College Athletes: Why they should not be paid

Introduction

The term college athlete was coined and incorporated to describe the vocation of full-time students who competed in intercollegiate athletics during the 1950s, when grant-in-aid scholarships were first implemented and athletes could be considered paid employees and thus required institutions to carry worker's compensation insurance to cover the athletes in case they were injured. The term has subsequently been used by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to promote the image of college athletes. For some time now, there has been a great debate about whether or not college athletes should be paid. Some people believe that the scholarship should be payment enough. This essay argues that college athletes should not be paid, giving relevant arguments.

Discussion

One of the claims that proponents for student athletes' rights contend is that student athletes are steered toward degree programs and particular professors that are less that academically challenging. One of the measures that the NCAA has taken to prevent institutions from playing student athletes who are not progressing toward a degree was to implement the satisfactory degree progress rule in addition to its minimum grade point average requirement for continued eligibility in intercollegiate athletic competition.

In order to add credibility to its monitoring of Title IX, which is the federal legislation that promotes gender equity, the NCAA added the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, which requires schools that receive federal funding to report their income and expenditures related to men's and women's sports. However, complaints have indicated that reports contained widespread errors and are largely ignored by the Department of Education.

One of the other relevant debates regarding student athletes involves the paying of student athletes for participation in intercollegiate athletics. Student athletes are prohibited from working while participating in athletics and are limited to the full cost of attendance at NCAA member institutions. The full cost includes tuition, room, board, books, and fees. Proponents of paying student athletes cite the actual cost of attendance as being more than the benefits provided, as students need money for miscellaneous expenditures (e.g., clothing, travel to and from home for holidays, and entertainment). In response to complaints and requests for institutions to provide additional financial assistance to student athletes, the NCAA created a Student Athlete Opportunity Fund, which provides more than $750 million for students to access for special needs, such as travel for the holidays, new eyeglasses, and suits to wear to special functions. Students are limited by the specific list of items; however, the list has been greatly expanded since its creation to include a wide variety of educational, health, and personal expenses, as well as specific institutional program needs.

Television networks pay millions for the rights to show big games on TV. The colleges get money for appearing in the bowls. The sponsors of the bowl games - often big companies with names people recognize - pay lots of money to be associated with a game millions of people will watch. Sometimes it seems like everyone in college football is ...