It is a common misconception that college athletes have it easy in college. Student athletes are often seen as individuals who do not care about their educations and just party and mess around instead of focusing on their education and training. While the athletes that are on scholarship do not have to pay tuition or for housing there are still costs for them to cover and a lot of them can not afford to pay these fees. Coming from someone with a sports background in high school and almost in college there was a lot of time that was devoted to football in high school and it only exponentially increases in college. During high school grades came first but if you wanted to play you made it to every work out and every film session and all of that on top of school work was tough enough upgrade that to a college level curriculum and workload and something has to give. The first thing usually is the school as athletes who play division 1 college sports are usually there to do just that and the rules can be bent for them so that they remain eligible to play.  The truth is a number of college level athletes would not be in school if it weren't for their abilities on the field or court and in todays college sports world that is why they are in school, to play sports and not to learn. Because of the separation of education and college athletics in big time college sports and the way corporations and coaches profit from their performances athletes need to be better compensated for their efforts during their college years. The prospect of potentially playing professionally is not enough for the athletes considering the amount of input required. Coaches, the Universities they work for, and event the corporations that work in conjunction with the universities to broadcast the sports all profit heavily off of college sports while the athletes themselves sometimes have trouble getting enough food to eat during their extremely packed day.  There is however opposition to further compensating student athletes such as claims that there is not a real rift between college athletics and academics or how paying the players could move college athletics toward a more market motivated system rather than the traditional educationally motivated system and further push athletics and education apart. 

In todays college athletic world there is very little meaning to the term student athlete anymore. In fact the term was coined by the NCAA itself in an effort to dodge potential workers compensation claims and not having to give players benefits and save the NCAA millions. These athletes choose a school to attend based purely off of potential to be drafted, put second is the prospect of actually getting a degree because they are focused solely on playing and their futures as an athlete. Even universities who are very aware of how much monetary gain there is in a good college athlete and only take actions for their education to satisfy rules and regulations to allow the students to play at the university "colleges provide underqualified athletes with advisers who point them toward easier courses and majors and offer extraordinary amounts of academic coaching and tutoring, primarily designed to keep athletes eligible to play." (Gutting, Gary). For the most part the help athletes receive amounts to cheating or being steered toward empty classes or easier majors for the sole purpose of maintaining a high enough Grade point average (GPA) to continue to play. College athletes also are required to put a lot more into a day than a regular student to maintain the grade requirements that make them eligible to play. Most college athletes get up at six in the morning or earlier to eat food before practice and then its off to school with another practice following that and then they have schoolwork to attend to. This immense amount of time "an average of 36 hours a week" (Isidore, Chris) amounts almost to what the government considers a full time job at 40 hours a week. A student athletes whole schedule focuses on their ability as a player versus their potential as a student, making sure they get their daily practices and meetings in before even sitting down to do homework for their classes the next day. 

Not only is being a college athlete a full time job with less than adequate compensation for their services but while they are at practice preparing to put on a show for the fans, huge corporations that feed off of their abilities as athletes are making huge sums of money and are pocketing almost one hundred percent of the the profits. During the march madness tournament, which happens to be rapping itself up tonight (April 4th, 2016), the television companies responsible for airing the games make over one billion dollars just during the tournament alone which is only a period of three to four weeks "The NCAA basketball tournaments, or "March Madness," have become a huge business. As Forbes' Chris Smith wrote, CBS and Turner Broadcasting make more than $1 billion off the games" (US News & World Report). The big corporations are not the only ones bringing in huge sums of money off of college teams successes but the average athletics income of the top 10 most lucrative college athletics programs brings in hundreds of millions of dollars while they spend a figure minute in comparison on scholarship money "In 2014, the ten schools that made the most money in college sports averaged $144.8 million in athletics revenue, $132.5 million more than the average those schools spent on scholarships, $12.4 million." (Business Insider). Not only do these schools make vastly more than they spend on scholarship, but they haven't increased their spending on scholarship as profits have increased but the money being spent on scholarship is not increasing at the same rate as seen in "Just ten years ago, the gap between the two figures for these ten schools was just $63.2 million." (Business Insider) this number compared to $132.5 million. All this and even the people who are supposed to be representing the athletes also take a huge cut of the cake as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) takes in about six billion per year. The president alone makes plenty of money "NCAA President Mark Emmert was credited with more than $1.8 million in compensation during the 2013 calendar year" (USA Today) with a base salary of 1.3million and up to $200,000 in bonus and $250,000 in deferred payment I think the NCAA can ease up on allowing college athletes to make a little more money.  If executives of the NCAA, make as much as they do and the Association as a whole makes as much as it does then athletes deserve better compensation. 

