College athletics have been around for quite some time and have always been watched and/or played by so many people. College sports are not only fun to play for the players, but also a blast to watch for the viewers. While college sports are fun to watch for both parties, it does come with a huge time commitment and work load for the players, perhaps more so than a lot of jobs do. Even though there are so many different sports played in the NCAA, one thing is the same for them all; they all take a huge commitment and a lot of work. A man named Ekow Yankah wrote an article titled, "Why College Athletes Be Paid" on this matter. He wrote this argumentative essay article with a logical and also emotional approach. The author effectively gives facts about college sports that can't be denied for the better of his argument. Along with Yankah's frequent use of facts about why athletes aren't paid, he also draws many conclusions from those facts that appeal to the readers emotional side and can relate to. Though Ekow Yankah's "Why College Athletes Shouldn't be Paid" provides many eye-opening and astonishing statistics in order draw the reader's attention, majority of his articles success comes from his implementation of these facts and his emotion-striking insights he provides based off of those facts.  

Any college team and any college sport will always require a big commitment and it is hard. Many people treat it like a job; players work for long and hard hours on a daily basis for the most part. College sports are by no means easy. Many people ask why college athletes don't get paid, they work as hard as they can for more hours than most jobs even entail and yet don't get a paycheck. Not only do they work hard, but they bring in a substantial amount of money for colleges, granted some make more than others. All of these are insights are said in Ekow Yankah's article from the New Yorker, "Why College Athletes Shouldn't be Paid" following facts in regard to various college sports teams.  For example, Ekow Yankah, brings about the point, "The athletes in major football and men's basketball programs are disproportionately black, many from poor and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. For too many of them, the N.C.A.A. is the only game in town. In some dispiriting cases, the students are so unprepared that academic failure seems inevitable. In worse cases still, their scholarships are cynically undermined by the schools themselves. Coaches steer students into empty classes or supply so-called academic support that amounts to cheating" (Yankah). He brings up the point that many college athletes go to college to play a sport and focus on their classes much less if even at all. Bringing up this point will bring a rise out of people, especially the ones who play sports in college. Realistically, there are a very large amount of college athletes that prove this to be true, however there are also many who go to college in effort to get a good education and also play a sport.

Ekow Yankah does a great job persuading readers by saying many points in favor of not paying athletes to play and heavily backing them up with many real-life facts to shown why he believes what he does on the matter. He does not do this by simply bringing up his point and just stating relatable facts, if that was the case then the essay would be meaningless. His persuasive tactics are so effective because he states his point, explains why his point is logical and then provides evidence to back his claim up even more. This tactic really opens people's eyes and truly think about what he is saying. For example, "It fails, first of all, to recognize the value of sports as a part of education. This value can be seen in the countless student athletes, from gymnasts to softball players, who pour hours of work into training and competing with no hope of going pro. (Similarly, many of those in even the biggest sports show dedication long after it is clear that they will never be professionals.) (Yankah). Yankah begins by stating that playing a sport in college does take away from the student's scholastic achievements. After he makes his claim, he then backs it up by using gymnasts and softball players as prime examples of people on those teams that do not go to college for a degree (they go to play a sport instead). Sports like football and basketball usually draw a lot of attention on this regard, the players in these two sports tend to me less academically inclined for success. Providing two examples that  are not the two that people hear about every day is not as effective because it is more easy to see than it is in not so big sports. 

Many of Yankah's points that he makes are incorporated to appeal to a sports-involved audience. He uses the information that he knows will be more meaningful for a specific crowd. He writes this article aimed towards those who work with the NCAA, play for the NCAA or are affiliated with the NCAA. A good example of this is when he mentions players reasoning for picking a school, he says, "If a high-school football prodigy reported that he chose Michigan not for its academic quality, tradition, or beautiful campus but because it outbid all other suitors, a connection to the university's values would be lost." This quote is directly meaningful to colleges, coaches and other staff, and all of the players. Seeing this quote, that audience will most likely have an opinion on it and continue reading to see why Yankah says that. However, at the end of the day, college is a form of school which is meant academics, not sports. 

Throughout the duration of Ekow Yankah's article, "Why College Athletes aren't Paid," Ekow has a very unique persuasive tactic in order to be as effective getting his point across as possible. He knows that with the topic he is talking about, his article is easily relatable for a lot of people and he uses that in order to speak to people on a personal level. When an audience can relate to a topic on a personal level, it will most likely strike the reader more so than if it wasn't personably relatable. Yankah's tactic of bringing about a particular viewpoint that is relatable on a personal level to many, grabbing their attention, and then backing up his claims with non-refutable evidence is why this article is so effective. 

