The NCAA made 989 million dollars in 2014, in that same year the players who made the games so exciting and the market so viable, did not make a penny of that. The gap between these numbers being so large showcases the injustice that is being done to these student-athletes. While the NCAA, the coaches, and even their universities make millions off of their hard work, they are not being given any of the money despite the fact that they are what people are paying to watch. This is an oversimplified look as to why the system that the players are being entrapped into is wrong on many different levels. This also leads to the question of how much else is the NCAA controlling outside of ensuring they aren't able to profit over their abilities as athletes? The answer to that is a lot, the NCAA has almost complete control over these kids from owning their rights to an insanely large and detailed rule book, to even how these students spend their time. The organization that is supposed to be there to protect the players and advocate for their rights does little for them in this regard, and uses a number of different resources and tactics to help ensure the players are kept at a constant disadvantage in multiple different facets. Additionally, the scholarships that they use as compensation for the student-athletes are so often abused to the point where their worth comes no where close to matching those received by regular students. The NCAA's role is to protect student-athletes from this and make sure that their amateurism is upheld and their educations held to the highest standard, but at best the NCAA has a reactionary policy, often acting too late to help the athletes victimized by it, and at worst let these infractions go unpunished, setting a precedent allowing these institutions to take advantage of them. This along with corruption and an unwillingness to crack down on the most recognizable offenders has created a completely unfair and abusing system that the players are forced to join in hopes of pursuing their college education and/or pursuing their opportunity to go on and play professional sports. 

This system is unfair to the players, who are supposed to be the ones protected by the NCAA, but are ultimately harmed by their policies and lack of action. This is why the NCAA needs to be reformed to help student athletes be compensated fairly for the work that they do, as well as reformed policy to help protect them from the myriad of problems the current system either does not protect them from, or causes for the student-athletes. The NCAA needs to protect their student athletes by instating new and reformed policy to protect the rights of these players, as well as to compensate them fairly both with the education they have earned by signing that scholarship, as well as the money that they help generate for their universities, their coaches, and the NCAA themselves.                                                

The most often used defense against paying college players is that they are given scholarships in exchange for them playing their sport, and this is true the student-athletes are being given a lot for them playing football. These benefits which Seth Davis states in his article against paying players "Student-athletes earn free tuition, which over the course of four years can exceed $200,000. They are also provided with housing, textbooks, food and academic tutoring" (Davis), and Seth Davis is right, to suggest players earn nothing for playing is incorrect. The issue here is that the scholarships prohibit the players from making what they would be able to make, if this were a fair market without one organization holding a monopoly over major college athletics. This allows for the money that these athletes earn to be distributed out unfairly, with the NCAA themselves and the universities making the money that is made by watching these players perform. This sentiment is stated in Taylor Branches piece about why college athletes not being paid is an injustice "The NCAA makes money, and enables corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young college athletes." (Branch). This sets a dangerous precedent, with college sports continuing to draw more and more revenue, that means universities, The NCAA, corporations, and even and the coaching staffs are on pace to continue making more money as the sport gets larger, and more people continue to make money, while the athletes make nothing. 

The NCAA is able to get away with this by hiding behind their claims of amateurism and how they have been protecting this since their inception. The claim that the NCAA was created for protecting amateurism is true, but the same values no longer exist in this organization. When the NCAA was created in 1906 there were no T.V contracts, bowl game sponsorships, or any numerous amount of other ways that these groups were able to profit off of the performances of these student-athletes. This was a time frame in which amateurism was at its true form, and in comparison to what the NCAA has turned amateurism is unrecognizable from what it looked like originally. The issue with this is not that the game has evolved or that people are taking more interest in it at an incredible rate (both should be positives actually), but rather that the NCAA has failed to keep up with this and even at times has taken steps back. 

One of the greatest injustices the NCAA has done to their players is the moniker student-athletes. While at first this seems like an innocent name to describe the people who are, just as it says, students and athletes. The issue however is why the name was created, and how it continues to be used. This was also stated by Taylor Branch, who was talking about the work done by economist Andrew Zimbalist who explains how the term "Student-athletes" was designed and formulated in by the NCAA to deny the players workmen's compensation for injuries that might occur during the athletes playing career. Stories like this show why the NCAA needs regulation and change. An Organization which was designed to implement a safe way for these athletes to participate in these sports are actively doing the opposite should concern people, and with little to no oversight, the NCAA will continue with this behavior as they have no reason to take action against it. These athletes who are injured should be compensated for it, especially when there are so many people benefitting off of them risking that injury that it is an incredible wrongdoing that they are not protected. 

The lack of protection for these student-athletes can create some very ugly and real scenarios in which these athlete' futures are being destroyed. A great example of this being the story of Kyle Hardrick who was an athlete who accepted a basketball scholarship to the University of Oklahoma. During his sophomore year he suffered a knee injury that was not covered by the university, even though he suffered this injury from playing basketball, but because he was no longer playing basketball, his scholarship was revoked. The lack of the scholarship and the family paying over ten thousand dollars in medical bills forced Kyle to drop out of college because they could no longer afford it (Solomon). Stories like this show how little power the players truly have and how poor of a job the NCAA does at protecting their student-athletes from exactly what they promise to be protecting them from. This is why the NCAA needs change and there are many new reforms that can be implemented to help these Student-athletes be represented the right way at all times when things are not so great. The change that needs to be implemented must be systematic and something that changes all different facets of the way the NCAA is allowed to operate. If this is not changed these kind of scenarios will continue and that can not happen. 

