the likes of major sports companies such as ESPN, Fox Sports, etc. It has been argued for and against by major sports personalities like Jay Bilas and Colin Cowherd. It was argued around thirty years ago and it has probably been argued somewhere today. Whenever the argument is brought up it is usually settled with one person expressing his/ her opinion and the other listening until they can come to a consensus. I am here to go beyond that, as I will show how paying student athletes could work and how making it work would affect the players, their families, the schools that they play for, the NCAA, and college sports as a whole. Being a student athlete can be seen as a job that takes away from the educational and social side of college, and these students need to be rewarded more for the effort they put in for their school. 

The main reason the average student goes to school is to get an education that will set them up with the skills that they need to pursue a good career when they grow up. It should be the same way with athletes, but they are often brainwashed by coaches and sometimes parents that sports are the most important thing in their life. This is a problem caused not only by the school's but also by the NCAA, as a statement they released explains this. The statement is shown in the video titled, Is it Time to Pay College Athletes?, as the host says as he quotes the NCAA, "We are not responsible for the education of student athletes" (CNN). It is for these reasons that the student athlete's education is overlooked and, therefore, becomes flawed. A study was done over a four-year period, where two sociologists, Peter and Patricia Adler, devoted their time to a school's basketball team and studied the player's attitudes and actions towards their education. They wanted to see how players at a big time basketball program changed in the way that they viewed education, and how, in turn, their grades changed. The brainwashing done by the school and its coaches is seen as the Adlers point out, "Although most college athletes ultimately become disillusioned with and detatched from academics, many begin their college careers idealistically, caring about academics and intending to graduate" (Adler 241). Players reportedly had entered college with high hopes and looked forward to getting a good education. However, as time went on, the rigors of practice and lack of time caused them to lose this same feeling of hope and left their grades in the dust. This was seen by almost all players throughout their four-year research project. The research provides evidence that free education is not enough. There are many stances against the notion that free education is not enough, and one of these naysayers is Johnathan Chait. Chait wrote an article titled Why Paying Student Athletes Won't Work, and he brings up how the education is good because, "college athletes graduate at a higher rate than the general student body" (Chait). He contradicts his claim of good education, however, as he brings up that the Memphis basketball team went through several years in the 2000's where it had no players that graduated. It is quite obvious that there needs to be a greater emphasis put on the education of student athletes, because the higher graduation rate is not going to cut it.

Just because players graduate at a higher rate, does not mean that they are getting a better education. The free education that the student athletes receive as benefit for their work has usually turned out to be not worth very much. Another study that was done to prove this was performed by Dean Purdy, Stanley Eitzen, and Rick Hufnagel. This article brings up examples such as athletes taking fake classes and studying different athletes' grades, comparing them to the rest of the student body. They researched thousands of athletes in a 10-year time span at an unnamed major university. After doing this research, they realized that the educational attainment and preparedness that the athletes have is far less than that of non-athletes. They further examined this problem and singled out specific players as Purdy, Eitzen, and Hufnagel explained, "Athletes in the male revenue sports of football and basketball have a relatively low probability of receiving an education compared to non-athletes or athletes in other sports" (Purdy Hufnagel 445). This is interesting because as they further explain, the football and basketball players make the most money for the school, and are therefore pressured to win more, which makes them work a lot harder than the other sports' athletes work. This research helped Purdy and Hufnagel realize that usually athletes receive far less education than that of non-athletes, and that the two biggest college sports' athletes are even worse off education wise. These observations went on for ten years, showing the longevity of this issue of educating athletes. That is why free education is not good enough for all athletes, but football and basketball players especially. There needs to be more of an emphasis being put on the education of athletes. Handing athletes fake classes and easy majors is doing nothing for their future, especially those that are not good enough to go pro after college. Chait brings up the Memphis basketball team again as he says "I suppose you could ...  conclude that the players ...  ought to receive economic compensation ... But if the Memphis men's basketball players are getting paychecks, why shouldn't the women's basketball team?" (Chait). Chait brings up a good point as he believes that both the men and women should receive the same amount of money because they probably put in the same amount of participation, but this should be taken a step further. 

There have been many theories as to how we should go about paying college athletes, but most of them seem to have too many flaws for them to actually work. However, one article titled A Way to Start Paying College Athletes, written by Joe Nocera, seems to have the theory with the least amount of flaws. This article provides theories for ways that paying student athletes could work, such as salary caps, price floors, etc. He starts by explaining how a price floor, which would be around $25,000 per player, will be laid across every sport in order for them to have money to buy things like food and entertainment. He would then place a salary cap on football and men's basketball that would be way lower than that of the major leagues of those respective sports. The lower cap would be to avoid turning these amateur sports into completely professional sports, but it still adds somewhat of a minor league touch to it. The numbers he provides for these caps are $650,000 for basketball, and $3 million in football, while also reducing the number of scholarships in football from 85 to 60. He explains how this could very easily work as he exclaims, "It is ludicrous that the Power 5 programs cannot afford this; the combined $3.65 million is barely half the $7 million that Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh made this season" (Nocera). The players on those teams would then, based on their level of play, receive salary. This would provide an equal amount of compensation across all sports, boys and girls, while still rewarding the sports that have the most pressure on them, according to Purdy, Eitzel, and Hufnagel's study. Examples of receiving pay based on performance is already being done at these athletes' colleges. An example of this is explained in Ken Reed's 2015 article, Solution Regarding Paying College Athletes or Not is Simple, as he writes, "Music students in college are free to accept cash or gifts for playing a weekend gig at the local club. What makes athletes different?" (Reed). Student athletes put in just as much work as music students, if not more, so they should be able to make money based on their performance as well. One addition that I would personally make to this theory, is that players should also receive benefit for the selling of their jerseys and autographs. Just paying them on how well they play would not be fair for those players who are having their jersey's sold by the NCAA and receiving nothing for it. As Nocera explains, coaches' salaries keep becoming greater and greater. Coaches are a big part of how schools make its revenue, but players are just as big of a part of it. That is why half of that ludicrous salary should be split up and go to the players that play the sport for the respective coach in order to be fair to the players.

