It has long been debated whether college athletes should be compensated for the large sums of profit the NCAA and universities make off of them. A typical college football player puts in 60 hours a week of practices and other team related activities. This athlete might be rewarded with a scholarship if they were talented enough to earn one, however, an athlete who puts in the same amount of time and effort could be left without any compensation. College athletics has immense support across the country and some areas have more fans than the professionals who play the same game. The NCAA rules regarding paying athletes should be amended to allow college athletes earn money off of their own name in order to provide a better atmosphere in which college athletes compete. 

Throughout college athletics, there have been many different cases in which an athlete has been punished for trying to profit off of their own name such as signing autographs or selling game used equipment. If a player is so talented that someone would pay large amounts of money to buy an item they previously used, that player should be able to make money off of their own name. Essentially, student-athletes are being used as hard working employees in a multi-billion dollar industry and do not receive any type of pay. Multi-billion dollar companies do not collapse because they pay their employees.

If you live in the United States and have ever watched a football game you most likely know the name Johnny Manziel, he was a quarterback for Texas A&M University and became a huge target of an autograph scandal. Johnny Manziel, or Johnny Football as he is better known, lit up the SEC his freshman year and won the Heisman trophy. Manziel was the first freshman to ever win the Heisman trophy. The excitement and attitude he brought to the game of football is unlike anything ever seen before. Johnny Football will go down in history as one of the most exciting players to ever play college football. His rise to fame on and off the field was gained in a short period of time. He was seen out partying and having a good time every weekend which brought controversy upon Manziel and people doubted his ability to balance football, partying, and school. Nevertheless, Manziel would show up on Saturdays ready to play and win games for the Aggies. Johnny Manziel was a symbol and ambassador for the NCAA athletes that deserved to be paid to play the sport they loved. His presence in the college football world is the reason this photo was created and the idea of paying college athletes has an immense amount of support. This is why people loved Johnny Football and wanted to buy his NCAA replicated merchandise. The NCAA prohibits any college athlete from making money or allowing someone else to make money using their likeness or names. The NCAA is a money making machine and the athletes are the uncompensated workers that earn all this money. However, a controversy arose when Manziel was accused of signing autographs for money in 2013. The NCAA believed that Manziel had been signing autographs and accumulated a couple thousand dollars this way. The NCAA could not find any evidence and Manziel was only suspended for half of one game vs Rice his sophomore year. According to the NCAA, the merchandise they sell online and in stores does not have a direct relation to any student athlete. However, fans and writers experimented with this and went to the NCAA website and typed in "Manziel" in the search bar. Dozens of items were pulled up all relating to Johnny Manziel or Texas A&M. Some of these items were replica football jerseys with the number two which happened to be Manziel's number. The same NCAA.com search was conducted with other famous college athletes and their memorabilia too came up in the results. After these findings were made public, the NCAA removed the search feature on their website. This seems fishy, right? If typing an athlete's name into their website brings up items that people purchase for great sums of money, why are these athletes not getting any of the profit? The NCAA owns all aspects of a collegiate athlete which includes their image. An athlete's image certainly contains the memorabilia that is on sale with their number on the back. 

Along with Manziel bringing enormous profits to the NCAA, Texas A&M was a huge beneficiary to his success. According to NCAA rules, Manziel is ineligible to receive any type of compensation except for a scholarship. By Manziel's sophomore year of college he had to take all of his classes online because his fame became a distraction inside of classrooms and on campus. This is a college athlete being forced to take online classes because he has built a huge persona that everyone wants to see. However, he is just like any other ordinary college athlete in the eyes of the NCAA and Texas A&M and should not be able to make money off of his own name. Texas A&M made huge strides when joining the Southeastern Conference in 2012 and continued to increase revenue when Manziel was on his Heisman campaign. If you look at the revenue increase at Texas A&M when Manziel began playing football there and then how it slowly dips down after he leaves, you can see how much of an impact this one man was on an entire football program. Texas A&M hauled in 120 million dollars in revenue after Manziel's Heisman winning freshman season. The Aggies ranked sixth nationally in revenue after only one year of Johnny Football. A Texas A&M number 2 replica jersey sold for sixty dollars in 2012-2013. The Texas A&M bookstore quickly sold out of their 2,500 number 2 jerseys. That totals to $150,000 in jerseys sales off of a jersey that people are buying because of Manziel's iconic persona in Aggieland(common name used to refer to Texas A&M). Out of that $150,000, Manziel receives a whopping $0 profit. Texas A&M is obligated to follow the NCAA rules regarding paying athletes because the NCAA owns Manziel and all of its other athletes names. The Aggies also impacted off of a wave of media exposure. Manziel has been responsible for an estimated 37 million dollars of this increase in media exposure. Due to his success in 2012, the Aggies were awarded a trip to the Cotton Bowl which they received 7.45 million dollars just for appearing in the game. All of this money, millions of dollars and none of it goes to the man who is responsible for it. The NCAA and Texas A&M made huge leaps in revenue while there are college athletes who cannot afford necessities in life. The beneficiaries of Manziel's success at Texas A&M are awarded raises in their jobs and additional money funneled into the football program. Coach Sumlin (Head coach of the Aggies) received a 1.1 million dollar increase in salary after Manziel arrived and is now paid 3.1 million dollars yearly all to coach a NCAA Division 1 football team. The Aggies assistant coaches were also given 700,000 dollars to split among themselves. Giving full credit to Sumlin and his coaching staff, they deserve to be paid for producing college football's most exciting player in history. The unfair part is where Manziel sees no compensation for his own success and is not allowed to make money off of his own signature.

