College athletics is a job in modern day America, because of the money associated with it. Should college athletes be paid?  For years this topic has been debated as the NCAA has seen increased profits.  The NCAA is a non-profit association but to many may seem as a multi-billion-dollar business where the employer gets all the money and the people actually creating these billions receive nothing. The employees in this situation are college athletes who generate the revenue for the NCAA but more specifically for their university. Why is this allowed in college sports? This would not be tolerated if the situation did not deal with college amateurs. College athletes do not have enough time to get a job and play sports. In this essay I will provide background analysis on the NCAA and argue why college athletes should be paid due to the increased revenue of the the NCAA as well as the time they must commit to their athletic teams.

To better understand the NCAA, one needs to know the history behind the billion-dollar business. The NCAA was formed in response to President Theodore Roosevelt's concern to change rules in order to lessen injuries. Forward passing was no legal which created the wide receiver position and spread the offense out. Years later the concern about injuries was replaced with the concern of recruitment and financial stability of programs (Tredway).  After World War II, television made college sports more available to on a national rather than local market of fans. Players began to get more exposure, increasing competition and recruitment costs among univeristies. To aid the situation the members of the NCAA agreed to a sanity code, which set a limit on compensation and set limits on recruitment costs (Tredway). Since then technology has advanced and so has television programming focusing on advertising. Advertisements has become a main source of revenue for the NCAA. Recently, CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting paid more than $10.8 billion to the NCAA for exclusive TV rights to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) March Madness Tournament (Pebbles).

The rules in sports have been subject to change throughout time. The NCAA and the NBA work together because they both benefit from the players and the money involved in the business. The NBA originally had a rule that did not allow its teams to sign players until their class had graduated from college (Barbash). This changed when the NBA lost a court case against Spencer Haywood, an all American basketball player who won gold at the 1968 Olympics. The Supreme Court ruled that the NBA could not enforce its rule against signing high school players or college underclassman (Barbash). The NBA was faced to settle, creating the Hardship Rule that allowed players from low-income families to be drafted regardless of when they graduated college. This led the way for the early entry rule, which allowed high school players and college underclassmen to be drafted into the NBA (Barbash). This rule paved the way for players such as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, LeBron James, Dwight Howard and many others to be able to go straight from high school to college. 

By 2005, the rule changed requiring players to have at least one year of college in order to be drafted to the NBA. This new rule only caused more problems. Players such as John Wall, former point guard from Kentucky, enrolled in the colleges knowing they would only stay in school for the required year then leave for the NBA. This hurts the game of basketball because great players do not stay in college for more than the require one year. One of the most notable players to have taken advantage of this rule was Kyrie Irving, a former Duke point guard. Kyrie Irving played 11 games (Kyrie Irving Bio) and only started 8 of those 11 but still went on to be drafted number one in the 2011 draft. More players are taking advantage of the "one and done" rule because the more time they spend in college they have a greater the risk of potential injury, and more importantly they miss out on large salaries they could earn after being drafted into the NBA. If great players were paid in college, the incentive would be greater to remain in school.

Scholarships do not compensate players sufficiently. Here's an example of why this is in fact true. Nick Johnson was Pac-12 player of the 2014 University of Arizona Wildcats basketball team. Nick Johnson was also estimated to have made $2.23 million for the university (Pallack).  In 2014, the NCAA made $750 million from the NCAA basketball tournament. The money made by the University of Arizona does not compare to the scholarship they gave to Nick Johnson, which was worth $41,000. It is not only the universities and the NCAA which benefit from this college sport business; it is also coaches and investors. It seems anyone who is involved in college sports and is not an athlete is getting paid.  Jim Harbaugh, former head coach of the NFL San Francisco 49ers, left the organization to become head coach of NCAA Michigan Wolverines. Harbaugh signed a contract worth $7 million (Goodbread), however this contract is not the highest in the NCAA. Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama salary is $80,000 more than Harbaugh's salary (Goodbread). These high salaries are not only in football but also transcend into basketball. Duke head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski earns $9.7 million per year and John Calapari, head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, earns a little over $7 million per year (Uthman).  Universities and coaches both receive millions but the actual players are not adequately compensated by their scholarships alone. 

Paying college players will not ruin sports. Those in opposition may suggest that if athletes are paid, bigger universities can just pay to be great. The universities with the most money will be able to afford to buy whomever would make their teams better and create athletic dynasties. However, athletic programs have already been buying players indirectly by using the university's money to attract recruits. Oregon recently built a $68 million, 145,000 square foot football training facility (Berkes). This entices players to come to the university because of the luxuries Oregon can offer, such as sixty-four 55-inch television screens in the lobby of its barbershop and brand new locker and weight rooms. (Berkes). If players are paid salaries there is a possibility that universities with smaller revenues will not be able to recruit the top players, however 95% of the top 100 players go to these big schools anyway and the percentage is higher in football (Pebbles). Based upon this evidence, paying players will not have a greater effect in determining where high school athletes choose to attend college. 

