The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) is an association that identifies itself as nonprofit and regulates over 460,000 student athletes. When discussing the question on whether the organization's athletes should get paid, the common attitude is black and white; pay these students or do not pay them. As an author from the Charlotte Observer stated, the question should be rephrased as to not indicate a mandate but rather an opportunity (Bilas). Now the inquiry is refined to be asking whether or not college athletes should be allowed to get paid. I argue that these sportspersons deserve the right to be paid because of the afflicted financial state of both the past and present for these players, the changed nature of the NCAA becoming big business instead of an amateur organization, and by moral fairness when compared to the freedom their peers have. 

The reality for many of these athletes is that they go through financial hardships in college. One popular example of this is when Shabazz Napier, former point guard of the Miami Heat, gave an interview to the press about his days in University of Connecticut (UConn). He recalls "We do have hungry nights that we don't have enough money to get food in. Sometimes money is needed ... Sometimes there's hungry nights where I'm not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities" (Sherman). Though Napier's recollection went viral throughout various mediums of the media, he isn't the only one to publicly speak out about the adversities. Dominic Sylvester, an offensive lineman for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, tells his story. 

"A good pair of shoes for me, which are hard to find because of my size, can cost $150," said Sylvester, an accounting major, who is 6 feet 4, 315 pounds. "You make them last and last. I don't have a lot of extra money to buy new ones. I've burned the rubber out. They don't have holes in them, but they are getting there" (Glier).

Thus, not only are these players short on money when it comes to basic necessities but also when it comes to the program which they are actively participating in. If the student wants to play to his/her full ability then proper equipment and gear is needed but as Sylvester pointed out, the student has to pay for themselves in order to get adequate shoes. These are just two sports participants that illustrate how unfavorable the economic situation can be for them and their peers. 

However, the monetary misfortunes don't end there for these individuals. The National College Players Association released a report in which two of their conclusions were 86% of college athletes live below the poverty line and the average out of pocket expenses for each fulltime scholarship athletes was $3,222 (Hayes). But while these players are suffering in the present, they also did not have that much money to bring with them into college. Dr. Boyce Watkins, from Syracuse University, says that "a large percentage of the athletes who actually earn the money have families who live in poverty (Watkins)". Hence it has been revealed that while in the present these individuals can't afford items to help them live and work but they also cannot escape the reality of their misfortunate financial past and its carryon to the present. These sports competitors at least deserve the chance to be allowed to be compensated in order to increase their standard of living. 

The NCAA's core principal is that its program is based on amateurism, not professionalism. What this means is that people who participate in the sports program are doing it for the sake of playing and for the desire to play the sport. Money is not a factor for playing in the NCAA. The fact of the matter however is the opposite. The nature of the association has become more professional with the recent actions it has been taking. Large amounts of money are involved with the NCAA as, in 2011, $757 million was made through T.V. and marketing rights, championship revenues, and other services (Schlabach). Additionally, in 2010, the NCAA announced that they had signed a nearly $11 billion deal with CBS and Turner Sports for TV rights to 68 team tournament (O'Toole). These are not the characteristic of an organization whose foundation is amateurism but rather whose foundation is on professionalism. This fits right into the capitalistic ideology of supply and demand. The market depends on whether or not there is a demand for a good/service and whether or not it will be supplied. If the service (in this case the service is the players playing sports) is supplied, more money is made for the supplier. This might be the natural evolution of the NCAA, but the idea that it is still an amateur association is not true. 

Another field which exposes the status of amateurism of the NCAA is the players' lives. For the average college football player, up until the season starts they have to put 50-60 hours into work of preparation for the season (Isidore). Once the season begins they have to put in 40-50 hours for the sport but they also have classes to take as well. The life of an average college athlete has enough work that the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago deemed college athletes as "employees" (Tarm). Employees are usually involved in a professional entity (like a company or enterprise) and they are required to be paid. So even though college athletes are technically employees and therefore are technically in a professional organization, they should at least be given the mere right to be permitted to get money for their service. 

A questionable moral standard exists in the NCAA institutions. At any given university, students are allowed to receive money for activities they do that are related to their field of study. One of the columnists at ESPN, Michael Wilbon, drew a parallel from sports to music and journalism. He writes 

"If a music student goes out in the summer and earns 50 grand, who objects? Who even knows? The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can" (Wilbon).

The official NCAA rule is that college athletes are not allowed to make money off of their playing sports which means accepting money as gifts, selling autographs, having contact with an agent, etc. (Locke). If they break this rule they are no longer amateurs and thus risk losing their place in the NCAA (because the association is supposed to be amateur). Since this is the case there is a great deal of unfairness going on because these athletes are students also and their peers have a right that they do not have: to profit off of the activities they are doing in their respective fields. This is a one-sided affair and should be changed. 

