I have always been a fan of all sports, college and pro. The intensity that the players bring to the game is just something that cannot be duplicated. However, I find that there is something more special about College sports. The athletes don’t play with the mindset that they’ve already made it to the top, they are still trying to prove themselves and it causes them to work that much harder and play that much better. Now with all this attention on college athletes, you would think that there would be some money coming their way, but that is not the case. Instead of giving the college athletes a steady income, they give them a free education and the opportunity to showcase their skills. Education is clearly worth a lot, but is it enough? This rule has been intact since the day the NCAA was created in 1906 and for a long time nobody questioned whether it was fair. But now the money being thrown around is too large to ignore and some players and fans think that student athletes deserve to be compensated for the hard work they put into the game. Now people will argue that they don’t need to be earning money until they are at the pros, but some players never even make it there. Some aren’t good enough to play at the professional level and others suffer an injury that ends their career before it really even started. These players are working too hard and risk too much to not be receiving any sort of income for the work they put into the game and I believe the NCAA should change their rules regarding players receiving compensation. 

Before getting into the argument, I would like to give some brief background on the NCAA. The NCAA is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1906. Back then, football was a more dangerous game. In the 1905 season, eighteen players were killed during games. After public outcries, Theodore Roosevelt, the president at the time and a big fan of the sport, called for thirteen representatives to come to the White House in order to create more safety regulations for the game. This agreement then led to the creation of the NCAA. The NCAA’s purpose is to “protect young people from the dangerous and exploitive athletics practices of the time” and it has done that successfully throughout the years. There are three divisions in the NCAA that a kid can play in. Division one being the best and Division three being the worst. Schools can offer scholarships to kids that they recruit for their school and these scholarships give discounts on their tuition. 

The NCAA claims that every student athlete is an Amateur and that they’re a student first and an athlete second. This means that players are not allowed to do any of the following: Sign contracts with professional teams, receive salary or Prize money above actual or necessary expenses, Play with professionals, Tryout, practice or compete with a professional team or benefit from an agent or sign an agreement to be represented by an agent. Along with that they cannot sign any deals with companies. Players and schools always try to bend the rules when it comes to this because they believe that they are too good to not be making a single dollar, and this leads to them ruining their college careers and in some cases, professional careers. One example of this was the great Reggie Bush who was a running back at the University of Southern California. In 2005, the great Trojan running back ran for over 2000 yards and won the Heisman trophy which he claimed was one of his biggest accomplishments. After Bush got drafted to the New Orleans Saints an unknown source came out and said they heard that the former USC player had been receiving gifts from outside sources. This led to an investigation in which Bush was found guilty and striped of all of his records and his Heisman. Now obviously Bush should have been following the rules that the NCAA laid out, but these rules shouldn’t be there in the first place and now a college legend will not have left his mark on the college football world. If a player is good enough to receive money, then the NCAA should not be able to prevent that.

Now everyone knows that college sports bring in a lot of attention and money to schools, but would you believe me if I told you that the people bringing all of this attention get no money from it? It’s true. The NCAA may be a non-profit organization but it generates a lot of revenue. According to Huffingtonpost.com, The NCAA generated $989 million dollars in revenue. With $908.6 million in expenses, they generate about $80.5 million in profit for a “Non-profit organization”, and that number is growing every year. Now most of this money comes from the television deals. One of the bigger deals the NCAA made was with CBS. It was a fourteen year deal worth $10.8 billion and gives CBS the rights to air the last two weekends of the NCAA march madness basketball tournament. Over ten billion dollars just for those two weeks. Deals like this show us that people are willing to pay billions to watch these kids play, so there should be no reason that they cannot get a share of this. Now the coaches do see some of this money. The average coach on a Division One football team makes a little over a million dollars with some making over seven million dollars according to USA Today. Some of these coaches do deserve what is being paid to them, but they aren’t the ones putting their careers on the line every time they step out onto the field. 

Many people believe that these student-athletes do not receive anything, but that is not true. One of the largest parts of College sports is the opportunity to go to a college for next to nothing. An education is worth more than anyone can really say. People estimate that a scholarship saves you around $200,000 depending on which school you go to, but an education alone is worth a lot more. Now it’s true that some players that you see out on the field are going to make it to the pros and won’t work a day in their life, but less than two percent of the kids make it to the next level so an education is worth a lot to them. It is true that many players leave early from school to make the transition into the professional leagues and therefore don’t finish their education, but that is because they know that they’ll be making money right away. A student athlete who is not going pro is able to use their gifted skills to give them a free education and that is one of the big arguments preventing the NCAA from paying players. 

