The idea of paying student athletes at the college level is an extremely controversial topic that is widely debated by universities and the athletes themselves. From a student athlete's point of view, they deserve to be compensated for all of their work that makes many large corporations mass amounts of money and that playing a sport at this level is similar to being employed, as they put in hundreds of hours of work in and out of season. People that oppose granting student athletes with a salary argue that it's a choice to play a sport and that they will be stealing money from people that are dependent on universities and the education department.  With NCAA revenues for football and men's basketball reaching 757 million dollars in 1999, which excludes revenues by television networks and jersey sales, the market for college athletics is huge and growing every day (Johnson). The National College Athletic Association or NCAA has more than 1300 member institutions and represents over 400,000 students, making the issue of paying students much more significant. Universities and corporations are profiting hundreds of millions of dollars from college athletics and it is unfair for the players to be taken advantage for their commitment and not be compensated with money. College athletes deserve to be rewarded and properly reimbursed for all of the profits that they produce for their schools.

An analogy often used to compare the NCAA and large athletic programs to students is the plantation system similar to what was used in the old south (Johnson). The NCAA uses athletes as unpaid workers to generate extremely large profits. The student athletes are usually given scholarships and reduced tuition for their participation to the school team, but the amount of profit they create as an individual heavily outweighs what they are being given in scholarships. Most scholarships, even at the highest level which is a full ride average out to around 40,000 dollars, where as in 2005, a draft ready football player would return around 495,000 dollars to the university. Whereas a draft ready basketball player could produce $1.422 million dollars back to the university (Johnson). The NCAA takes complete advantage over students because they limit the amount a university can give a student by only allowing them to be compensated by tuition, while members of the NCAA reap the benefits. It is not only the NCAA and universities that benefit more than the athletes, but the coaches too. When comparing coaches and players workload at "1000 hours per year and an average scholarship value, economist Richard Sheehan calculated the basic hourly wage of a college basketball player at $6.82 and a football player at $7.69. Coaches' hourly wages, on the other hand, ranged from $250-$647 per hour" which would vary among the different salaries of coaches (Johnson). Coaches and athletes usually have a great relationship through the sport, but financially, coaches are using their players at their complete advantage to more than often generate a hefty salary.  Athletes are stuck with no choice but to accept this system because fighting the situation could be result in being put in an even worse scenario if they happened to lose their scholarship and even their enrollment in the university. Education is very important and valued just as much as their sport because in many cases, the athletics is the reason these students are enrolled at the university in the first place. 

The NCAA as a cartel engaged in capitalism is a concept that can no longer be ignored. The NCAA uses players as their workers and offer them no rights, but control the flow of all money. Many economists who have studied the NCAA have discovered that they "attempt to produce rents, both by limiting payments for inputs such as player compensation and by limiting output". The NCAA controls all inputs, meaning they can modify player's scholarships, suspend player and endanger schools academic credibility. The system in which this organization is run is corrupt because it can target a low income student, relying on a scholarship to attend a school. The NCAA, which is mostly a "white establishment maintaining an elaborate system of rules" governs a student-athlete body "many of whom are non-white, of adequate financial support in the name of the ideals of amateurism"(Johnson). This system leaves the athlete with no choice but to comply or risk a once in a lifetime opportunity of attending college with reduced tuition. Although attending a university sounds like a great advantage for students who can't afford college, there is an entire issue that underlies the process of granting athletes with scholarships and other forms of reduced tuition.

Many people would argue that student athletes are playing sports as a privilege and should focus on education more than the contribution of sports. The issue at hand is that there is an academic detachment involved with student athletes where they cannot use all that the universities offer to because of their sizable time commitment.  Since they are not, by law, under a contract of employment, they are not given the rights to be paid even though "The typical Division I college football player devotes 43.3 hours per week to his sport  --  3.3 more hours than the typical American work week" (Edelman). This is a substantial amount of time taken away from these students to use for academics, which is unfair to not be compensated for. Student athletes are lead to believe that they can express full commitment to their sport and easily obtain a degree once they graduate. Athletes are swarmed with sport related activities which include practices, work outs, individual training and film study, all taking away from time to focus on academics. Students and coaches plan to create class schedules that do not interfere with practice and sport related events, and are encouraged to drop classes that can interfere with the sport. This idea is abused by most athletic departments, misleading the athletes to believe that their sport should come before school, making it the student's number one priority. This is one of the reasons for a lower graduation rate of athletes compared to non-athletes "where the graduation rate was 31-40% for black football players compared to 60-70% of white football players" (Johnson). This small scale survey can't be conclusive for all schools but it is evident that there is a correlation between lower graduation rates for student athletes. The problem lower graduation rate and sports being a higher priority than education must be resolved in a situation where athletes are reimbursed for lack of education with money. Many non-athletes will have an advantage over athletes because they were able to use their full potential in class rather than forced to do so with their sports team. Athletes are misled before attending college and will continue to be treated unfairly until they are properly compensated for their lack of ability to perform at full potential in class.