The unfairness doesn't stop at the rights of the students though. There are a lot of people making money off of college sports. Football coaches Charlie Strong, Nick Saban, and Bret Bielema make more than $5 million a year (Kingkade). 6 other coaches make around $4 million per year. There are also around 34 college basketball coaches who make $1 million or more annually. This is significantly more than these coaches' colleagues (the professors) who make $50,032 - $126,981 per year (Kingkade). But in spite of all this money making, the athletes do not get any of the money for themselves. It is true that most of the NCAA revenue does go to the colleges to go for student assistance (however 60% of that revenue goes to division I schools) but they do not get monetary rewards for their hard work. As stated before, most of the sports participants in college live in poverty as well as their families so it is morally wrong to have a certain group of people profiting from the work of another group of people while the latter party needs the money more than the former. 

Nonetheless there is another angle to this disputed topic and it uses three common points to help maintain the status quo. First, there is a fear that if the college athletes are allowed to be paid, then the value of sports would be corrupted and money would always be associated with sports. In her piece on the student news organization for Elon University, Kate Murphy believes that if the athletes can be paid, "Then the pure love gets lost (Murphy). Participating in college sports is not easy but that is the point. She goes on to thoroughly explain 

"It's about the feeling of pride and the intense, passionate gratification that winning brings. Do it for the competition, the suspense, the strength, the sacrifice, and the glory. Life is about making sacrifices ...  It's about the grind. The 5 a.m. workouts that take every ounce of will to wake up for, the pain that comes with a hit ... " (Murphy). 

The big idea here is that the value of sports is intangible but if society makes the value of sports tangible (i.e. involve money) then the raw core of sports has been perverted. This is the last thing society wants sports to become as it is one of that last remaining links to unite people from around the globe. 

The second common argument against giving the student athletes the monetary right is that the value of college education would diminish as a result of this right going into effect. Athletes who play for a college are first and foremost students and the job of a student is to study and get an education. Josh Cooper, from BDL Sports, clearly points out that 

"What people forget about college athletes is that they are student athletes. The word student comes first before athlete. In college, they are students just like everyone else. No one gets paid to get that A+ or to get that pat on the back for doing well on a test or on an activity at school" (Cooper). 

 Cooper furthermore expounds on his point by stating in college one is supposed to learn to grow up and learn what it takes to earn a living. College is supposed to teach a student to be disciplined but discipline doesn't come easy when one is getting paid a lot of money (Cooper). An author at DailyLocalNews, Kieran McCauley, reinforces Cooper's point by declaring college to be a place to earn a degree and for people to jumpstart their careers (McCauley). These students should realize that the primary reason for their being at college is to receive a higher education and get them ready for the real world, not to play sports.

The last prevailing component of this counterargument is that when it comes to the economic situation of these athletes, it is not as bad as it seems. These players get into the university at the expense of the college because their tuition and other expenses are already paid for through sports scholarship. The situation for these athletes seems good since the average debt for a student that spends 4 years at college is about $32,528. McCauly goes on to state that "plenty of college students would be happy to play a sport for four years if it meant they did not have to take on that financial hardship" (McCauley). The author of this DailyLocalNews article is implying that not only are the college sports participants not suffering financially but they are actually lucky that they don't have to walk out of college with over $32,000 in student debt. Since they have all this financial aid, why pay them?

Despite all the reasoning against giving these individuals the controversial right, the backbone of the counterargument's position is not solid. The first component of the counterclaim describes a hypothetical of what would happen if the right was allowed. Other than the fact that this hypothetical has not been proven, it ignores the current reality. The fact of the matter is that as the NCAA matured, it became more professional and not amateur. As a result it is hard to blame a college athlete using the program as a gateway towards professional sports instead of playing the sport for the sake of playing. The second part of this opposing argument is that the value of college education will decrease if the right is permitted. However this is also a hypothetical and has yet to be proven. In fact part of the reasoning behind this aspect of the counterargument is flawed. If college is supposed to help discipline a student then paying the students would have the potential to help with the discipline process and help prepare them for the real world because if one does what they're supposed to do, he/she gets paid but if they screw up, then do not pay them. The third element of the countercharge is also logically flawed. An assumption is made that all college athletes get in with full scholarships and all their expenses are paid. This is only an assumption and has not proved that all college athletes get in a complete scholarship. But even if this was true, it was stated earlier that the average amount of money a college athlete pays out of pocket after a full scholarship is over $3,000 a year. Furthermore, it was also stated earlier that 86% of these college players live below the poverty line, illustrating the fact that they are going through economic hardships. Though the counterargument might seemed reasonable at the first take, after logically dissecting it, it does not seem like a good idea. 

Therefore, after weighing both sides of the pendulum, the better solution is to allow the right for college athletes to be compensated for their service. They cannot escape their past and present socio-economic reality, the NCAA has developed itself to go away from amateurism, and it is morally right to give them this freedom. Moreover these are only 3 points that were discussed which indeed means there is more support for this proposition. Even though this topic has been debated for decades, the answer still holds true for back then and now and possibly the future. Only with good intentions for this idea can people believe the sincerity of the position that is taken an extra step towards freedom in sports. The next step forward is for the community to contact local collegiate officials and reveal to them the voices of the public and urge them to take another look at the current rules that are in place. If change can happen in the arena of the multibillion dollar sports industry, the realm of possibility for society is limitless. 