Offering scholarships to kids to get a free education and play the sport they love is a great thing for college sports, but what happens when you lose that scholarship? Now obviously if a school takes away a scholarship because of a players’ behaviors, it’s the kids fault, but what sometimes there isn’t a thing that the players can do. If a player gets injured there is not much a player can do but hope that the school doesn’t take away their education. People never hear about it, but this happens a lot. One example was a South Carolina Defensive end named Stanley Doughty. After his Junior year, Doughty left school for the draft. After not getting selected, he received a call from the Kansas City Chiefs who asked if he would like to come in for a meeting. Kansas City was interested in Doughty, but after an MRI they discovered his spine had been altered from past injuries and that he won’t play a single snap in the NFL. After hearing this he went back to South Carolina to finish his senior year. In 2005, Doughty got injured in a game against Tennessee after getting trucked by a running back. This was Doughty’s final game. After this, he planned on just finishing his education, but that isn’t was happened. Doughty had his scholarship stripped away, and when he asked coaches if anyone could help pay for his medical bills from surgeries, they gave him false hope and eventually stopped returning his calls. Doughty was left living in his parents’ house with only a few credits left until graduation and expensive medical bills. No player should have to risk their careers for a school, and then get turned away when they injure themselves, just like a horse when it breaks a leg. If the NCAA compensated their players, players won’t be left with no money, education or help. They’ll have all that they earned while playing to use toward medical bills and education.

 Many people claim that the players in college sports don’t play the same way that the professionals do due to the fact that they haven’t gotten to the top yet. Every player in college is competing not only for their school, but against every other player for a spot in the big leagues, and people believe that giving money to these players will tarnish that style of play. In the NFL and the NBA players make millions on millions of dollars, so after they receive that big check some players won’t play with as much intensity. A man who makes nothing will work harder than a man who makes millions every time due to the fact that the man with nothing has nothing to lose by going all out. College sports is not just a place to receive an education for these kids, but a place to showcase their skills to the world and adding money to that equation will give off the feeling that these kids have made it to the top. That is why people argue that giving money to these young kids will cause them to play with less purpose and therefore ruin the purity of college sports. 

Another reason why players should be paid is because it will keep kids in school for longer. A big problem in college sports is that the student athletes leave school as soon as they’re eligible for the draft which means they don’t get to finish their education. Now many players don’t need an education if they make it into the pros because they’ll earn a lot of money, but they don’t always st ay long in the league. A player can be cut from a team or suffer a career ending injury that leaves them with nothing but the small amount they made and no education. However, paying the players will keep them in school longer because they won’t have a reason to leave. Most players don’t want to leave college but they risk suffering a career ending injury in college every year they stay so they leave as soon as they can which is bad for the game. Keeping players in college would be good for the game because players will have more time to grow and become school legends and the best way to do this is to give them a reason to stay, and money is one of the best reasons you can give.

College sports are adored by millions of fans. People love being to cheer on the school that they attended as they try to win a national championship. Its unlike any other level of sports. People never feel too connected to the teams at the professional levels because the only connection they have usually is just where they lived and that’s what makes college so much more loved. The fan base feels connected to the school. So why not give the fans the best we can? By allowing players to receive money and sell their brand, they make the players happy, and making the players happy makes the game that much better. An example of how much people love college sports is the South Carolina Gamecocks run in the NCAA march madness tournament. They were a seventh seed and had a tough road to the finals. Nobody thought they would make it out of the first game, but they managed to upset some great teams and make their first Final Four appearance in school history. This led to major celebrations in Columbia where fans partied like there was no tomorrow. This shows how much love people show for their teams when they do big things, so why not do whatever it takes to make the game better for the fans.

College athletes have been fighting for some sort of compensation for many years now, and not much ground has been made. The NCAA likes to focus their attention on the 98% of student athletes that don’t end up in the NFL because they know they are the ones who need their education, but it has gotten to the point where the non-profit organization is making more money than they know what to do with. There are many compromises here that the players and the NCAA could make like fewer rules regarding receiving gifts from outside sources or giving a flat fee for each player every year that will give players the money they need to get through college, but the arguments have gone too far for the NCAA to continue to call the student athletes “Amateurs” and then brush it under the rug. Players are putting careers on the line to get into the pros, and if they’re going to require a certain amount of years of collegiate play to make it to the next level, then the NCAA must give the players some of the money that they make for this billion-dollar organization. 
