As a major sports fan, I have always been intrigued by the controversy over paying college athletes.  When I began to look for a research question, this immediately came to the front of my mind.  The idea of compensating college athletes for the extremely large amount of revenue they produce for their institution's athletic department has been one of the most talked about sports controversies in recent years. Aside from the fact that I'm attracted to learn about controversial sport topics, this research question also intrigued me because I am finally a college student and can relate to the same difficulties that college athletes face.  For example, the busy schedule of college students causes them to not have enough time to have a job to make a little extra money.  I have a part time job where I work 10-20 hours a week, and I have now experienced first-hand as a college student that it is very difficult to fit this into my schedule with so much time being put towards academics.  I cannot even imagine adding in playing a college sport into my schedule, where many hours a week are devoted to practicing and getting ready for the sport.  

The research that I have done so far about this topic has only motivated me to learn even more about it.  One of the things that has surprised me the most through my research so far is just seeing exactly how much money is involved with college sports.  The popularity of college sports, football and basketball in particular, has caused there to be billion dollar deals between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and television networks for broadcasting rights for college games.  The amount of money that coaches make is also something that surprised me in my research.  I am not a college athlete and I do not ever plan to play a college sport or coach a college team, so this topic does not exactly affect me much.  I am a big college sports fan, but I would still not be considered a major stakeholder in this topic.  However, I do personally know a few NCAA Division I athletes, so it would be pretty cool to seem them get paid while playing in college.  

For this research question, I did not come into the research with a very strong opinion.  I have always recognized that the two main sides of this question are very strong arguments, and it is hard to disagree with either side.  However, after the research I now fully think that some college athletes deserve to and should be paid.  I can avoid being bias by recognizing the many good points as to why college athletes should not be getting paid, but by also looking at the points that suggest they should be paid. It is important that both sides of the argument are looked at equally.  As of now, I do not know exactly how much revenue is generated for universities by each sport.  I am looking forward to learning which sports produce the most money and see which athletes are the most important.  This would be important because the smaller sports don't generate nearly as much money as football, but they still might produce a very significantly large amount.  

In my argument for the research paper, I hope to be able to inform people with the facts regarding this controversial issue.  With these facts that I will present, I hope to prove to others that there should be college athletes getting paid and that it is possible to start happening in the near future.  I think it will be easy to write 8-10 pages on this question because there are several different factors and variables that go into college athletics.  Even if it is agreed upon that college athletes should get paid, there are still many questions to be brought up after that conclusion.  Who will pay the athletes? How much should they get paid? Is it even possible?  These are just a few of many questions that are derived from this topic.  In the sources that I have researched so far, there have been agreements and disagreements.  Most of my sources have said that the college athletes should be paid something.  However, it is disagreed upon on who they should be paid by.  Some sources say that the colleges should be the ones paying their athletes while other sources have said that the NCAA should be the one paying the athletes.  I could make this research even better by expanding it to asking whether the universities or the NCAA should be paying the athletes if it is decided that they should be paid.  Right now the research question appears in the middle on the scope spectrum, towards the complex side on the complexity spectrum and in the middle of the controversial spectrum.  As of now, my research question could be seen as a yes or no question.  This may be true to a certain extent, but it is still a question that is open and very controversial, so it's not like my question can be answered by someone looking it up on google.  The two main arguments for this research question are that college athletes should be paid or that college athletes should not be paid.  However, there is another side that I can look at, which is paying some college athletes and not others.  This brings even more scope and even more controversy into my research question, and I will strive to take this argument very seriously in my actual research paper.
