College athletes in the United States have been around since 1843 when Yale University made the first boat club. Nine years later in 1852 that club had a race against the team at Harvard University. That was the very first college sports competition in the United States. Pretty soon colleges had teams for other sports like baseball, soccer, and football. The first college baseball game was in 1859. The first college soccer match was in 1869 which was the same year as the first college football game. Now in 2017 people are used to seeing those same sports played at colleges, but a lot has changed. Competition and games have only gotten better. Players are committing more time and effort to their sports than ever before which is the reason why the competitions are becoming so exciting and challenging. Something else has changed too. Colleges are now getting millions and millions of dollars from their sports teams while college athletes are not getting paid a dime which is wrong. College athletes should be paid for the hard work they do and for the money they bring to their schools.

The group in charge of making rules for college athletes is the National College Athletic Association. Most people call them the NCAA. The NCAA was formed in the early 1900's because President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to do something to help colleges stop a lot of injuries and deaths that were happening in college football games. Today the NCAA makes rules for college sports and makes sure the rules are followed. One rule is that college athletes can't be paid for playing their sport. This is called the amateurism rule. The NCAA says this rule is important because it makes sure that the student athletes are getting a quality education since they are students first. The NCAA gives out scholarships to players to go to colleges to participate in a sport. A scholarship includes free tuition, free meals, free housing in a dorm, and equipment for their sport. The NCAA and colleges seem to think this is fair pay in exchange for the work college athletes do, but it's not. Jay Bilas, former Duke basketball player and now a college basketball analyst was quoted saying this about why scholarships don't really cost the school as much as they make it sound, "Think about what the scholarship is... It's the school paying itself. It's like me paying myself for rent for my kids in my house, and then claiming I don't have any money left because I paid myself rent for them." I think what he means is that if a college gives a $100,000 scholarship to an athlete, it doesn't really cost the school $100,000. They're just trying to make the athlete feel like they are getting some payment, but they're not getting nearly as much as the school is getting out of them.  

The NCAA and colleges act like college athletes are just students who play sports, but they are really employees of the colleges. In the United States you are considered a full-time employee if you work more than 40 hours a week at the same job. College athletes work an average of 43.3 hours per week for the sport they play. If the NCAA truly thinks these athletes are students first, they should not allow them to miss class in order to play in a sporting event. I am a full-time student who does not participate in athletics, yet I still struggle to balance my work schedule. How are these student athletes supposed to work enough hours to play a sport, do all of their school work, and still have enough money to live? If a college student who is not an athlete wants to have enough money to go out with friends and put gas in their car they can get a part time job. What does a student athlete do? How can they find the money to have any fun? They don't have the time to get a part time job because they are giving their time to the school by playing sports. This causes scandals like in 2002 when Nevin Shapiro was a booster for University of Miami athletics and gave the school's college football players cash, gifts, prostitutes, and favors. He even bought a yacht to hold sex parties for the football players with prostitutes. Maybe if college athletes were paid a reasonable amount of money it would cut down on these types of scandals. Also, if players are working for money maybe they will train and play harder and stay in school longer. Some of the best players end up leaving school early to play their sport professionally. Maybe if they made enough money to have some fun in college they would stay to get a degree. That would make the fans who buy tickets happy so it would help the college. It would also help the player in case their professional career didn't last long because maybe they would get injured or not be very good in the pros. At least they would have a degree so they could do something with their lives. 

Why are colleges and the NCAA so determined to not pay student athletes? It's all about money. Over fifty schools in the United States have revenue from their athletic departments totaling over 100 million dollars a year while over 150 colleges have revenue totaling over 50 million dollars a year. The University of Alabama reported 143 million dollars in revenue from sports last year. That is more than every professional NHL team and 25 out of the 30 NBA teams. These schools and organizations are making millions of dollars off of the people actually doing the work. The worst part is that most college athletes in some sports don't have a choice about going to college. A great high school player in most sports can't skip college and go straight to the pros. If you're the star of your high school football team, you have to go to college for at least 2 years before you can quit school and try to get drafted. If you're a great high school basketball player, you have to be "one year out of high school" to get drafted. That doesn't mean the basketball players have to go to college, but most of them do since they need to keep playing for pro teams to know who they are when it comes time for them to start trying to become professionals. They can't just take a year off and get out of shape. Some high school athletes are allowed to go straight to the pros right out of high school. Those include golfers and tennis players. That probably is because those sports don't make much money for colleges. Not as many people go watch a school's tennis team or golf team. The basketball rule hasn't always been that way. LeBron James who plays basketball for the Cleveland Cavaliers was drafted right out of high school. What if the rule was the way it is now when he got drafted. Why make LeBron James spend a year in college if he's ready to turn pro? Do you think that college would have made him go to class and pass things like biology tests or write English papers like this one? Would he have sat on the bench if his grades were bad? What if he had gotten hurt playing in college and was never able to play in the NBA? Some people use the phrase "one and done" to talk about great college basketball players who spend one year in college and then go right to the pros. Isn't that a waste of the school's resources? These athletes aren't really students first like the NCAA says they are. They probably don't put the same time and effort into their classes as students who aren't athletes. Wouldn't it be better to let another person who applied to that college go to that school and try to do something with their lives? 