They hypocrisy of the student-athlete name is not just the workmens compensation issue, but it is also used to twist the public opinion on what student-athletes really are. Student-athletes are forced to cut classes for athletics extremely often, but if they decide to skip an athletic event for a class or to study for an exam, they run a real risk of losing their scholarship. This is a scary reality for many student-athletes who are constantly forced to do things that can potentially harm their academic standing for their sport, even though the NCAA claims that they are students first and athletes second despite this being just plainly not true. This also goes against the most common argument against paying these college athletes.

Assuming that the athletes are able to stay healthy and produce at a high enough level to keep their scholarships and their place on the team, they are compensated with an athletic scholarship. These scholarships are promoted as tools to help these athletes advance their futures for when their athletic careers are completed, and on the surface this appears to be the case. This is until you delve into this claim and you can find the numerous amount of issues that come of this. When athletes are being recruited they are often told that they will be able to major in whatever they want when they enroll at the school they are being recruited to, but once athletes are actually on campus they are often told that they will not be able to take a lot of the more time consuming majors and are strongly discouraged from taking it. They are then frequently pushed into less time consuming majors with less opportunities for future employment and a lack of passion from the student-athletes to take these classes. 

The threat of devaluing their education also comes straight from the university themselves, recently the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has come under scrutiny for their use of "paper classes" which were used as grade point average boosters to ensure that these athletes would remain eligible to play. These classes had been around for years and would have likely continued if a professor did not come forward about these classes. These classes were not even being taught by professors, but rather assistants in the department these classes were under. Since the school has been under serious scrutiny and has even put its accreditation at risk, all for them being able to get their athletes on the field no matter the cost. While the school has gotten in a lot of trouble, the NCAA has failed to take action so far hiding behind a long standing "investigations" to avoid the sanctions that should come from allegations like these, these instances being something that the NCAA are supposed to be protecting the student-athletes from in the first place. Situations like this lead me to believe that there is no way to reasonably refute that student-athletes need to be better protected, as well as better compensated than what they are currently receiving. 

Those who argue against paying student athletes use predominantly two arguments to do so, protecting the sanctity of amateurism and that they are already compensated more than fairly with the scholarship they receive and what comes along with it.  These arguments work in theory, but closer analysis proves that this just is not true. Amateurism is not something that the NCAA promotes and the scholarship they are provided has numerous flaws and failures that these student-athletes are forced to overcome. The NCAA preaches Ameaturism as the reason they are unable to pay their players while coaches, athletic directors, and the universities make millions off of their hard work, and tickets to see them play and jerseys with their names on them are being sold without a cent of it going back to the players. This mixed with the notion of their scholarships being sold as more of a priority then they are in actuality is scary, that the NCAA has fooled so many people into thinking that the scholarship is more than adequate compensation for these athletes that, for the large majority of them in power five conferences, would be way more than the what their scholarship is worth for their schools. The NCAA also continuously overblows the scholarship worth with misleading and over generalizing data. A prime example of this is the University of North Carolina counting adding the worth of their scholarships for their athletes as out of state tuition, regardless of whether the student was from the state of North Carolina or not, which is a difference of thousands of dollars per player.          Another argument commonly used is that players are already being paid with cost of attendance payments. These payments are money the school gives the students on top of their scholarship based off of how much it would cost for a student to attend the university, and this is based on a number of factors from travel costs to the university to cost of a number of products around the school and other factors. While I agree that this is a step in the correct direction I do not think that it is nearly enough to right the wrong that the NCAA is doing to these student-athletes monetarily.  The easiest and most effective way to show this is how much that the NCAA is still shorting them is the University of Texas, the cost of attendance benefits will equal just under $20,000, but the Elias sports bureau estimates that the average football player for the university of Texas is worth S560,000. The difference between these numbers are life-changing and an almost criminal difference of money, and while this number varies from school to school, every power conference football team is underpaying their student-athletes by a significant margin, because they are able to get away with, this is because of the lack of protection and regulation these students receive from their universities and the NCAA who claim to be there for the betterment of these athletes.

I believe that despite how flawed the NCAA and college athletics are, they are not broken. To fix this issue the NCAA needs more regulations, harsher penalties, and other protective and beneficial measures to help the players from being mistreated and victims of the greed of the universities, athletic directors, and the NCAA themselves. The first change that needs to be made is that they either have to embrace amateurism or stop hiding behind it and using it as a shield for criticism. Since it would likely be impossible for true amateurism to be embraced with the incredible amount of money that is currently in college sports, they need to fix how the money is distributed in college sports. This is because the claims to amateurism are comical when coaches and athletic directors are making millions of dollars to play in front of crowds that pay a lot of money to be there to watch students that make nothing play. The unfairness of this can be corrected with the players being compensated for the value that they bring to their universities, as well as allowing athletes to use their abilities to make money outside of the school. Another thing the NCAA must do is regulate how many hours the athlete can actually be working to ensure that they have an equal opportunity to be chasing their academic goals instead of simply competing classes to stay eligible to play their sports. Lastly the NCAA has to do a better job of protecting these players instead of allowing universities to take advantage of them, and also lighten up the rules that govern these players to make them reasonable with more common sense policy instead of the over the top nature that is in these rules right now. 

The reason this issue is so important is because college athletics are one of the most unprotected and mistreated industries in this country, as well as one of the most profitable ones. We must hold the people accountable and cut the greed out of something millions of people have a vested interest in and protect the players that make the sports they play so popular, and give so much to the universities that are abusing their power at the hands of these athletes. It should not be acceptable for these athletes to have such a lack of rights compared to the worth they bring to numerous other people. This is why this issue is so important, and why there needs to be changes in major college athletics.  