The selling of players' likenesses has always been a big problem for the NCAA and its workers, or players. In 2014 Ed O'Bannon, a former basketball player for the UCLA Bruins, had had enough of the NCAA cheating its players and he wanted to stand up for himself and all the other current and former athletes. He decided to sue the NCAA for the sale of his name through Television and Video Games. According to Daily Win's Dan Rubenstein's informational video, the NCAA tried to make a case for themselves saying it was their write to pay or not pay whoever they want for the stuff that they use. This was ruled out and they were ruled essentially a monopoly by the O'Bannon team. The NCAA eventually lost to the O'Bannon team, but nothing was done about the fact that student athletes were still not getting paid for their player likenesses'. According to USA Today's Steve Berkowitz, the judge ruled that this would "undermine the efforts of both the NCAA and its member schools to protect against the 'commercial exploitation' of student athletes (Berkowitz). The only big change that came out of the O'Bannon lawsuit was the cancellation of the continuation of the NCAA football video game. The NCAA football game was one of the most played in the gaming world, but they knew that they could not keep using player likenesses' without paying the players with the issue of paying student athletes at the point that it was at that point with lawsuits against the NCAA becoming normal. The NCAA basketball series had already been cancelled around 5 years prior, as it could already see this problem coming, but it was also due to the fact that it had not made nearly as much revenue off the players as the NCAA football game had. These are not the only strives that have been made since paying student athletes has been an issue. 

There has been some movement towards creating that price floor for student athletes. For big schools and big sports, they get paid a certain amount to get by with things that the normal college kid spends his money one. An example is a North Carolina football player receives eight hundred dollars per month in order to cover things the scholarship does not cover. These things include goods such as food, gas, traveling, etc. Other smaller football schools, such as Georgia Southern University, are beginning to receive costs of attendance. These are starting to move around to different schools and different sports and are almost always varying in the price. Georgia Southern football players, for example, are starting to receive $1800 per semester. That is a pretty drastic difference compared to North Carolina, but that has to do with the amount of revenue the specific sport at the specific school makes, and how much pressure the players have on keeping that revenue going. What the NCAA does not realize is that there is a better way to increase their revenue.

Paying student athletes would not only benefit the players, but it would also benefit the NCAA and its member schools. The way this would work is explained in Louis Barbash's article, Pay or Don't Play. College Basketball has been notoriously known recently for having players who attend school for basically one semester, play one season, and then go on to the NBA draft in order to receive compensation for their play. This has been happening for the last 20 years, causing a descent of college basketball as a sport. Barbash explains how in the 1990's and 2000's, players such as Lebron James skipped college entirely in order to go to the professional level, and how if these players were in college for all four years, receiving at least a little bit of compensation, it would have made college basketball an even bigger superpower than college football is today. Barbash shows this crumble of college basketball as he explains, "For years, NCAA basketball was the only game in town for players with ambitions to play in the NBA. Now, dozens every year desert the college game for ...  the chance to share in the revenues their performances create, and their departures have fractured college basketball" (Barbash 15). The same issue could go for college football, although it is a little less of a problem since the players play for at least three years. College baseball could also go through a major increase in revenue if this plan could get through to the NCAA and its member schools. Baseball is one of the only sports where a player can skip college entirely and be drafted into the minor league system. However, if they received compensation for going to school, it would increase the talent level of college baseball, increasing the amount of viewers it gets, which would increase the revenue. College basketball and baseball would become another revenue juggernaut, like college football, and would give schools even more profit. This expansion in profit would give the schools more of a budget to pay to players and the cycle would continue. This cycle shows a way that benefits all three sides. The players would finally receive compensation for the work they put in, the schools would receive more revenue from its increase in star power and level of play, and the NCAA would improve because more of its Division 1 schools would be profiting. 

A decision on whether or not to pay student athletes could easily be reached if each side could see the benefits that they would receive if they did it the right way. It is a way in which all players in all sports would receive more benefit than they are receiving now. There would be no disadvantages to women or to those sports that make less profit than the big sports. It would increase the ways players could make money as well, by basing it on their level of play, their jerseys, and their autographs. The excuses of free education being good enough, the athletes are just amateurs, and all others, are becoming more and more loose in their truthfulness, and the times are changing to where no one will listen to these excuses. It is time to change the ways college sports work for the sake of college sports. It is time to pay student athletes. There are many theories of how to pay college athletes for the work they put in for their schools, and to also replace the educational and social side that is take away from them, and I believe that combining these theories into a theory that has no flaws could do wonders for making college sports, in general, better. 