A lot of people might say that college athletes don't need to be paid since they will make millions of dollars when they turn professional, but most college athletes never become professional athletes. 11.6% of college baseball players become professional players. Only 1.7% of college football players become professionals. 1.3% of college hockey players and 1.2% of college basketball players turn pro. Another thing that most people don't know is how short a professional athletic career can be. The average NFL career is under 3 years. That's when you include all football positions so not just quarterbacks but offensive and defensive linemen, wide receivers, running backs, and kickers. Some players just don't turn out to be good enough for the pros. Other players get injured or get concussions and decide they should quit. It seems unfair not to pay college athletes when most of them are giving the schools their best years in their sports.

Some good examples of athletes who have really been cheated by the system include Johnny Manziel. Johnny Manziel got an athletic scholarship to play football at Texas A&M. During his freshman year he set many records and became a star. He was the first freshman and the fifth player in NCAA history to pass for 3,000 yards and rush for 1,000 yards in a season. At the end of his freshman year, he became the first freshman to win the Heisman trophy. This made millions of dollars for Texas A&M while Johnny Manziel never got a dime. Tickets to all of the games sold out. While people are at games they buy food and drinks and souvenirs. Jerseys with "Manziel" on the back were the most popular college football jersey that year, and people bought thousands of them. One article said that Texas A&M made tens of millions of dollars off of Johnny Manziel. The year after Johnny Manziel won the Heisman he got in trouble with the NCAA for getting paid about $3000 to sign autographs. How fair is that? Texas A&M can make tens of millions of dollars but Johnny Manziel can't get paid for just signing his own name. It wasn't like he was getting paid to throw a football, he was just writing his name. If  the NCAA won't let college athletes get paid by the school to train and play, can't they at least make money signing their name? If a student who is on a music scholarship writes a song that becomes a hit and makes lots of money, that student doesn't  lose their scholarship or get kicked out of school. The college doesn't get to take a part of that money from the song. If a student who has a scholarship and is an English major writes a book that gets published, they don't lose their scholarship or get kicked out either. It's time to be fair and pay college athletes. Jonny Manziel's professional career has not been good and right now he is a free agent which means he's not part of a team and is waiting to get hired by someone. His game never really fit the pros so he gave Texas A&M his best football years. They should have given him something in return. When his skills were at their best and when he was the most famous the NCAA wouldn't let him make any money from his skills and hard work. Instead the money went to Texas A&M and the NCAA. Another example is football player Tim Tebow. His story is a lot like Johnny Manziel. He was a star player for the University of Florida and was a Heisman trophy winner. The school used his playing for them to sell tickets to games, food, drinks, and jerseys. Tim Tebow didn't play very well as a professional player so he doesn't play football anymore. He now plays professional baseball for a minor league team.

The NCAA makes money off of all college sports but March Madness earns them the most. It’s when the top 68 teams in men’s and woman’s college basketball compete against each other to see who the best team in the country is. March Madness is a lot like the Super Bowl of college basketball especially commercial wise. The NCAA profited 1.13 billion dollars during the basketball tournament in the months of March and April. Everyone seems to make money from March Madness except the players who are doing the hard work. The NCAA gets money from television networks. Television networks make money from advertisers. Cities where the games are played make a lot of money from people coming to the cities and staying at hotels and eating at restaurants. Airlines make money from those same people. Schools get money from a basketball fund that the NCAA makes from the money it gets from television networks. The players get nothing. That's right. The college athletes who are the reason people are watching in the first place and the reason fans are traveling to cities to buy tickets to go to the games don't get a penny.

The original NCAA rule that said student athletes would not get paid also said the same thing about coaches. Today that is a joke. College athletic coaches are paid millions of dollars a year. John Calipari, the coach of the University of Kentucky basketball team, makes a salary of 8 million dollars a year. He is not even the highest paid coach in college basketball. That goes to the coach at Duke University Mike Krzyzewski. Most people know him as Coach K, and he makes 9.8 million dollars a year. Coaches salaries are just as high in football. The University of Michigan's coach is Jim Harbaugh, and he makes over 9 million dollars a year. Coach Nick Saban at the University of Alabama makes almost 7 million dollars a year. Here's an interesting thing. Most college sports fans know who John Calipari is. Most of them also know Coach K, Jim Harbaugh, and Nick Saban. They know so much about these coaches that they would know them if they saw them in person. How many fans could name a president of any one of those universities? Some of the students at those universities probably don't even know the name of the president of their own school, but they know the coach for sure. 

If the highest paid employee on a college campus is the head coach of an athletic team and not the president of the school and if the football stadium and other athletic facilities cost more to build than all of the other buildings on campus put together including libraries, classroom buildings, dorms, theaters and all of the other things colleges are supposed to have, what does that say? It says that the school probably couldn't survive without college sports. It says that college sports are as important or even more important than academics at that school. The NCAA should stop pretending that college athletes are students first and that because of that a scholarship is enough to pay them for the hours they spend training and playing. College athletes aren't just employees at a college or university. They're the most important employees. They should be paid like employees.