The decision to pay college athletes would come with hundreds of standards and regulations at question. The first step into a new NCAA where college athletes would be able to accept a salary would be to start with Division I football and basketball players, where the greatest amount of revenue is created. They technically do have the right to a salary or wage because "according to the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago an "employee" is a person who [1] is under contract of hire to [2] perform services for another, [3] subject to the employer's control, and [4] in return for payment" (Murphy). But addressing this for Division II and III sports that don't generate even fractions of what Division I sports that are televised daily is an issue for the future, after allowing players of large universities to accept payment. On a legal standpoint, as of now, paying athletes is illegal due to antitrust laws which are created to keep fair competition between schools recruiting. But these laws are actually hypocritical because they "have resulted in inevitable rules violations" in which players take money under the table, which comes with serious consequences including expulsion from the NCAA and fines to the university (Mitchell 207). The result is college athletes increasing participation in criminal activity which furthermore causes economic insufficiency because of "resource misallocations" (Mitchell 207). The NCAA rules have been considered flagrant because they encourage players to disobey laws in order to benefit themselves for what they have not been compensated with financially. Reported in 1990 by NCAA news, "fifty seven percent of the 101 division I-A were either censured, sanctioned or put on probation at least once within the last decade" because they were attempting to make cash ranging from selling shoes to game tickets provided by the school. The NCAA rules preventing players from earning money promote more illegal activity, than prevent it. College athletes don't need tens of millions of dollars, but simple adjustments to regulations and rules could solve problems from illegal activity to compensating time commitment. 

Defining amateurism is very important in deciding whether or not athletes competing in the Division 1 sports leagues are being exploited for their participation in the highest level of college athletics. The concept of amateurism, in comparison to professional has been widely used throughout the NCAA since the early 1900s when determining payment rights for students (Miller). Although in the early 1900s, college athletics was considered an extracurricular activity, aside from academics, not the other way around. Since then, college athletics has become an enormously profitable organization, which is seemingly less "amateur" when observed at the highest level. Since the early 1900's "popularity and revenues increased ...  and athletes were given incentives such as free room, board, and tuition" and the NCAA changed their view of players to student athletes, and the term amateur began to fade as competition arose. Over the 1900s until present day, student athletes play in "new football stadiums and new $200 million dollar basketball arenas" and use "state-of-the-art medical and dental equipment" (Johnson). Players are no longer competing at an amateur level, they are training with and playing inside professional level stadiums and being televised nationally. Also, football and men's basketball ticket sales "exceeded the total ticket sales for all of professional baseball, football, and hockey that year" so it is unclear why these student athletes are not treated like professionals and get to keep a cut of the money they produce (Johnson). Student athletes that compete at this high of a level and perform in arenas the size of and sometimes larger than professional arenas, deserve to be treated like professionals. These athletes are truly exploited and used to strictly to bring in money to the executives of the universities and athletic apartments.

The fault of exploiting student athletes lies directly on the hands of the NCAA and universities. College athletics is a billion dollar industry where almost all of the money is created by athletes who don't legally receive a penny of those profits. If athletes are treated like professionals in the way they train, devote their time and nationally televised, they should be compensated in a similar manner. Paying student athletes tens of millions of dollars is seemingly too much for a student enrolled at a university and is not the issue that needs more awareness. But starting with small amounts of payment to the highest of competitors in Division 1 sports is a place to start to make up for stealing the profits they produce. One may argue paying athletes would steal from teachers and non-athlete students. But, it is always and will continue to be unclear how much of athletic profits is used in the betterment of education, which will always lead to a grey area of argument between athletes and employees of the university. Pay proposals for student athletes will be vastly different when the time comes and athletes receive salaries. The solution is not to instantly jump on board to start paying college athletes, but is to raise awareness for athletes that are being exploited in big time sports. The answer is to pay members of teams that generate huge profits, and only pay enough to compensate for lack in education and free time. 

