I have chosen the topic "Why D-1 College Football and Basketball Athletes Should Be Paid?" as my research question because I love sports, I watch sports, I have played sports and I have friends who play also.  Watching TV (ESPN, ABC, FOX, ECT) I know the topic on weather college athletes should be payed or not is current and extremely popular.  Citizens, coaches, players, universities and even the government are discussing and arguing about paying college athletes all across the country.

While doing research on this topic I realized that I could narrow this topic to a much more specific group of people. D-1 college football and basketball programs are the only programs that make a profit, therefore those players should be the only ones in discussion of being paid as college athletes. This research helps narrow the scope of my argument significantly. 

I am interested in this topic because I have a lot of background information on college sports. I am aware of how much money can be made off of popular athletes names in college. For example after Johnny Manziel played for Texas A&M in they had enough money to build an entire new stadium and athletic facility in College Station. Another example would be the Fab 5 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They took University of Michigan merchandise sales from 1.5 million dollars a year to 10 million dollars a year. Also the NCAA is a billion dollar empire that has an absurd amount of power and persuasion in our country. This is issue does not directly affect me as a person but it does directly affect everyone that is a sports fan.  

Paying college athletes will have a major negative ripple effect on all college sports. This issue could have many effects on college sports as a whole. If college athletes were to paid universities might have to decrease funding in other sports programs and athletic departments would have to cut other teams/sports all together. Coaches around the country are banning together because they will be out of jobs if athletic departments are forced to make budget cuts. There would be no more swimming, equestrian, volleyball and many other sports that are not as popular as football and basketball.  

If players have the right to advertise themselves, this would cause a much different marketing and economic standpoint on merchandise and TV time for players, agents and universities.   Players would be able to advertise themselves and sponsor themselves. The college sports world as we know it would change if college athletes were to be paid as free market players.

Entering this discussion and topic I am not deeply embedded on either side of the argument. I go back and forth all the time because both sides have so much support that make both claims very hard to rule against. My point of view is that universities make millions of dollars off of certain players and they don't get to see a dollar of that and the NCAA makes around 6 Billion dollars a year and the players are the ones that generate that revenue for them. But on the other side I also understand these players receive a free education, housing, food, medical care and a shot to earn a pro-contract. There are also plenty of cases where four years of college is the only time some players would have a chance to make good money playing a sport they love. Also paying players may create an even more competitive field if there was more money eared if you were to win more games or a system like that.  However the players who would make a lot of money in college should be able to wait a couple of years to make millions.  Going into deeper research on this topic I plan on discovering the answer to this issue. I want to know why college athletes were never payed in the first place if they generated so much money to begin with.  With more information I will be able to make to pick a side and fully support my claim with no hesitation. 

With this argument I plan on accomplishing an end to a major debate in the multi-billion dollar college sports industry. I will be able to effectively answer my research question in an 8-10 page research paper because there is so much material and content on my topic. 8-10 pages will give me the space needed to fully convince anyone that the side I pick is the right answer to this country wide debate. I will be able to include many sources to support my view point. I have found so far that almost every article shows a different set examples and support for their argument. There are so many reasons not to pay college athletes but there are also so many reasons to pay college athletes. Many articles will disagree with each other in one way but agree with each other in another. I will need to shape my research question onto a certain side in order to make it a working thesis for my research paper. The topic 'Why D-1 College Football and Basketball Athletes Should Be Paid?" will be answered thoroughly and clearly in my 8-10 research paper.  
