College Athletes Should Be Paid: Opening The Conversation

College athletics have increased tremendously popular among Americans in the course of recent decades. This has come about into expanded livelihoods for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the schools taking part inside the affiliation. This has filled the open thought of whether school good athlete should be remunerated barring their athletic grants. Some contend that grants understudy athletes get is an agreeable sum while others contend something else. It was approximated that the University of Texas' Athletic Program had the most noteworthy income of other universities. Despite the expansive measure of cash they are accepting, none of the school athletes are lawfully getting paid for their games. Although many individuals, particularly the athletes themselves, battle for the pay towards school student athletes, advocates for not paying them keep on arguing their reasons towards superfluous installments towards the athletes other than grants.

Paying student athlete would really decimate the way of life of school sports. Understudies worship school brandishes in light of the way that the students are much the same as them. The athletes go to classes and are seen on school grounds every day. They are a bit of the school's condition. Cash would separate the athlete from the understudy body. It would impact them to seem like they are the prevalent understudies of the school. The remunerated athletes will get degraded the enthusiasm of the amusement and they won't be as persuaded as they used to be to make it to the following level. The athletes are as of now going to carry on with the way of life they longed for: they're getting paid for playing a game. Malcom Lemmons, a student athlete, businessman, and creator of “College Athletes Getting Paid? Here Are Some Pros And Cons” from the Huffington Post imparts that “ Let’s face it, if they give these kids money, they’ll never have any incentive to go to class. Many of them don’t want to go already, combined with the fact that some may be receiving grades without doing any work. Money will only add to this fact.” (Lemmons). The repaid athletes will have no reason or inspiration to really do well in sports and in the books because of them getting paid. Likewise envision a mentor trying to teach a player in case they were being paid. Paying them would impact their character and it would impact the way they act if they somehow managed to confront reality and play professionally. School educates about existence and molds one to be a capable and very much taught person. Including, the understudy students will never have motivating force to go to class. Lion's share of them would prefer even not to go to their classes joined with the way that some might get grades they don't work for. Money will only add to this fact. The creator, Maurice Reed Jones, of “Why College Athletes Should Not Be Payed” from The Odyssey Online features that “Another thing is that some athletes do not stay in school the four years to earn their degrees, so they will take up classroom space for one or two years and it is free.” (Jones). This is a prime case of understudy competitors exploiting their circumstances. Paying student athletes will enable them to have a greater number of benefits than others which will in the end prompt tumult.

But when the NCAA signed a multi year bargain with nearly $11 billion with the CBS in Turner’s sports that will give the rights to show games and some coaches are being paid almost $10 million year, it doesn’t seem very fair to me and doesn’t look like the purity of the game isn’t really put into question when the coaches,schools and NCAA are getting paid. No I’m not saying that the coaches and staff should I make a living, but when players are putting in almost 50 hours a week on practice and study hall I think they should make some money for their time. Now it’s not as easy as handing out checks every football and basketball player who played for the best team in the nation. There are a lot of factors that we must take into account, for one title nine which is the equal distribution of money for every sport the university provides. So if you want to pay the Heisman Trophy winner got to pay the second string goalie women soccer to. Now this is usually not something people are thinking when they say we need to pay student athletes, but I think there is a solution to this problem and in the end will make everyone happy.

But before I go into more detail about how we can start paying student athletes I want to start with why people say we shouldn’t pay them, like I said before many people that say student athletes shouldn’t be paid are representatives of the NCAA coaches and even some former players. For example when Tim Tebow former quarterback of the Florida University was asked about whether or not student athletes should be paid his response was “I knew going into college it wasn’t about the money it was about school pride and winning a national championship for my school,'' even though his jersey was one of the best selling jerseys in American and he never saw a dime from those sails. He is still very against the players getting paid and says athletes should just play for school pride and try to make it in the pros. But for many players making the pros is not real realistic and school pride doesn’t put food in their belly and a roof over their head.

Now I’m one of the biggest college football fans all over meet, i’ve gone to many San Jose State games and even as a kid I used to play the NCAA video game with my friends. But as I’ve gotten older and started to hear some of the injustices some players go through the more I thought they should be compensated for their work. One example of a player very recently being screwed over by the NCAA is Memphis basketball star and potential number one overall NBA draft pick James Wiseman, earlier this year Wiseman was suspended 12 games by the NCAA because his mother had received over $11,000 from a “booster” in the beginning of his recruitment to go to Memphis University. But this was not the first nor the biggest example of under the table payments of players, in fact this has been going on for years.

One of the biggest bust the NCAA ever made back in 1985 at Southern Methodist University(SMU), see back in the 1980s Texas universities were basically like a wild wild West trying to recruit the best players in the nation for their schools. This included boosters trying to buy players commitment to their University by paying the players,buying them nice cars or even helping a players family out. But SMU was the worst they were not only do illegal recruitment practices like buying cars and paying players, but they would have a monthly payment plan for every player on the team. These payments would range from $500-$5000 for each player and they eventually did get caught by the NCAA, but when they were caught they didn’t stop paying the players they just tried to sweep it under the rug and it worked for about two years until someone leaked information about the school and their illegal practices. The whistleblower was Sean Stoppers a former linebacker for SMU who had been removed from his scholarship for abusing drugs and always being injured, so when he went back home to Pennsylvania the NCAA followed and asked him some questions about SMU‘s recruitment tactics. Stoppers and his mother with nothing to lose told the NCAA all about the ilegal activators that we’re still going on at SMU, this would later result in SMU receiving the “death penalty”, which is the loss of scholarships the cancellation of the program for at least a year and not being able to participate in any bowl games for two years.

Now the big question is why would schools go so far and risk getting caught by the NCAA just to recruit some 18 year old to come to their school. Well the short answer is to win some games but the longer answer is a little bit more complicated than that. See having a winning program can help boost school attendance and sell more games tickets,merchandize and help set up endorsements with big companies like coke or all state. But SMU story has nonstop schools and exporting their players and bending the rules to help them win games, it’s just made them more careful of how they do it. So to the people who say that players are doing this for the love of the game and the college sports are pure, I see there’s so much corruption college sports that we need to take the boosters out of the equation and just allow the players to make money the legal way and keep on playing the sport they love that the worry of losing the scholarship or hurting their team. So how do we pay the players without hurting the School or the way the game is played, well recently the state of California has passed a new law that “pay to play act” saying that players can make money off of their name and likeness. This goes for all sports and helps pay the bigger names in college sports like Zion Williamson and Tue Tagovailoa, it doesn’t make the schools pay the athletes directly but it is a step in the right direction. In my opinion the schools not paying the players directly could be a good opportunity for the athletes to make some good money and build up the personal brand. The NCAA seemed to agree with the new law as they also passed a new law to apply to all schools starting next season, so hopefully players will make the most of the new activities presented to them and still keep the integrity of college sports.

So in conclusion paying college students is not an easy question to answer not easy to do. But if the players, coaches and the NCAA are willing to make changes in the rules to help the players, then maybe we can wipe out boosters from committing illegal acts and putting players in danger of losing their scholarship.The new law will not only keep the NCAA happy because they don’t have to pay the players directly and the players can make money off their own name and likeness. The NCAA is heading in the right direction and will hopefully set the right rules and regulations to help players not be taken advantage of