For as long as division one collegiate sports have been in existence they have continued consisted of the most talented, hardest working, all-around best athletes at their respected levels. For years, players were able to play simply for the love of the game that motivated them to perform their best. In today’s world, however, this is becoming an almost near impossibility for some players. Specifically, for division one football and basketball players. This issue is created for these players because of the serious amount of wealth that these sports can bring to the universities. For this reason, they have been the most heavily debated sports on allowing compensation for players. The student athletes who play for division one colleges in basketball and football deserve to be receiving payment for their services due to the large amount of money they bring into their schools, the high risk of sustaining serious injury, and for the time and effort commitments they invest in their programs.

The history of sports can be traced back hundreds of years. However, the first college football game did not happen until November 6, 1869 when Princeton played Rutgers (College Sports Scholarship). The first college basketball game came just 30 years later when The University of Chicago beat Chicago YMCA 19-11 (College Sports Scholarship). Neither sport had an incredibly exciting start and the rules that govern them have changed drastically since they began. After both sports began to take shape and develop, it became clear that each one would be responsible for bringing large amounts of money for the university they represented. In 1982 less than 100 years later the NCAA grossed almost 50 million dollars and today it is grossing over 1 billion dollars per year (NCAA Revenue). Once these earnings began to occur, the debate for compensating athletes was introduced. Since then, it has snowballed into one of the hottest topics in the sports world today.  

One of the greatest issues that college football and basketball players face is restrictions on their time throughout the year, including the summer months. The schedules of these athletes are more time consuming than most college students could ever imagine having to handle. For college football players, their grueling season begins long before it is ever seen by spectators and fans. It starts with organized team activities or OTA’s. These typically begin in middle to late June depending on the coach, and will carry on into the start of season practices. These summer workouts will consist of three different training sessions. The first is usually focused around weight and agility training and is a two-hour workout. This is followed by a rest session in which players can be treated for medical ailments or rehydrate and get ready for the next session. The second training period comes in the early afternoon and is a full contact practice which involves complex play memorization, and individual skills drills. This is typically the most demanding session because most coaches will choose to partake in this practice outdoors to acclimate players to the climate of the early games in the season. This is another two-hour session followed by more rest and recovery. The third and final session of the day comes in the evening and is a film and plays session. Here players and coaches alike tirelessly study film from previous games of both themselves and their opponents, and they work on memorizing their job in the plays. This is usually a four-day a week process, and often times will require extra film watching and playbook memorization from players on their own time. Based on this schedule it is clear that college football players do not get to have the same summer experience as other students Then once the school year starts and the season begins their entire world revolves football and school. Anytime they do not spend practicing or watching film, they spend with a team tutor or making sure they stay academically eligible to play on gameday. All other spare time they are sleeping or resting due to exhaustion from their taxing schedules. This season lasts from September 3, which is the first game of the season until December 12 when the regular season ends. However, for many teams they must continue practice for bowl games or the college football playoff. Once the season ends, they do have a brief respite from their schedules. After this break comes the start of spring training, which begins around March depending on the coach’s policies. This time period consists of daily practices and a film and information session (Drotar). It is a lighter load, but could hardly be considered a break especially based on the schedule of average students.

The time restraints that are put on college basketball players are not much better. Their season begins on November 13 and does not conclude until March 6, which does not include the NCAA Tournament which does not end until April 4. This takes up all but two months of the school year and that does not include preseason practice and offseason work. The work put in by these players are perfectly summed up in the words of Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight. Knight is one of the greatest college basketball coaches to have ever lived. He won three national championships and made five final four appearances. He was known for his grueling schedule with his players and making them practice for seemingly ridiculous hours. When asked about this, he said, “the key is not the will to win everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important” (Knight). This represents of the feelings of countless coaches from around the NCAA who put their players through incredibly time taxing schedules, which any average student would never have to handle. 

