Pro Con Essay, Should College Athletes Be Paid

Marcus Payne

December 3, 2013

Writing 321

End Athlete Exploitation

Many people will tell you that the opportunity to go to college is enough for student-athletes, but it is time to start offering more than that and paying the athletes. Athletes that take their talents to the collegiate level bring the school and NCAA a large amount of money while not being fairly compensated for it. There are many different commodities and experiences that are given up to pursue college sports and the people that choose to do so should at least see some of the benefits of making that choice. The time has come for the traditional rules of amateur athletes not being paid to play to change. There are many good ideas that are going around about how to pay the athletes and they include using a free market technique or paying based on production. People have also brought up things such as athletes get full ride scholarships, they get a shot at the pros and that paying would be unfair to smaller schools, but if the rule change is approached in the right way it will be more fair to the players.

College athletes are defined as amateurs by the NCAA and their bylaws state “a student who engages in athletic contests for educational values, personal pleasure, satisfaction, and for the love of the sport, not for monetary or material gain” (NCAA 2012). This means that while an athlete is participating in college sports they can receive no payment, whether it is in the form of cash or other goods. There have been instances in the past when athletes have received benefits for playing and the NCAA isn’t lenient with their punishments. If a person does end up losing their amateur status they can no longer participate in intercollegiate athletics in a particular sport. The rule has been speculated on by sportscasters and news people, but the NCAA has decided that rule won’t be changed at this point.

Investigations have dug up past scandals of college athletes violating this rule and...