How much should a college football player make yearly? The answer is that they should make nothing more than they already do. Collegiate athletes are already making the price of tuition yearly and they receive weekly stipends for food and other necessities. Until the past couple of years, students weren't even getting weekly stipends for food, but this was a necessary step that the NCAA felt like it needed to make in order to improve the lives of college athletes. This was absolutely the right thing to do and it was a necessary change to college sports. "In 1906, President Teddy Roosevelt formed the NCAA to improve safety in college football" and today, only 110 years later, the NCAA is making nearly a billion dollars a year. (At Issue) Some may argue that student athletes are being exploited by NCAA for financial gain, while those people may be right, these student athletes knew what they signed up for when they decided to play college sports. Student athletes should not be compensated with more than a scholarship and food stipends because they aren't ready for the responsibility that amount of money would bring and the college's first priority is to educate students, not pay athletes. There are many reasons to pay college athletes, but there are more reasons not to. These reasons include that they are still amateurs and aren't playing at the highest level, they are too immature and not ready for serious money, it would create an uneven playing field among major college athletics, it would take away from other sports, and it would take away the value of a scholarship and put less value on education. 

Collegiate athletes are amateurs and should be compensated as such. According to Horace Mitchell, President of California State University, Bakersfield, student-athletes aren't professionals, they are students receiving a college education through their participation in sports. The Collegiate sport is the student's vehicle to a higher education degree (Mitchell). A college education is undervalued and it is up to the athletes to take advantage of the education they are given. Athletes are given this education for free, while others go into debt in order to receive their education. Many athletes feel as though they are being taken advantage of by the NCAA. When they sign their letter of intent to sign with a school, they are also signing away their likeness to the NCAA until they are no longer apart of that institution. Participation in sport is voluntary and the athletes can choose to quit at any point if they feel like they are being treated unfairly by the NCAA. Students don't get paid to go to class, so athletes shouldn't get paid for playing a sport in college. Students have to wait to get an education and move on to become a professional in their field in order to earn money. Athletes must finish their "training" in college and if they are ready to become professionals in their sport, they become professionals to get paid. Often times, when athletes do become professionals, they get paid extremely well. After that, it is up to them to be able to maintain their money. According to Leigh Steinberg of Forbes, an estimated 80 percent of all retired NFL players go bankrupt within the first three years that they are out of the league (Steinberg). Most athletes go to the pros too young and never learn how to manage money. This is another reason college athletes shouldn't get paid; they are too immature and haven't learned how to handle large amounts of money. 

A large amount of professional athletes, especially in major sports, quickly become bankrupt after retiring. This is due to the lack of education in money management and the lack of skills to work any other job. Many college athletes take their education for granted and don't realize how valuable the education is until it is too late. This is a major problem among NFL, NBA, and MLB players where the athletes come out of college at an early age and don't complete their degree. These athletes have trouble finding work after their playing days are over and then they can't get a job that pays well because they don't have the skills or the degree. If student-athletes were paid, there would be no motivation for them to learn and their education would lose a lot of value. Some of the top athletic programs have shown that they don't value the education of athletes at all. Students are steered into fake or empty classes; UNC's "shadow curriculum" is an example of this (Yankah). On top of the tens of thousands of dollars that their scholarship is worth, they would make a salary on top of that. Why even send them to college? According to Scholarship Stats, the average athletic scholarship is worth upwards of 14 thousand dollars, and for football and men's basketball players, it is even more. Last year, in the United States, "the typical American family income was $53,657"(Luhby). At some universities, this amount is met in either a football or basketball scholarship. Do college athletes deserve the more than the "average" American family earns annually? Large amounts of money should come after you complete or move on from college, once the athlete learns how to manage money and can get a job in the future in something other than sports. If schools could pay their athletes, there would be a vast difference in the quality of the top teams and the middle level teams. 

If college athletes were paid, that would be the end of competition between the Power Five Conference schools and all the other schools. In college football, teams like Alabama, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, and USC would never have off years. These universities have much larger athletic budgets than most other schools. They would be able to afford the biggest and best high school players and could offer the players more money and incentives than the smaller schools who wouldn't be able to compete. Trying to regulate the payment among all of the sports would be just too difficult. How would the amount of money allotted for each sport be determined? Kieran McCauley, a writer for Daily Local News, asks "would all the athletes get paid the same amount?" He believes it would be unfair because he doesn't think an athlete who competes for a sport that isn't televised should get paid "the same amount as [a] college football player competing in the National Championship with 33 million people watching them"(McCauley). There are very few universities that actually make a profit from athletics, and those select schools would be allowed to give much more to the incoming recruits. "According to Jeffrey Dorfman, only a few collegiate sports actually bring in money"(Patterson), this leaves the smaller schools, that do not rely on athletics, at a major disadvantage and the gap in quality of teams would grow vastly. This would take away much of the excitement from collegiate sports, because they would no longer be collegiate sports. This would turn collegiate athletics into professional sports or semi-professional sports. Players would play just for the paycheck and not for the pride in their school or for the hunger to get to the next level. The biggest question would end up being, who do you pay and how much? The only logical way to determine the answer to that question would be to give money to the athletes that are bringing in money. 

