A serious commitment and complete devotion is needed from college athletes in order for them to be successful. This immense amount of sacrifice often goes unnoticed, and college athletes are placed under a heavy amount of stress for the work that they put in; injury, student debt, and achieving a higher education. As explained by, The Journal of Sport Behavior, “Athletes invest a great deal of time towards achieving optimal performance. Because their self-worth is often tied to these performances, they often perceive a long-term injury as a traumatic event.” Khan argues that because of the stress and problems college athletes face, they should be paid; however, his argument is weak. Khan does not include a relative and effective rebuttal and …show more content…
The rebuttal is important because it gives the author the opportunity to introduce a possible argument that could be made against them and then disprove it. By forgetting this Khan left room for an attack to be made on his argument, in result weakening it. There were many opportunities for Khan to include a rebuttal, for example, “The time they spend practicing compromises their academics; graduating debt free with a paper does not equate to a job post-graduation. Even scholarships can be revoked if a player is injured or decides to stop playing. Players can also get lifelong injuries that colleges may do nothing to compensate for.” This is a very bold statement and could easily be debated and rejected by readers based on differing opinions, but if Khan had included a counter argument those opinions could have been refuted also. An example of what Khan could have included is this statement from Dennis Johnson and John Acquaviva, “The fear of the NCAA, as it should be, is that the mere notion of paying college athletes undermines the university's primary purpose--education, something far more valuable than a modest annual stipend proposed by many.” If Khan included this, even if it does appear to derail his argument, in an effective rebuttal he would have countered it and in result disproving the opposition. Since Khan fails to include a …show more content…
Khan’s evidence has no correlation to what he is attempting to argue at times which takes away from his argument and becomes confusing. In the Toulmin model the rest of the argument is based on the fact that the writer provides and if the writer cannot provide any strong evidence they cannot build a strong argument. An example of this weak evidence was the point where Khan discusses female athletes viewing times and the difference in revenue they earn, “Over 28 million viewers tuned into watch the 2015 men’s NCAA Division I championship game, compared to 3.1 million who tuned in for the women’s championship. There's no doubt that women work just as much as men do, but because of the popularity of men’s sports, they do not… generate as much revenue.” This statement, even though it is well researched and true is not important to what Khan is attempting to argue. Not only did he already state that this argument was centered around, “male football and basketball teams” but also the term college athletes can be inferred to include male and female athletes. Instead of including this the author could have used evidence that was more relevant to their point and that assisted in strengthening his argument. Khan’s use of weak evidence distracts the reader because they now have to think why he included that information in the essay. It also makes the essay hard to follow because you