College athletes are some of the hardest working students on a college campus and deserve to be rewarded for the work that they do. While most students have a rigorous course load and may struggle somewhat they usually have enough time to complete their work or use various resources to improve their grades. Student athletes face this same struggle except they also find themselves with around forty hours a week of additional work that they put into their sport either practicing or playing in a game. This takes a tough work load and makes it a near impossible work load and results in two main things happening, one is that the student athlete is forced to take filler classes or easier classes in order to boost their GPA in order to continue playing and maintain their scholarship. However, these classes usually do not apply towards receiving a degree. The other one is that they choose to focus more on their academics and may end up missing practices or games which will then result in them losing their scholarships which are the only way many of these students are able to attend college and they once again find themselves with no money, no job, and no degree. This is why college athletes should be considered employees of the school for which they are playing and be entitled to all of the benefits such as insurance, and the right to form unions that is already given to all other employees.

College athletes work very hard and it has been proven by fans of college sports that they are worth money as thousands of people pay to watch them play each game. However, these athletes will not see any of the money that they raise, and in fact are not able to even use the fame or the reputation they have built for themselves to try to obtain some extra money via autographs or other deals in advertising. This is because the NCAA provides them this opportunity to further their career and education but only if you follow by their strict set of rules. This means that the only payment they receive is a scholarship that only covers the cost of attending the school as well as books and if they break any of the absurd rules set by the NCAA that exist almost exclusively to keep them from making money or striving for better benefits they will lose their scholarships. While this may seem reasonable if the coaches for these teams and the rest of the athletic staff were paid small wages this is not the case. In fact, many college sports coaches find themselves making multi-million salaries and on top of that they are allowed to pursue other deals such as selling their own merchandise and receiving even more money for advertising deals. The NCAA’s justification for this massive imbalance in pay is that college athletes are amateurs and therefore should not be paid. However, this is not a sound argument as according to the Oxford Dictionary an amateur is “a person who engages in a pursuit, especially a sport, on an unpaid basis.” What this means is that NCAA considers these athlete’s amateurs so they do not have to pay them and use the fact that they do not pay them as the reason for why they are amateurs. This is circular reasoning and the worst part is that these college athletes are very far from being considered amateurs. These students often find themselves having to juggle the work load of the average college student as well as adding another forty or more hours of practice and game time a week. According to the National Labor Relations Board, college athletes work the equivalent of a full time job just on their sport and meet all of the common-law requirements to become an employee. However, since college athletics is a gray area, the National Labor Relations Board will not officially state that college athletes are employees of the school without the approval of congress. 

With the knowledge that college athletes meet all the requirements to be considered employees in mind these athletes are not only deserving of a livable wage, as all other employees of the school receive, but should be allowed to form unions and argue for how much pay and various other benefits they should receive such as insurance. This has been tried before by Ramogi Huma who is a former college football player who founded the National College Players Association. Huma started this organization after the NCAA suspended his teammate Donnie Edwards for accepting free groceries after his scholarship money had run out. This organization was intended to allow these athletes the rights provided to them under the National Labor Relations Act but due to college athletes being a gray area under the NLRA it was complicated and difficult to achieve the status of labor organization despite the fact that they meet the common-law requirements. While this attempt may have failed more cases similar to those of Donnie Edward have continued to appear and the way in which the NCAA rules over these cases with an iron fist is not acceptable. It has even been seen in some cases where athletes face consequences for small instances of taking money even after they are no longer participating in college athletics. This has been the case with many Heisman winners where the athlete has faced fines or even had there Heisman trophy revoked for accepting small amounts of money or selling their own autograph in order to earn some extra cash. Allowing these athletes to have the rights of employees, the rights to earn money off of their own reputation and merchandise, and the ability to form unions is a major part of the fight for the proper treatment of these athletes.

One of the main arguments by those that are against the payment of college athletes is that it would bankrupt the school and take too much funding away from other programs. While this would be unfortunate this is already the case as many schools find themselves allocating money that previously went towards academics, to building massive stadiums and supporting the high luxury life style that college coaches have come to enjoy. However, there is a way in which both the players could be paid and it would require no extra funding from other programs. This could be done using the plan suggested by a respected journalist, Joe Nocera. In this plan, Joe suggest that “Every Division I men’s basketball and football team would have a salary cap, just as the pros do — except the amounts would be vastly lower. In basketball, the cap would be $650,000. In football, it would be $3 million.” (Nocera). While this may seem like a large sum of money it is not quite as much as when you compare it to the money currently being spent on coaching, with the combined caps barely equaling half of Michigan’s head football coach Jim Harbaugh’s current salary. With this plan if cuts were made to the coaches’ salaries then players could receive a twenty-five thousand dollars per year salary as well as other benefits such as health insurance. After giving athletes this salary that those within the system claim would bankrupt the school there is still half of the salary cap remaining to offer to students in order to entice them to come and play for a certain school. This provides a free-market aspect which would allow for any school to obtain star players as long as they are willing to put the money in. This is advantageous over the current system in which recruiting is mostly focused on prestige and does not allow less historically athletic schools to obtain better players. This system would allow these athletes the rights they deserve as well increasing the overall competitiveness of the sport by allowing players to explore various options rather than sticking to those schools in the five dominant college sports divisions. 