Large corporations and the NCAA are not the only parties that take big cuts of the cake as the coaches of some of the more notable teams in college athletics make a pretty penny as well. Nick Saban, Alabama's head football coach has been the highest paid coach in the NCAAF world for the past 2 years while since recently jumping down a rung from being head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, a professional football team, coach Jim Harbaugh recently took the head coaching position at the University of Michigan and with it the second highest salary as a head football coach. These two coaches are revered in the world of football but they are not the only ones making huge sums of money as most NCAA division one coaches make over $500,000.  While this might not seem such a bad thing as coaches like Saban and Harbaugh bring talent and big wins for their teams, especially seeing as Saban's Crimson Tide has won four national championships in the last eight years, all eight of which Saban was head coach. While these coaches and coaches like them certainly bring talent and set up a team for victories which bring the school money is it not really the players that do the work. Saban and Harbaugh make around seven million each with room for bonus in case they win the national championship or a conference championship while their players are not even compensated properly for their efforts. Football isn't the only sport where this happens as it happens to the same extent in college basketball as Duke, a revered basketball program, makes around $7 million with room for bonuses and in second place is Kentucky's, also a highly revered program, John Calipari makes $6.5 million a year also with room for bonus pay. With salaries like those most coaches for college teams are sitting pretty while some of their player's struggle to eat at night. Some of these coaches one more notable Nick Saban agrees that players should have a say about what happens to the college football scene when questioned about players at North Western:

I've always been an advocate of players being compensated the best that we can to help them," Saban told reporters following practice on Monday night. "Whatever the NCAA rule is and whatever they decide to do, I've always been an advocate of the player and the quality of life that a player has. I think that having a voice in what happens, I think, is something that the players probably ought to have. (Scarborough, Alex)

There are several counter arguments to why student athletes at the college level should not be paid. One of the more popular arguments is that if you were to start paying them it would make the term student athlete even less important but as mentioned earlier that term is all but meaningful and in the current landscape of college athletics there is a bigger emphasis put on the athlete side of the student athlete term. Another commonly used counter argument is that athletes playing at the college level are amateurs that are choosing to participate at the college level because it is something fun for them to do. A recent article by The New Yorker made the argument that paying athletes or compensating them further would decrease the educational value of a school "Paying student athletes erodes that association. 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." (Yankah, Ekow) this is a good argument but one that is irrelevant considering that a star athlete already is not considering what college offer he has will allow him to get a better degree but which one will give him the best chances to make it to the pros. While many athletes in college love what they have the opportunity to do you could make a case that division 1 athletes are anything but amateurs while a stronger case could be made for division II or III athletes being amateurs as many of them do not have a very serious chance at playing at the professional level. Considering the advent of the one and done college basketball player due to the NCAA rule that forces someone to be 19 before entering the National Basketball Association (NBA) further shows how un amateur these athletes are as a few of them could be going to the NBA as a high schoolers.

All in all, college athletes are being done an injustice by not being compensated fairly while large television companies, the NCAA, and their coaches are enjoying fat salaries and living the good life. As someone who almost had the chance to play college sports yet has no chance to play professionally on account of being a few inches to short I would have wanted to get something out of my time in college especially if I were playing for a team where a coach was making millions and even more so if I were playing for a championship team that brought in millions to my division and school for simply doing my job, a job that I wouldn't be paid for. Yes, some of the student athletes are on scholarship and some of them will go to the pros and benefit from the exposer that playing for a college team brings but the vast majority will not. They spend hours on end per week, almost equivalent to that of a full time job, focusing on football often more during the so called "off season" in addition to their classes and other past times to sometimes be left broke or unable to eat enough food. Working for a system that takes advantage of their abilities for the benefit of men and women who sit in offices enjoying the millions and even billions of dollars made annually ready to do it all again. The question now is not whether or not to pay or further compensate these student athletes but how to do so. They should first be allowed to market themselves and decide for themselves what they want is more important to them, an education or professional prospects. It ultimately should be up to the individual and it should be an open market system that allows them to make whatever a school is prepared to pay to have them on their team. This system will allow the players to represent themselves and discover what they are worth to a university and make decisions by themselves and for themselves. 