Johnny Manziel is just one case of this happening across the country. Many star athletes emerge around the country each year and have the same effect on their schools and the NCAA.  If we look at the opposition to this argument for paying college athletes and see why someone would not want to pay Manziel or any star athlete similar to him, the negatives do not come close to outweighing the positives. An article, "Cracking the Cartel" written by Theodore Ross explains why paying college athletes would be a bad idea. He says that college athletes should not be paid and that money should be out of the equation and everyone should go back to what they are used to which is sports and school. He shows the statistic $156,647 as the median amount of money a university spends on a scholarship football player. He uses the median instead of the mean which does not accurately represent the dollar amount used to pay for an athlete to attend school. However, this number does not even compare in the amount of money that a football team brings to a university during a season. The profit outweighs the cost in any way, shape, or form when it comes to revenue. He also uses the statistic that college football and college basketball coaches are the highest paid public employees in 39 states. Now why should these coaches be paid so much money if they are not allowed to pay the people who work for the? This statistic along with much of his article hurts his claim and weakens his argument. Horace Mitchell is another advocate for the opposition to paying college athletes. He says. "Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses. Collegiate sports is not a career or profession. It is the students' vehicle to a higher education degree. This access is contingent upon continued enrollment, participation in the sport for which they received the scholarship, and academic eligibility." (Mitchell) Acknowledging that college sports are not professional, he makes good points. He fails to address how some of the college sports dynasties have larger fan bases and money support for their teams than professional teams. If you closely look at Alabama's football program or Kentucky's basketball program, most will see a carefully operated business, with hardworking employees that are working over 40 hours a week to produce results that are expected each year. These results are the reason fans pay to watch these eighteen to twenty three year old kids come and compete in such exciting atmospheres. People will pay thousands of dollars to travel across the country to watch their favorite college team or perhaps their alma mater compete in widely broadcasted events each year. Technically these athletes are not professionals but they most definitely should not be considered amateurs. Taylor Branch writes a compelling article titled, "The Shame of College Sports" and discusses the amateur aspect of a college athlete. He includes more examples of other scandals similar to the Johnny Manziel autograph signing. The following excerpt was taken from his article,

Scandal after scandal has rocked college sports. In 2010, the NCAA sanctioned the University of Southern California after determining that star running back Reggie Bush and his family had received "improper benefits" while he played for the Trojans. (Among other charges, Bush and members of his family were alleged to have received free airfare and limousine rides, a car, and a rent-free home in San Diego, from sports agents who wanted Bush as a client.) The Bowl Championship Series stripped USC of its 2004 national title, and Bush returned the Heisman Trophy he had won in 2005. Last fall, as Auburn University football stormed its way to an undefeated season and a national championship, the team's star quarterback, Cam Newton, was dogged by allegations that his father had used a recruiter to solicit up to $180,000 from Mississippi State in exchange for his son's matriculation there after junior college in 2010. Jim Tressel, the highly successful head football coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, resigned last spring after the NCAA alleged he had feigned ignorance of rules violations by players on his team. At least 28 players over the course of the previous nine seasons, according to Sports Illustrated, had traded autographs, jerseys, and other team memorabilia in exchange for tattoos or cash at a tattoo parlor in Columbus, in violation of NCAA rules. Late this summer, Yahoo Sports reported that the NCAA was investigating allegations that a University of Miami booster had given millions of dollars in illicit cash and services to more than 70 Hurricanes football players over eight years.

The list of scandals goes on. With each revelation, there is much wringing of hands. Critics scold schools for breaking faith with their educational mission, and for failing to enforce the sanctity of "amateurism." Sportswriters denounce the NCAA for both tyranny and impotence in its quest to "clean up" college sports. Observers on all sides express jumbled emotions about youth and innocence, venting against professional mores or greedy amateurs. (Branch)

As you can see, Branch touches on many different aspects of the paying college athletes to play controversy. He elaborates on the amateurism and lists scandals that have caused players to be punished for making money off of their name. Branch focuses on how the NCAA is unfair to its workers, better known as student-athletes, and does not compensate them for what rightfully should be theirs. 

As the market for college sports continues to increase and more money is poured into the college arena, it is almost a no-brainer that athletes should be fairly compensated and one day will be. Star athletes, such as Manziel, should be allowed to profit off of his own name and not see any type of penalty. College athletics are coming to a point where it is necessary to pay their athletes or else athletes will find a way to become professionals early on in their career and the college sports market will decline. The rules that regulate athletes from being compensated need to be amended to enhance the college sports experience for players, fans, and businesses who are heavily invested in college athletics. College athletics are a fun and exciting level of sports and it would be a shame to see such a highly competitive level come crashing to the ground.

