The topic that I have been researching is the ongoing debate over whether or not college athletes should be paid, and if so why? I say that athletes at a college level do deserve compensation. I have found that there are a lot more arguments in favor of athletes getting paid than there are opposing arguments. Across all of my articles, they have been able to come to an agreement that athletes do need to receive pay on at a college level. They have also all shared a common point; the NCAA makes way too much money, to not be providing the players who make them this money any share of it. The NCAA signed a contract with CBS in 2014 for $11 billion dollars. The NCAA would not make a single penny without these athletes, yet the athletes are never compensated for their hard work. The universities themselves do not have the means of money to pay their athletes without help. The NCAA has plenty of money to distribute amongst the universities so that athletes can be rewarded for their hard work and time they dedicate to their sport. 

Having two older brothers I started playing sports at the age of two, which is one of the reasons I found this topic very intriguing. Dating a guy who is a college athlete has also given me tons of insight on how much time and how hard a college athlete has to work. I am qualified to write about this topic because I have done lots of research pertaining to the argument and have made sure all of the factual evidence is true and it is.  These men playing football have are busy from 6 am until as late as 9 pm on some nights of the week.; and I'm sure all other athletes follow a similar routine.  This topic stood out to me because I think it is just entirely wrong that the NCAA makes all this money off of these college athletes, but doesn't compensate them for anything. The NCAA seems to have forgotten that their source of income would be completely cut off if there were no college athletes.

Dave Zirin, who is an economist writes about how the NCAA is so strictly enforcing the rule stating college athletes can't be paid simply so they wont have to give up any of their money. He believes if this rule didn't exist, than college athletes would most definitely be paid. He proposes a simple solution saying the best way to put this into effect would be to have it be on a conference level. Each specific conference as a whole would decide whether to pay their students or not, and the economists strongly believes that most all conference would decide yes. The great thing about this article is that this economist attacks almost every possible argument an individual could make against paying college athletes and states why that argument is incorrect and would not hold up in court.  He talks about how coaches and athletic directors are being paid way too much money and are receiving the money the athletes should be receiving for their REAL talent. He bashes the athletic directors saying they don't possess the REAL talent that the athletes do. This article really is not bias because it is very factual and he is just being very "matter of fact". 

An ESPN commentator, Michael Wilbon proposes another route as for paying college athletes. In his article he also brings up the contract that the NCAA made with CBS for $11 billion and talks about how some of that money should be set aside for the athletes. His belief is different from the other articles in that he believes that the athletes paying for revenue-producing teams should receive pay. He thinks trying to distribute pay equally amongst athletes is impossible and wrong.  His mentality is that too bad so sad if your not doing as well as one of your teammates the players doing the best should get paid and no one else. While this is unfair he has a point, I'm not saying he's write or that I agree but I think I can take arguments from his article and use them to my advantage. This article is definitely biased, but it's also true which makes it credible.  However I believe for his theory on how to pay athletes isn't ever going to work because it's way too unfair. I included it to show the broad groups of people who are going against the NCAA and siding with the athletes. 

A former athlete wrote a blog on the Huffington Post presenting his arguments as for why college athletes should be paid. His main arguments were that playing a sport in college is a full time job, which it is, and players don't have time to have real jobs like regular students to make money to buy a nice meal.  He also talks about how people argue most athletes get scholarships but the players don't receive a single penny of that money for themselves. His main argument was that college athletes don't need to receive an excessive amount of money they just deserve to get money to have to spend on food and outside activities they want to participate in. 

Here's the deal, I am not arguing that college athletes need to be paid excessive amounts of money, like athletes at a professional level are. The articles I have presented and my argument is that college athletes need to be paid, as one article said, just $2000 a semester to cover food and a few leisure activities outside of their sport. These athletes are participating a full time job playing a sport in college and are making the NCAA tons of money but aren't seeing any of their hard work and time dedication in dollar form. Every single one of my articles I found all agreed that the NCAA makes a large amount of money and has more than enough to pay these athletes for their hard work. Yes they don't all agree on how it should be done, but they do agree that it needs to be done. I agree most with the economist who said that the NCAA should sponsor whichever conferences decide to pay their athletes. This would mean leaving it up to the conference to make the call on whether or not they pay their athletes taking away some of the power from the NCAA. 