Giving money only to the football and basketball players would definitely take away from other sports. With the amount of money that those programs make, smaller sports wouldn't be able to be funded if the football and basketball players were getting paid. The profit the sports bring in would most likely all go to the athletes and their salaries. If other sports got cut, participation would decrease drastically and participation in those sports prior to college would also decline. There is no need to take away other sports just to make the athletes of two or three sports happy. If schools choose to pay players of every sport equally, there wouldn't be enough money in the budget to cover the cost. If cutting sports is the only way to have enough income to pay players, it isn't worth it. Participation for those sports would decline across the board and could have major long term repercussions, from youth sports to professional sports. If these athletes are receiving a scholarship earning and a salary and are causing the downfall of other sports, is that fair? No money for scholarships in other sports would put many students out of scholarships and possibly destroy their only opportunity for an education. Students from other sports tend to take their education more seriously and it is not right to ruin their opportunity and their education just to pay amateur athletes who aren't at the school for an education. Schools have to make money of some athletes to be able to fund other sports and, in some cases, to fund scholarships for other students and provide more and  more opportunities for success. Education among athletes today is extremely undervalued. 

Today, many collegiate football and basketball players leave college early to get their shot in the pros. This is a problem that is more prevalent in men's basketball than any other sport. In men's college basketball, there is a rule that an athlete can leave after his freshman year and declare for the draft. This encourages more and more athletes to leave without getting their education. In college football and baseball, players are required to stay at least three years in college before they are eligible to declare for the draft. Players rarely get degrees in basketball and even in football, more and more players are leaving college before they get their degrees due to the risk of injury and the large amounts of money the National Football League (NFL) throws at the kids entering the pros. More value needs to be placed on getting a college degree than playing sports. Many students struggle to pay their way through school, many coming out with loads of debt. Many of the scholarships given to athletes could be given to students and made better use of and be more valued than giving them to some athletes that don't even show up to class. In a CNN video hosted by Sara Ganim, former NBA great, Dominique Wilkins, said he thinks kids sometimes come out a little too early because they see dollar signs and want to make as much money as they can and as quickly as they can (Ganim). There are many counter arguments that are for paying college athletes, these include: NCAA is taking advantage of them, they are bringing in millions for their universities, and some think it might create a sense of financial awareness. 

Although the cons outweigh the pros, there are pros to paying college athletes. Many people think that the NCAA is making too much money off of the collegiate athletes and that some of that money should go to them. It may not be morally okay, but the student-athletes sign away their likeness to the NCAA when they sign with a university. This means the NCAA basically owns them. Football and basketball players and programs bring in large amounts of money for their universities and many think they should receive a percentage of that money. They are compensated very well in scholarship money and in stipends they receive for food and other necessities. Even if they don't stay all four years and receive their degree, they were awarded a college experience, an opportunity for education, and a chance to showcase their abilities at the college level. Many people also think that "if schools were to begin paying players, they could also help these students build a foundation of financial literacy"(Patterson). I don't think that would change much in their financial education. They would have to learn to manage money and that happens in the education process. It helps to have experience, but when they are making much more money, they will still run into problems. They will make questionable investments, have more and more people asking for money, and, if they hire the wrong person, they will have a questionable money manager or investor.

Another point that many people make is that if the athletes are paid, they might stay in school longer. According to Jay Bilas, college basketball analyst for ESPN, "they may decide, 'You know what, I'm making money here.' When you start making money, then you can go when you're ready."(Peebles) The counter argument here is that when young kids see greater amounts of money thrown at them, they will still leave and chase after as much money as they can. I do believe that there are pros to paying college athletes, but for every good thing there is a negative and since they haven't been paid for, there is nothing to say that anything is definitely going to happen. There can be speculation, but it can be questioned because it isn't proven; it's just that, speculation. There is always a counter argument to whatever the speculation is, and that is why the cons outweigh the pros on the issue of paying college athletes. 

The payment of college athletes isn't a good idea for the future of college athletics. In the past year or two, they made some necessary steps for the student-athletes, but they need to be taken any further. In the past year or two, they allowed universities to give student-athletes weekly stipends of a few hundred dollars or so for food and other necessities. College athletes get free tuition, room and board, food, and now they have money for entertainment and other little things. Playing a sport is like having a job, but for people to say that they don't get paid is absurd. While they may not get a weekly paycheck of a large amount of money, they get a lot of perks and just about everything they do is paid for by the university. Look at how many allegations have come out about recruiting violations and athletes getting paid for something they weren't supposed to do. They are young and when they get any fame or fortune, they show it off and they let the money get the best of them. They don't have their values in the front of their mind and they seem to have a skewed idea of what is important in life. This is where there immaturity kicks in and people remember that they are in fact just kids, amateurs in their sport. 

The goal for most of the student-athletes is to make it to the next level. That is the goal for most high school athletes as well, should they be paid to play in high school too? Collegiate sports is just a stepping stone to the next level, or the pros, as high school or AAU is a stepping stone to college. Although there are many reasons to pay college athletes, there are many more reasons not to. A year or two ago, I would have taken take the opposite side of this argument. Going through the struggle of finding out ways to pay for college and being in school and understanding the value of a college education and experience is invaluable. It is the athlete's fault for not taking full advantage of the amazing opportunity they have to gain the experience and education at absolutely no cost to them. Not paying athletes is the right thing to do for the benefit of the greatest number of people. It is up to the athletes to adjust and learn from those who came before them and utilize the opportunity that they have when they receive a scholarship to go to a prestigious university and learn with some of the brightest minds and to do it for no cost. Collegiate athletes are and always will be amateur athletes and that is all that needs to be said on the issue of paying college athletes.  