 These students do not have much free time between trying to perfect their craft and spending their remaining hours studying or resting. This means that they are often not given the opportunity to get jobs and earn money for themselves. In many cases these players are not coming from good backgrounds, with one statistic showing that as much as 86% of student athletes could be coming from poverty stricken situations at their homes (Hayes). This means that they have no money coming for them to pay expenses that are not covered by the school. Simple luxuries like, haircuts, extra school supplies, any kind of food off campus, new clothes, or a ticket home if they do not live near their campus, that many college students take for granted, these athletes may not be able to afford. 

Another reason why these athletes deserve the right to have compensation is that they give all of themselves for their college careers and a large number never end up going to the pros. Only around 4% of college football players will ever make it to play professionally (Hayes). This means they have been sacrificing all of their time and efforts, and while, they will be getting an education at the same time there are things that an education cannot make up for. For example, the experiences they miss out on, the academics that struggle due to lack of time and energy, and emotional stress they are put under by these sports. In division one sports, approximately 81% of students will graduate. However, many athletes take just 12 credits, which often times results in a fifth year being needed to graduate (Drotar). Since players only receive four years of eligibility this, they will be paying for the fifth year on their own. If they were to be receiving compensation during their playing years, they would have funding to pay for this fifth year.  

Many times, people will argue this and say that playing sports is the choice of the athlete and no one is forcing them to do it. While this is a true statement, if you look at the background of many of these athletes, it may seem they really do not have a choice. Approximately 86% of college athletes come from sort of history of poverty (Hayes). One of the many examples of this is Derrius Guice. Guice is a running-back Louisiana State University or LSU. His story is just one of the many stories that shows the struggles many of these athletes come from. He was born into an impoverished area of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When he was six years old, he watched his father get murdered in a Denny’s parking lot. A few years later, he lost his brother when he was charged with attempted murder (Hayes, Bleacher Report). The only thing that kept Guice going was football. It was the one constant in his life and he knew it was his only option to get an education and to have a chance to get his family out of that area. A teammate told him that he ran angry and his response to this was, “If you grew up where I grew up, and you knew this game was the only thing that can get you and your family out, you'd run angry, too. Every damn time you touched the ball" (Guice). Clearly, this puts a very different perspective on this topic than most people are used to. Guice is not the only player to struggle with loss and poverty and recognize that sports might be his only option for a way out. This is a reality for countless players who do not see playing sports as a choice. They see it as an obligation to their families to get them out of these situations. However, since only a very small percentage of players are actually able to make it to the pros, many players do not get this opportunity. If they were to get some compensation for their efforts in playing, then they would have the opportunity to help their families and at least provide some support even if they never are able to go pro.  Another issue plaguing these players is injury. Many times, players will suffer career- ending injuries that have the potential to affect them for life. Out of all college athletes, 30% will suffer an injury. This includes a wide list of possibilities, but provides a good illustration of how many players do have to deal with this issue (Daily Science). One of the best examples of this is South Carolina’s own Marcus Lattimore. In the 2012 season, Marcus Lattimore was a standout star, a favored Heisman winner and first round draft guarantee with heavy potential to be the number one overall draft pick. However, in the team’s game against Tennessee his phenomenal season came ended when he suffered a gruesome knee injury. The resulting injury would require surgery and countless hours of rehabilitation just to get him back on his feet. Despite all of this, Lattimore overcame every odd and managed to get drafted late in the draft by the San Francisco 49ers. Unfortunately for Lattimore, he was plagued his injury throughout offseason training and was forced to retire before the season even started and never got to play a game (Laird). This is not an extraneous example and is a sad reality for many players every season.  This means that players who were excepting to be able to support themselves in the league now are coming out of college with next to no money most times. If they were to be receiving compensation while in college, they would have the opportunity to be saving some of their earnings in case of an injury like these to allow themselves the ample time to recover and prepare for a life outside of sports.

