Professional athletes, part of the top 1% of America in terms of yearly income. College athletes, not paid at all yet, performing the same actions as these professional athletes. The average work week for most Americans in today's world is 40 hours. The same week, millions of college athletes around the United States will be putting in more time, approximately 43.3 hours, between practice, and weight lifting alone. On top of that, they must fulfill the gruesome and stressful tasks that are expected of a normal college student. If it were you doing all of this it may not seem that the free tuition, clothing and food is enough, and that is how many high division 1 college athletes feel right now. This is the issue that interests me most and this is what I will be talking about throughout the rest of my paper, should college athletes be compensated for their efforts. 

I am very interested in this topic. This is because I am an avid sports watcher, whether it be professional sports or college sports I also have a team to root for and an excuse to put off my homework to watch it. In terms of how this topic affects my life, the effects a miniscule as the payment of college athletes no longer affects my lifestyle. I do believe it could affect my environment. Going to a school like South Carolina means that there are a lot of important athletes on campus and if they were being paid big dollars than that may change the way the campus acts and goes about their daily lives. My personal experience with this topic is simple and it also ties in to me being qualified to write about the matter. In my junior and senior years of high school I played varsity basketball and came across several offers to play college basketball. Nothing major just mid-level D3 schools but of course the question was in my mind, what would I get out of it? So as a former athlete I definitely have a stand on the subject and also have a fair amount of knowledge regarding the college sports world. 

The first source I am introducing is an article from the US New debate club. The very question I have asked was put before them. Almost everyone on the board voted yes, college athletes should get paid. All of their reasons seemed to circulate around one major theme, college sports is a business, and a big one at that. During the yearly "March Madness" tournaments "CBS and Turner Broadcasting make more than $1 Billion off of the games thanks in part to a $700,000 ad rate for a 30 second spot during the Final Four" (U.S. News). One billion dollars is just a drop in a bucket compared to the $6 billion dollars the NCAA makes every single year. The credibility is not within question as the Us News is a very liked and reliable source for media and news coverage. As far as biased remarks and decisions go, every person is going to answer this question based off of their own beliefs and life experiences but the presentation of solid facts helps back that up. 

My second source is a Forbes article written by Marc Edelman. Edelman's viewpoint is interesting as he is considering these athletes, employees of the universities that they play for.  "College football players at Northwestern University petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to form a union. The NCAA disagrees with the petition, arguing that the student-athletes are not "employees" under federal law" (Edelman 1). He goes on to state 21 reasons why college athletes are employees of the NCAA and not just student-athletes. One very important point he brings up is in regards to the name "student-athlete" itself. He says "Although the NCAA claims college athletes are just students, the NCAA's own tournament schedules require college athletes to miss classes for nationally televised games that bring in revenue" (Edelman 1). This implies that the student does not come first and making money for the organization is more important than the kids getting an education. He also says "Meanwhile, the annual NCAA men's basketball tournament affects more than six days of classes (truly "Madness" if the players aren't "employees")" (Edelman 2). Forbes itself is an extremely credible source as they have senior writers doing these articles and it is trusted around the world. 

My third and final source is an article from the popular column The New Yorker, written by Ekow Yankah. Which argues the opposite if my other two sources by saying that paying players isn't smart because it does not solve a problem that most of these athletes have and that is how to manage their lives and get an education along with playing the sport they are good at and love. She says "The athletes in major football and men's basketball programs are disproportionately black, many from poor and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. For too many of them, the N.C.A.A. is the only game in town. In some dispiriting cases, the students are so unprepared that academic failure seems inevitable. In worse cases still, their scholarships are cynically undermined by the schools themselves. Coaches steer students into empty classes, or supply so-called academic support that amounts to cheating. It hardly seems coincidental, then, that sports with less African-American participation, such as baseball and hockey, maintain robust minor-league systems without the national gnashing of teeth" (Yankah 1). She goes on to say "And yet I believe that the drive to pay college athletes is a grave mistake -- not because it misdiagnoses the disease but because it suggests that the only cure is to put the patient out of his misery. It fails, first of all, to recognize the value of sports as a part of education" (Yankah 1). This addresses appropriately the issue of student-athletes doing a lot of the athlete part and little to none of the student part of that agreement. This source is very liable because the New Yorker is a respected and very prestigious column.

This research question is arguable because, as you can see, there are two sides to this subject. Each side has a reasonable explanation for why their side is correct and one side has years of history on its side. In the end this may be a subject that gets ruled on many different times and may continue to go back and forth. Two of my three sources were for playing the players and both of them came to this conclusion based on the same grounds. The grounds of the sources do not affect my stand on the issue at all. As it stands my point of view is the same as the two sources that had the same ideas. My research question is broad but I believe that it has to be considering it is dealing with a very large entity (NCAA) that controls everything underneath of it. I could possibly narrow it down to one or two sports and focus on the most profitable sports in the country such as basketball and football. 

