Collegiate athletics in recent years has exploded in popularity, resulting overwhelmingly from football and men's basketball, the two profiting sports. The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, is the governing body of this extremely lucrative industry. My research will focus on the debate centered around if student athletes ought to be compensated for their contributions to the NCAA, respective universities and programs, and if so, how will the athletes be properly compensated? There are two schools of thought present in this growing debate, should student athletes be paid for their work or should they keep their amateur status and remain unpaid. This paper will be arguing for compensating student-athletes in order to solve the injustice that has been compared to "modern-day slavery". Major corporations, the NCAA, universities and athletic programs greatly benefit financially from exploiting these young men and women, whether they claim "non-profit" status or not, while the student-athletes cannot accept any sort of benefit from their work, be it money or even a sandwich, without harsh punishment. It is morally wrong to continue to not take action to bring justice to the hypocritical NCAA and universities who benefit from keeping their athletes, or bankroll, broke. Student-athletes deserve justice and fair compensation for the value and hard work in which they contribute to their respective universities and athletic programs, which currently dictate every aspect of their day for their benefit while failing to provide them with a proper, marketable education.

The debate on whether NCAA student athletes should be paid is one that has been in existence for awhile. College athletics have been a major part of the university system for over 150 years. Successful college athletic programs are a way of instilling pride, bringing name recognition and more importantly, but unfortunately, funding to the university. One of the unfortunate by-products of collegiate athletics is the exploitation of student-athletes. This debate has only become popular and viewed as a serious issue within the last couple decades. This is mostly due to the fact of the great expansion of mass media and money in college sports through television deals and sponsorships.  College athletics, mainly men's basketball and football, are huge television events that bring millions of viewers and billions of dollars to the NCAA, broadcasting companies and advertisement/sponsorship corporations. The student-athletes participating in these games do not see a penny of the money made. Recently, the NCAA and CBS Sports came to a 14-year deal worth $10.8 billion dollars for broadcasting rights. (2011) This deal is supposed to be redistributed to the universities to help athletes "learn and compete" but the athletes will never see that money, especially not helping them in the classroom. (2011) One of the milestones of the pay for play debate is the anti-trust lawsuit of "Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA". In 2009, Ed O'Bannon filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in regards to the use of his image and likeness in an NCAA basketball video game. Ed O'Bannon was a basketball player for the UCLA Bruins in the 1990's, and when he realized a player from the team he was on was eerily similar to all the characteristics of himself, he wondered how they got away with it. The player matched his team, height, number, position and all physical characteristics. Ed O'Bannon wanted financial compensation for the NCAA using his likeness and image, so he challenged the NCAA on the NCAA's commercial use of former player's images, and won. The lawsuit centered on O'Bannon's argument that former athletes should be entitled to payment if the NCAA uses his or her image in future video games or media outlets. This is a significant milestone in the debate because a former player showed that the NCAA isn't an untouchable organization who can exploit everyone and solely reap the benefits. One proposed way to compensate current student-athletes is to allow them to benefit of their image and likeness, something that is extremely regulated and enforced now. The NCAA should have no right to dictate what players can and cannot do with their own image that they worked tirelessly to make for themselves, this is a perfect example of the NCAA trying to keep the student-athletes broke, because that benefits them.

 There are two schools of thought present in this growing debate, should student athletes be paid for their work or should they keep their amateur status and remain unpaid. The arguments for compensating student athletes revolve around the exploitation of the athletes, who work non-stop at their sport and do not see a penny of the billions of dollars they produce. According to Forbes, the average Division 1 football devotes 43.3 hours per week to their sport, more than the average American work week (2014) One of the biggest injustices done to student-athletes is the sub-par education they are given so they have the most time to train and practice. Many of the athletes earn useless degrees and a watered down education, this becomes very unfair when student athletes lose their scholarships from injury or are, according to Oliver (2015) one of the 98% of football and men's basketball players who do not go professional. This has been highlighted in recent times at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where a story came out about phony "paper" classes football players where enrolled in purely for the sake of increasing GPA's in order for the athletes to be eligible to play the following season. The NCAA claims that student-athletes are indeed students first but their actions dictate quite the opposite. The NCAA's own tournaments consistently require students to miss scheduled class in order to compete in nationally televised, revenue making games. For some schools, the road to the tournament combined with tournament play results in the basketball players missing a quarter of their spring semester classes. NCAA student-athletes are treated more as employees of the universities than anything else, except they are employees that don't get paid. Last year the NCAA made $989 million dollars, while students made not a dime. (NCAA) The average coach's salary last year in Division 1 football was just over $2 million dollars, yet student-athlete's basic needs in college go unfulfilled. Student-athletes often go hungry since most scholarships aren't enough to cover the full costs of food and books while some coaches have the university buying them palatial homes.

