My topic is about why ALL college athletes of every college sport should be paid some sort of money. Now a days in the collegiate world of sports, colleges and Universities are generating millions upon millions of dollars through the athletic programs. From football all the way down to the golf team. Yet, the people who bring these millions of dollars in aren’t getting paid for it. I’m speaking about the athletes. The athlete’s adults and even children have come to know, love and cheer on every single game, get not once dime from the revenue the University brings in. It is time to start paying collegiate athletes.
I plan to write this as a purpose to argue and show people the facts on why collegiate athletes should be paid for what they do. Support facts that college officials of the NCAA have to say and reasons to back each and every one of those up.
For my first point, is the money generated and how it’s not fairly distributed. The players BRING the money into the Universities all by themselves. Even in some cases, one single player alone can bring in close to 100 million dollars alone. For instance, Johnny Manziel, quarterback for Texas A&M University football team. He alone brought $59.3 million dollars into the athletic program in 2012, from ticket sales, people buying his jersey on and offline and other miscellaneous items. Not one penny did he receive from NCAA but the NCAA will gladly let the Texas A&M dean build a new 34 million dollar library from that money he brought to the University. People come to see Johnny Manziel play, that’s a huge part why almost every game is sold out on a weekly basis. Just to see one man play. I feel personally as if a University has that type of caliber in a player as they do in Johnny, why not pay him some of the money the University gets OFF of them, I’m not saying millions but I’m saying a good amount, after all.
For my second point, I personally feel as if paying college athletes helps them out with future difficulties down the road. Such as paying back huge debts owed to the school. Of course a full scholarship for a Division-1 athlete only runs on average $25,000 (that’s $100,000 over four years). BUT, let’s not forget that only very FEW select athletes even get blessed with an opportunity to have a full ride to a University to play a sport. So with that being said, athletes are now going to have debt coming out of college when at the same time colleges can pay the athletes who work basically a full-time job as a student AND athlete to help them cover cost but they don’t.
You can argue that any student will end up with the same debt, but let me ask. Will that student alone bring 12 million dollars to you off of one sporting event? Players can use the money given to them to at least help out with meals on a daily basis. Any college student-athlete is typically broke. 71% of college athletes come from low income households. 18% of that 71% are on full scholarships. So why not help the 53% out that don’t have money to support themselves? That’s over half. The overall point of this is that, the scholarship doesn’t equal the amount of pocket money an athlete has.
For my last point, I find it extremely questionable that other people make money off the college athletes but they can’t make money off themselves. Most collegiate coaches make at least $100,000 a year to coach a major sport such as football, basketball or baseball. Most of these coaches get paid bonuses for achieving accomplishments such as breaking records of any sort, winning championships or even just simply getting to the playoffs. The amount of bonuses the athletes of the team the coach is coaching…not a single dime. The players who performed to get him those bonuses get absolutely nothing. Then recently the NCAA and CBS signed a multi-billion dollar deal for college basketballs “March madness”. $10.8 billion dollars to be exact and NCAA claims it’s a non-profit company. That’s questionable.
My two possible counterarguments that you could make against paying the college athletes are that you could say that if you pay them that they could abuse the money they are given or maybe they will buy drugs or alcohol they aren’t permitted to have. Basically abusing the money that’s given to them. Another counterargument someone could use against paying athletes are that people could say that college is already paying for the athletes. Meal plans, scholarships and etc. A lot of people feel as if that’s all you need in college as athlete and you shouldn’t be paid. Most people feel as if you are so good then sooner or later you will be paid in the Professional level.
One other little counterargument that someone could make is that, what if the players get paid and begin to start slacking off because a high profile player is getting paid decent money. Letting the money ultimately get to their head. That could affect the head coaches’ job position and even the University. My intended audience is everyone in the NCAA business and in the sports world. I want to address them because I would hope they could listen to me and hopefully change this disastrous happening. I feel a couple NCAA athletes will help support my opinion and I feel as if those will be against are members of the NCAA board and a couple major networks such as EPSN, CBS and TNT only because those networks make tons of money of the NCAA and will see a significant pay cut if athletes start being paid.
The NCAA sports audience and sports world will be attracted to this because it’s a topic that’s controversial either way you look at it. But my major audience would be to attract the NCAA board members to take my opinion into consideration. I feel my position states more than others because I name things about the NCAA that not many people think about. Such as paying athletes to help them with school and pay off debts later on in life after football and school. Most people look at players and just say pay them cause they are good. That’s simply not going to cut it. That’s not going to get college athletes paid. You have to go more detailed into it and I feel I have done that. I also state multiple facts about how the coaches get bonuses for things the athletes accomplish so the coach can accomplish.