Payment for the Players Essay

Mike
Schantz
121-003
5/3/2013

Payment for Players

In college sports, it seems that everybody gets paid except the athlete. The players provide the labor that produces winning teams, which in turn, generates heightened fan interest. As a result, football stadiums and basketball arenas are filled to capacity, translating into fatter operating budgets for the athletic powers. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), formed in 1905, set by laws requiring college student-athletes to be amateurs in order to be eligible for intercollegiate athletics competition. However, intercollegiate athletics have changed dramatically over the past ninety-five years. Presently intercollegiate athletics generate tremendous amounts of gross revenue, especially football and basketball players. According to the NCAA, requiring college student-athletes to be amateurs protects them from being exploited by professional and commercial enterprises (Schneider, 2001). It has been a wrong doing and unfairness to the players for years, only time will do the right thing.
If we want to reward college athletes and dramatically reduce the cheating that goes on in college sports, we should consider paying student athletes. A program of this type would not only eventually generate more income for our colleges and universities by attracting more students, it would also increase the graduation rates among college student athletes. It would also have a positive influence on high school academics because high school athletes would receive a clear message: If they want to participate in sports at the college level, and receive payment, they will have to develop good study habits (Leiserson, 2012). Coaches can do commercials and nobody questions their integrity or sense of fair play. For athletes, that's a bad choice, one that could jeopardize their eligibility and ultimately cause them to be banned from further collegiate competition (Greenlee, 2000). Plus, think if how many college athletes don’t graduate, and leave their school to go play at a professional level, there is nothing keeping them there besides a free education, which they don’t need because of all the money their able to make at a professional level (Bagari, 2012)
According to Leiserson (2012) in Current Events Issue 13, College football and men's basketball generate revenues of more than $6 billion every year. Yet not one penny goes toward paying the people who make the sports possible: the student athletes. Student athletes are often unable to work part-time jobs, because in addition to training and playing in games, they are full-time students who must earn passing grades to stay in school. According to Greenlee (2000), “For athletes who are on a ‘full ride’ have all the basics covered for school: tuition, books and room and board. Even so, the scholarship does not include a spending money allowance to help cover incidental expenses such as laundry and bath items or being able to go to the movies or buy a hamburger and French fries”. The student athletes could be given a small salary, and it would help them live comfortably for their demands. Another good point he sates is “Given the demands of being a college athlete, putting in 20 hours a week at a part-time job is not very practical. The hours athletes would spend working at a job are already spoken for…. Typically, they already spend that much time every week in team meetings, practices and traveling to out-of-town games. And depending on the sport, the time demands during the offseason aren't that much different from the actual season (Greenlee, 2000)”. This is why Greenlee (2012) believes that there should be some kind of money plan or stipend. It could be something like two-hundred dollars a month that would be included with their awarded scholarship. Student athletes do not have a lot of time to work, so it seems to be the only way to award student athletes without breaking NCAA rules and regulations. With a well

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