 Something must be done to solve this injustice and provide athletes fair compensation for their hard work and value to the university and respective athletic programs. The solution to putting an end to this exploitation comes in three parts. The first solution is to give student-athletes the rights to their own image and likeness. Student-athletes should be able to profit off their name and picture since these are independent of the school. Allowing this would mean that student-athletes would be permitted to sell signed autographs, appear in television/ sponsorship advertising for local business like a Columbia auto shop, host summer football camps in their name and also be properly compensated whenever the NCAA uses their image like they do often in video game franchises. These reforms on the NCAA's compensation laws will relieve some financial pressures of student-athletes who are often forced to go the professionals after one year because they the money to support themselves and their family. Providing a just form of alternate income for student-athletes will result in more student-athletes staying in college longer and working to their degree instead of opting out for the big leagues. The second solution to balance this injustice and boost the student-athlete would be to work hand in hand with the professional sports leagues. The professionals greatly, and almost solely, benefit from getting quality athletes from the NCAA. The NCAA and the professionals should work together in order to benefit both organizations while helping out the athletes. The second solution to ending the exploitation of student-athletes would be to install a professional league rookie salary cap. This would provide an incentive to student-athletes to stay in college longer by installing larger rookie year salary caps the longer you stay in college. So a student-athlete who decides to enter the professionals after his freshman year of college would have a limit to how much his contract would be worth but if he stayed one more year in college, the salary would increase and so on. The student-athlete would be making the most money possible in his rookie season in the professionals if he stays all four years at a given university. This system would greatly encourage student-athletes to stay in college for the entire time and receive their degree, which is the best idea considering that only 2% of football and men's basketball players make it to the professionals and that does not even count the ones who end up not being successful or making careers in the professionals. This system pairs perfectly with giving student-athletes rights to profit off their image, now these athletes have a way to supplement their income they deserve but are denied, so they can afford to stay in college and the salary cap encourages and greatly benefits them to stay in college for four years. Not only will they make more money and be better physically prepared for the big leagues but they will come out with a degree. The final part of the solution to ending the exploitation is education reform for student-athletes. The universities and NCAA need to work together to ensure they are providing the same education rigor, experience and opportunities for student-athletes as they are regular students. These schools greatly rob the student-athletes by exploitation their hard work for massive profits, then they fail to provide them with a marketable degree or education. Student-athletes well to often are forced to take useless, often fabricated, classes designed to boost their GPA's in order for the athletes to be eligible for the season. This watered down education comes back to haunt them when they need to find careers after the professionals or if the professional league does not work out like it doesn't for so many people.

 On the opposing side, rhetoric becomes vital for the argument that NCAA athletes should go unpaid. One of the strongest arguments this side has is the over the term "student athlete". The term student athlete puts emphasis on the fact that these college athletes are actually students before they are athletes According to Oliver (2015), the term "student-athlete" was actually created by the first executive director of the NCAA in the 1950's explicitly to avoid having to provide workers compensation for injured athletes. Critics of paying athletes believe that student-athletes should remain amateurs and that the athlete's free education through scholarship is their payment, which is a strong argument but fails to recognize the value of the education they are getting. Not only is their education not as marketable as everyone else, but the value of their education compared to the value they provide to the university and NCAA are quite disproportionate. The NCAA also believes that if student-athletes were paid then it would tear down the collegiate athletic environment that is cherished by so many and is what truly defines college sports. They state that the connection to the school, its alumni and student body would be lost if athletes were attending a certain institution over another for strictly financial reasons. Another weak argument made for not paying athletes is one that states it is unfair for every other non-revenue making sport, these athletes don't have the exposure and wont nearly be able to make as much off their name and likeness as star football or basketball players. To this, I would argue that it is very fair that some athletes can make more than others, that is a fair market. If you are worth more and generate more money for the university, then you ought to make more money than an athlete who doesn't add financial value. All other sports besides football and men's basketball actually lose money for schools. 

The most ethical way to resolve this this issue is to do what is best for the most amount of people. Following Mill's and Bentham's theory on utility would be the most fair method to address this problem. Utilitarianism is the ethical theory that states that the most ethical thing to do in any given situation is to do what provides the most amount of happiness to the most mount of people. According to the NCAA, there are 88,000 collegiate football and basketball players, the revenue making sports, and 460,000 total college athletes. College athletes outnumber the coaches, athletic directors, sponsors and university presidents who profit off of these student athletes hard work. Under utilitarianism, it is obvious with whom we should be advocating for, student-athletes are the majority. Compensating student-athletes in any form would provide the maximum amount of happiness and utility to the most people. The NCAA does not want to budge in the conversation of payment, but student athletes, who essentially have nothing to lose, would accept any payment they could. An alternative form of compensation that would be easier for both the NCAA and student-athletes to vouch for that would still provide utility to everyone would be to give student-athletes access to market their likeness and name. This would mean collegiate athletes could sell autographs, host football camps in their name, sponsor a local car dealership or be featured in a local commercial, all for money. This is often viewed as the best method to compensating student-athletes because the athletes can keep their amateur status, like Olympians, while still having a method of alternate income. The bigger stars in men's basketball and football will obviously profit the most from this but that is the market that student-athletes are participating in and these two sports are the only two collegiate sports that turn any revenue. 

This debate has changed greatly over time, mainly because of the expansion of mass media and television. In this current day, it is very rare to go a single day without having some form of college athletics on television, the industry is more profitable now than ever. This can be seen quite simply through the NCAA's recent 14-year deal with CBS Sports worth a whopping a near $11 billion. (2010) There is an obvious injustice being done to student-athletes who are subject to a near modern-day form of slavery by way of the NCAA restricting them through very strict regulations on amateurism. The hypocritical NCAA claims that they are students before athletes but treats them just the opposite by interrupting their school schedule to make time for millions in revenue from televised tournaments and playoffs. This exploitation of young adults is something we must take care of sooner rather than later before the situation worsens. If we are being ethical in our treatment of people and our approach to this situation then we will look at this problem through helping out the many who suffer while a select few reap the benefits of their toil. We ought to apply a utilitarianism to this injustice and take the leap by allowing student athletes to retain their right to profit of their likeness and image and instituting reform to progress the student-athlete, not suppress their potential by trapping them. It is far from ethical for a select few wealthy individuals to benefit off of the hard work of the many while the many go unpaid. These young men and women's financial needs are not met through only university scholarships, this solution would be the most ethical way to supplement student-athletes lack of proper compensation.  If we are looking out for the utility and happiness of the most amount of people we will advocate for compensating the exploited college athlete.

