By Tyler Morgan | Observer Contributor
If your child was recruited to play a Division sport, didn’t have to pay for school, food, or clothing, would you still want them to be paid? For many reasons, I believe college athletes shouldn’t be paid.
There are many benefits that College athletes receive for playing sports at school. I asked friends of mine who were Division 1 as well as Division 2 athletes about benefits they or other athletes they know receive. They mentioned how these benefits that the athletes receive include first class travel, free food at some of the best schools across the country, private tutoring, as well as free clothes.
Although some may think that is nothing, they need to consider that not any student can just go to the store and buy one shirt that cost $30, while these athletes are getting some of the more expensive athletic wear and lots of it. Also they get shoe benefits because most of these schools are sponsored by Jordan, Nike, Under Armour and Adidas. The big time schools travel all across the country by plane and coach buses, which are not cheap by any means, and the amount of food that some of these teams eat costs a lot of money.
Nobody is making these players attend these Division 1 schools. Many athletes argue that they don’t have time to eat, study, or have any free time. An article by CNN quoted March Madness Tournament Championship point guard from UCONN, Shabazz Napier, saying, “I go to bed starving”. I think that those are just excuses because if you want to be successful and become a pro, which many of these athletes do, you have to do what it takes; becoming a pro athlete is not supposed to be easy.
An article from U.S News said, “Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition fees, room and board, and other allowable expenses.
Collegiate sports is not a career or profession; some of the most successful people in the world didn’t make it big by having it easy. Some people went hungry and lived on ketchup and mustard sandwiches, ran on barely any sleep and no free time and now are some of the most successful people in the world such as the NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban stated, “I had a whole lot of fun and loved my life when I was eating mustard and ketchup sandwiches and sleeping on the floor of a 3 bedroom apartment that housed me and 5 buddies”.
Since people argue that college athletes should be paid because they are looked at as full time employees, it is fair to relate big time colleges to big time businesses. Colleges are making money each year, but just like other business, they have costs to cover and people to pay for all of the resources being used whether you’re an athlete or not. If these athletes were to get paid, how and who would determine how much they should be paid?
Then another argument would come into question: why are men getting paid more than women? It would be too difficult and controversial to break up an even pay scale due to better performance even though all athletes are putting in the same amount of time.
To ignore these controversies, it is beneficial that the NCAA avoids paying players any extra income. In conclusion, I believe a college athlete that has earned free tuition, food, clothing and plenty of other things, I feel they should not be paid. It would cause many issues on and off of the field/court.
You have to remember at the end of the day these students are still kids and unfortunately money can cause a lot of issues. They choose to go play a sport for a reason and that is to excel at their craft and earn a free education.
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