While this system is advantageous overall some people still have one concern for this system which is the disparity in wages that players are now earning. This was addressed by Allen Sanderson and John Siegfried who are highly educated and respected economists in their article The Case for Paying College Athletes in which they state “Competitive markets pay workers based on their marginal revenue products and opportunity costs, and when those factors differ among individuals, compensation varies accordingly.” (Sanderson and Siegfried, 130). Once again this shows the relation between college athletics and employees of any other job as if you contribute more or are more valuable to the business then you will receive more compensation. A free market system will allow athletes to see an instant pay off for the hard work they have put in their whole life when they are able to receive a payout that reflects how hard they have worked and mirrors the idea of the American dream where if you work harder than you can earn more and acquire what you want. This is the same way it works with professional sports which many of these athletes hope to one day participate in. 

While many people agree that college athletes should be entitled to payment and other benefits those who do not often work within the college athletics industry. For example, Barbara Osborne has worked as an athletics administrator in intercollegiate athletics for fourteen years and is strongly opposed to the idea of paying student athletes. The reasoning for this is that she believes 

Participation in athletics is viewed as a privilege by the legal system. This is a concept that seems frequently forgotten. Student-athletes are not entitled to participate in college athletics; it is a privilege (with many benefits) to participate, and with privilege comes responsibility. If student-athletes are not happy with their situation as student-athletes, they do not have to participate. (Osborne, 145).

While Osborne has a point that participation in college athletics is optional it has the same affiliation to those who participate in them as a job. While having a job is technically not required, being employed or attending a college, which many athletes might not be able to afford without athletic scholarships, offers people better opportunities for their futures and will allow them to be a more productive member of society. With this in mind it makes no sense that players who are actively helping the university and bringing in money for them see none of it while the NCAA takes up so much of these student’s class time and alters their schedules when their grades start to decline. 

Some of these concerns were addressed by John Oliver on his television show Last Week Tonight where he took testimonies from former college athletes on the issue with the current scholarship system. These athletes shed light on the fact that most college athletic scholarships are on a year to year basis. This means that during any of an athletes four years at a university, they could be dropped from their scholarship for no reason and would no longer be able to play or attend their classes. Along with this, players could also find their scholarships terminated and may face further punishment if they break any of the rules set for them by the NCAA including trying to profit off of their own name or reputation they have made for themselves. While this may seem like a rare case unfortunately occurs much more frequently than it should due to the strict rules that are placed on these players. Many people who have conflicting opinions with Osborne think that how the NCAA is essentially fixing their players wages is not only a moral issue but may be illegal. This is similar to when the NFL and the old American Football League merged and it resulted in the decline of players’ salaries and bonuses. This was due to the removal of the bidding system and is the way that the NCAA is able to pay less money to their players by not using a free-market system. This exploitation of students is the reason why parents believe that what the NCAA is doing may be illegal and think of them as a buying cartel who contribute a lot to the economy but do so by taking advantage of their workers.

Along with the current issues regarding the guarantees of scholarships there is another problem that plagues the current system and that is player injuries. There are cases where players who were expected to be top round draft picks for a professional team end up with a career ending injury playing college athletics. In this situation there is no compensation, the student loses their scholarships because they can no longer play, and they still do not have a degree or any money saved up from all the hard work they have done to fall back on. This is unacceptable and is a prime example of why college athletes not only deserve but need these salaries and benefits. One example of someone in support of this is David Woodburn who is an attorney that wrote a request to have the definition of employee broadened to include student athletes. Woodburn calls out the NCAA for their blatant lies about how college sports is only amateurs points out the increasing pressure this puts on both coaches and players to win games and bring in more money. With this being the case it increases the odds that athletes will overwork themselves and end up with an injury. Currently this is a major problem as most scholarships do not provide insurance or have any sort of plan to assist players that suffer from injuries and instead they just do not renew those player’s scholarships. However, once again looking at the fact that college athletes should be considered employees of the school, Woodburn says 

In light of the fact that insurance coverage is not a comprehensive solution to student athlete injuries, there exists a need for some type of unifying coverage. A solution to this problem may lie in state workers' compensation codes. If a scholarship-athlete is recognized as an employee of the university which he attends, then courts will allow recovery under the state workers' compensation. (Woodburn, 616).

What this would mean is that if Congress could just be convinced to consider student athlete’s employees of the school they would be able to receive worker’s compensation as well as many of the other benefits they have been fighting for so long. Unfortunately, this has been tried many times before and not succeeded and thus is why this is still such a big issue in the United States.

College athletes bring in millions of dollars for their schools every year. They have become a very important part of the school’s economy as the NCAA and college sports have continued to grow along the years. Along with this these players are working the equivalent of a full time job each week for their sports while also attending classes as students. However, despite the money they bring in and the work they put into their sport, they will receive nothing more than a scholarship to play sports for that school. This leads to athletes being used for all the money they can earn for the school at a minimal cost to the NCAA and allows them to drop the athletes from their scholarships at any time because of the use of yearly contracts. If college athletes were considered employees of the schools then they would be able to earn a salary and argue for a higher salary, be able to form unions, and reap the benefits of other employees such as insurance. College athletes are hard-working individuals who deserve to be given at least a fraction of the millions of dollars that they bring in, if a free-market system in which they were employees of the school was implemented then the NCAA would finally be forced to pay up for the vice grip they have had on college athletics and lead to a more enjoyable and competitive version of college sports.
