Two Sides of College Athletes Get Paid

An Amateur is one who engages in a pursuit, study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than as a profession (Amateur). There are two sides to the argument of should college athletes get paid. One side states that college athletes do not have a lot of money, they are made billions off of, and that college athletics does as much work as a school job but does not get paid. The other side states that college athletes are amateurs and get scholarships to pay for their schooling. College athletes do not have enough money to spend on the necessities of college life, colleges, and the NCAA make billions off of college athletes and they do not get to see any of the profit, and college athletes are treated as employees of a job so therefore they should get paid to play.

A majority of college athletes do not have enough money to buy the necessities that their scholarship does not cover. These athletes are not able to get jobs like college students who do not play sports since they have no free time because of practices, weight training, and games (Horace). College athletes should also get paid because a majority of college athletes are living below the poverty line. Mitchell Horace’s article states “A 2011 report entitled ‘The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport’ confirms that 85 percent of college athletes on scholarship live below the poverty line,”(Horace). One reason a majority of college athletes live below the poverty line is that more and more college athletes are coming from low income and underprivileged households, so they can not get financial support from their parents (Pay for Play). The college athletes that live below the poverty line and out of state can not go see their families on brakes because they have no money to fly or drive back home. All in all, the money that college athletes would get from playing would help their lives tremendously in the fact that they would not have to worry about their financial state.

Colleges and the NCAA make billions of dollars off of college athletes and they do not get any of the benefits. College athletes spend all their time and effort into their sport and do not get to see any of their hard work pay off. The NCAA hides behind a “Veil of amateurism” and this keeps the wealth of college athletics in the hands of the coaches, athletic directors, and the NCAA (Horace). College athletes should also get a salary, benefits, or a cut of the profits because it is their name that gets used to make millions of dollars and it is their actions that get the colleges, the media, and the NCAA paid billions (Sack). The media, colleges and the NCAA make billions of dollars off of college athletes through numerous sources (Horace). The media, colleges, and the NCAA make their millions through ticket sales, sponsorship rights, and the sale of broadcast rights (Horace). Therefore, the payment of college athletes will help the athletes tremendously, and this will not hurt the media, colleges, and the NCAA‘s billion-dollar profit margin.

College athletics should be considered a school job due to the demanding requirements of college athletics (Cooper). In Kenneth Cooper's article, he explains the three tests to see if a person falls under common law. The article states “Common law has three tests: the right of others to control a person's activities, whether that person is compensated and if that person is economically dependent on that compensation,”(Cooper). The professors found that college athletes fall under all three requirements and that college athletes should be considered a school job (Cooper). College athletes also get a scholarship which is a form of payment, but it should be considered a school job because they can get fired off scholarships like workers can be fired from a job and they can be hired on scholarships like workers can be hired for a job(Sack). They also provide a service as people do in a job, but college athletes do not get paid or get the benefits that come along with the job (Sack). Therefore, college athletics should be considered a school job since they fall under the three tests of the common law, provide a service, and get treated like an employee.

Considering that college athletics has been an amateur sport for centuries, college athletes should not get paid (Horace). Supporters of not paying the athletes feel that paying the athletes will ruin the college experience, and make college athletics a professional league rather than it being an amateur sport and the athletes playing for the love of the game and to get free schooling. They also believe that going against the NCAA’s rules of not allowing college athletes to get paid will hurt the recruiting of smaller D1, D2, and D3 schools because they will not be able to keep up with the cash flow of the powerhouse D1 schools (Horace). What the opposing arguments fail to consider is that even though college athletics is an amateur sport they are made billions of dollars off of every year and they do not get to see a penny of the profits that the media, colleges, and the NCAA make every year (Horace). The media, colleges, and the NCAA makes billions of dollars off of college athletics and then hide behind the “Veil of amateurism” that the NCAA demands in its rules (Horace). Which in turn keeps the money out of the struggling athlete's hands, but rather into the hands of the media, colleges, and the NCAA (Horace). All in all, if college athletics were paid it would help the struggling athletes out of poverty, and would also not make recruiting unfair due to the imbalance of college's financial standings.

College athletes also get their schooling, rooms, and fees paid for, so, therefore, they should not get paid (Horace). Supporters of this feel that athletes get enough from their scholarship and that they should feel grateful for the opportunity to be able to play the game they love and to be able to get their schooling paid for. What the opposing argument fails to consider is that a scholarship does not cover all the expenses of the necessities of college (Cooper). The scholarship does not cover an array of things including things like food and laundry, and they also do not have any money to travel home if they are attending college out of state (Pay for Play). The main reason why college athletes can’t afford this is that 85 percent of college athletes live below the poverty line (Horace). Although college athletes get scholarships it does not cover all the expenses of college and therefore should get paid.

College athletes deserve to be paid because a majority of athletes do not have extra cash to spend on necessities, they are made billions off of, and that they do the same amount of work as school jobs. This will give the college athletes the financial stability that they need to excel on the field and off the field. Paying college athletes will not only affect the athletes, but it will affect everyone who watches the game. It will give the players an extra pep in their step when knowing that their getting paid for what they love to do and that they do not have to worry about their financial status.