In the article by Kieran McCauley,  she argues that student athletes should not be paid because they are compensated by their scholarship they receive. Therefore, the athletes do not have to worry about debt when they graduate, nor do they have to worry about searching for a job. McCauley then gives supporting evidence to her argument by  stating that in the state of Pennsylvania the average debt of a college graduate is $32,528 (McCauley). Student athletes do not have to worry about paying for housing, meal plans, or paying for textbooks. McCauley is right when stating the facts about tuition however and the benefits of the athletic scholarship however, she is wrong when she states that student athletes do not have to worry about the burden of finding a job after college. In the sport of football, there are a little more than a million high school players, however only 6.5% of those players will play in college and 1.6% of high school players will play in the NFL (NCAA.org).  There is no guarantee that players will be signed to play for a professional team. The author of the article makes it seem like college athletes only play sports stating, "When you look at it that way, plenty of college students would be happy to play a sport for four years if it meant they did not have to take on that financial hardship" (McCauley). Student athletes are students first and athletes second. It is understandable that athletics may be the only catalyst for many to even attend college, however they are expected to perform as students as well. These athletes still have to attend the same classes and have the same requirements for their degree as a full-time student. On top of being a student, athletes have practice year round with few breaks. In essence, being a student athlete is like a full time job with benefits, yet they receive less than minimum wage although they are the primary wage-earners for their institution.  Sure a full scholarship is nothing to sneeze at, but much more is required  to fully compensate college athletes. 

McCauley brings up another argument that it will be hard to pay athletes fairly. She mentions how it would be unfair to pay an athlete who plays a sport that is viewed by millions the same amount of money an athlete would receive who plays a sport that is not televised.  How the money is handled and distributed would be a difficult task but if athletes are paid different amounts, then that is unfair to all athletes involved. Just because millions are not viewing an athlete's sport does not discredit their hard work they put into their craft.  What about the millions that the institutions receive as a result of the athletes' efforts? McCauley elaborates on the distribution of revenue problem by stating statistical facts about viewership.  The NCAA reported that 28.3 million viewers watched the 2015 NCAA Men's Division I National Championship between Wisconsin and Duke. They also reported there were 3.1 million viewers for the 2015 NCAA Women's Division I National Championship between Notre Dame and UConn (McCauley).  She then suggests that men and women be paid differently, however this is certainly unfair. To solve such problems, universities can put all the money together and distribute the revenue equally among all athletes. This is the only way to guarantee equality for all athletes.  

Throughout the many years of college athletics, there have been numerous players caught violating NCAA rules when it comes to compensation. Johnny Manziel, former quarterback for Texas A&M and 2012 Heisman trophy winner, was paid $7,500 for autographing mini football helmets (Rovell). This violated NCAA by-law 12.5.2.1, which states that student-athletes cannot allow products with their names and likenesses to be sold even if they do not profit from it (Rovell). As punishment, Johnny Manziel was suspended for the first half of the season opener. Even though Manziel found himself in trouble at the beginning of the 2013 season, Texas A&M managed to make $37 million from Manziel from November of 2012 to January of 2013 (Terbush). That same year, Texas A&M ranked 6th in revenue, raking in $120 million, this was done by merchandise and media exposure. Manziel's #2 jersey in the book store was sold for $60, but with his name erased from the back and when he won the Heisman that same year he brought $37 million worth of media exposure to the University (Terbush). With all this money flowing into the University of Texas A&M, yet Manziel got paid nothing, and when he tried to take advantage of his likeliness and name, just as his school had done, he was punished for violating the rules. 

Johnny Manziel was not the only Heisman winner to receive benefits while in college. Former running-back for University of Southern California, Reggie Bush's family was living rent free for a whole year. In the end, Bush lost his Heisman trophy and the University of Southern California was stripped of their 2004 National Championship title because Bush was ineligible to play (FoxNewsSports). More recently, Jameis Winston, former Heisman winner and quarterback for Florida State University was caught stealing crab legs from Publix. However, Winston claims he had a connection with an employee and did not steal the $32 crab legs (Hobson). Regardless of whether Winston stole not, the fact is that he did not want to pay for the crab legs. There is one common theme with all these stories dealing with student athletes, and that is money. If the student athletes were paid at least most of these instances would not have occurred. 

College sports is a business and college athletes should be paid for contributing to this business. In any other business, the worker gets paid for their labor, and the universities and colleges should treat student athletes the same way. The NCAA must also recognize that their revenue increases yearly and so have scandals about players breaking the rules to get paid. These scandals tarnish the reputation of the NCAA and the universities because it sheds light on the problem that the players don't have money because of their sacrifices dealing with their sport. The universities and colleges should recognize this problem and develop a solution. College sports will get more credibility if they fairly compensated their players. People talk about how tradition is important in college sports and paying players will tarnish the tradition, but this unfair treatment towards players is in fact tarnishing the reputation. 