There are multiple reasons why people argue that paying these athletes is a bad decision.  One of the most common is that it is not fair to other athletes that they will not also be receiving compensation. This argument contains some serious flaws with the most important being that there is not enough brought in by these sports. The NCAA brought in approximately 900 million dollars in 2016 (NCAA Revenue). Over 450 million dollars of this was brought in by college football (Sb Nation), while college basketball made over 250 million dollars (Sb Nation). This is a total of over 700 million dollars, which does not leave much money left to be divided up amongst the other sports. It would not be fair to give them money like football and basketball players because they did not earn it. It would be more unfair to pay them.  Also many people who oppose the idea of college athletes being payed support themselves with one main argument, which is that if they are getting a scholarship to play at their school then that should be compensation enough. The average division one college athletic scholarship is 14,270$ (The Spruce). This is a substantial amount and some people think it should be all the players need. However, when one looks at the numbers, this becomes a poor argument. The average cost of a State-run university is around 16,000$ per year (The Spruce).  This is over 1,000$ more than the average scholarship. Clearly the scholarship gap does not fall on the universities and the teams, but it does present an issue for players, which they often times will solve with student loans. This will usually be paired with some kind of other loan, since now whenever an athlete needs money ,they have to borrow it from a bank just to cover expenses other students do not think about like a haircut or a date.  If the players were receiving scholarship and some extra compensation for their work, they could cover some of their other costs and come out of school with far less debt, even if their scholarship does not completely cover their schooling. 

Although some students might be short of money, the universities which they attend are not. To put the massive earnings of these schools into perspective, in 2012 Texas University made over 95 million dollars of off their football team (Writer, Leaf Group) and this is not a rarity. In 2010 the earnings from the 15 highest grossing teams in college football were pooled together and it reached over one billion dollars (Writer Leaf Group). Clearly, these universities have no shortages of revenues and have an ample ability to provide some compensation for their hard-working players. 

The story for college basketball players is no different. In a study recently conducted by Business Insider, it was found that if college basketball players were viewed on the open market they would be worth a shocking amount of money. The highest valued players were from the University of Louisville and were found to be worth over 1.6 million dollars each (Yukari and Diana, Business Insider). This means that each player on the team is responsible for bringing in over 1.6 million dollars to the university. With that being said, the average scholarship is only $14,000. Another statistic this study pulled up was the amount these players were denied from the amount of money they brought in. In the case of Louisville the players, brought in 1,632,103$ per player and they were never able to see 1,614,733 of those dollars. That means that over 99% of the earning brought in by the players are never actually seen by any of the players (Yakuri and Diana Business Insider). There is a massive gap that in no way is fair to these players. The schools have no shortage of funding and could easily afford to be compensating their players. 

Obviously, once payment starts to become a part of college sports one, must raise the question of how much does each player make? For years, the NCAA has been over-complicating this issue and making it so the players never receive compensation when in reality the solution comes very simply. First one has to look at the school’s income from each respective sport. Once this is done the school can allocate these earnings to players based off of merit. The simple fact of the matter is that not every player deserves to be compensated in the same ways. This presents a problem for some people saying that it makes it unfair. However, this could be said about any institution. In a car dealership the person who makes the most money is the person who sells the most cars, in a stock firm the highest salary goes to the person who sells the most stocks. It is a simple way to look at it but it is in fact the fairest the way to do this. Some people are simply more valuable to their teams than other players and while it would be great if every player could get the same amount that is not the way the world works and it is not fair to rob all players from receiving compensation simply to spare the feelings of those who deserve less money. Another solution people feel would have the potential to work is to pay every person the same amount of compensation so it is “fair.” However, when examining this option is it really fair? Is it right to give the kid who sits at third string on the bench the same amount of compensation as the running back who is starting every game and laying his body on the line for the team every play? While paying everyone the same is a good idea in theory clearly it does not play out well when put into practice. College sports is a business now and the players who deserve the most money should be payed the most. 

Players who play football and basketball for division one schools deserve the right be compensated for the efforts they put into making their university and teams better and for bringing in incredibly large amounts of funding for their schools. While this is not a reality yet it stands as an extremely prevalent issue in the sports community and is something must be solved. The right decision is to allow these hard working players who are trying to earn money for themselves and their families the ability to receive compensation for the work they put in. 
