...The title "Student-Athlete" refers to people who are interested in an NCAA sport while attending a full-time university. As the debate about whether high-profile or high-income college athletes deserve to be paid, a very important fact continues to escape the conscience of those who passionately defend the idea: these athletes are already being paid. It's okay. Student athletes on the NCAA Division 1 football or basketball field have the potential to earn almost a quarter of a million dollars over the course of a four-year college degree with a scholarship. While regular students manage full-time academic schedules, sometimes work in multiple jobs or go into debt to pay for their education, scholarship recipients simply do something they love without even thinking about the cost of paying for school. While they certainly have demanding schedules, they have the financial...
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...Would you work for free? How would you feel if you had devoted thousands of hours while attending college and thousands of hours prior to attending to college to receive no compensation for your efforts. This is the exact situation that student athletes in the NCAA are faced with. The NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world today with revenues exceeding twelve billion dollars a year. This money comes from ticket sales, marketing and fees for the use of the athletes likenesses across a variety of media. It all directly financially benefits the universities with the student athletes not getting even a bite of that pie. It is surprising that even though student athletes are the most easily identifiable figures in college sports and often the driving force behind this...
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...Should Student Athletes be Paid? Do student athletes deserve to be paid? 12-10-13 For years it has been a controversial topic. Do student athletes deserve to be compensated for the time they put in to their sports program? Many student athletes say yes while the sports professionals say no. I spent the day walking around Sacramento State University talking with students as well as a few athletes asking if the athletes should be compensated for the work they do representing the school? The answers I received were quite surprising. I followed this up with research on the internet and this is where the controversial topic starts. I spoke with Sac State Hornets Basketball Player, Dylan Garrity who agreed that, “paying players would not take away from the competitive nature of the game. It would just allow us to be able to provide for ourselves. No more top ramen dinners,” he said jokingly. After my day at Sac State I came home a tad confused. Everyone was arguing the same thing, students should get paid. And keeping my own personal bias out of the story was hard enough in itself. Morgan Pope a Track athlete contacted me after she heard about the story I was writing and told me what I wanted to hear all day. She stated, “Paying the student-athletes would give them the picture that athletics is more important than academics, which should not be the case. If an athlete comes to Sacramento State to run or play, they need to understand that academics come before athletics...
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...competition of who can give athletes the most. Today there are numerous schools who go above and beyond what is legal based on NCAA and league rules to maintain student athletes ameteur statis. There are many who believe that payment of athletes is unfair and it changes their status from ameteur to professional, but the lack of compensation for the use of these athletes likeness and names while others are reaping the fiscal benefits is unjust. Especially when some face difficult financial situations and have the inability to help their families make money. NCAA athletes around the country have had their names and numbers used on merchandise with no compensation for the value that they have given each. Athletes are in constant practices, games, or events for their specific sport giving them much less...
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...think yes, and some think compensation should be required. However, I disagree. For many years now, one of the most popular debates in sports has been whether or not student athletes should get a share of the revenue they generate for the university in which they are attending and participating in college athletics. If college student athletes were to begin receiving compensation, it would cause universities to prioritize the more market-value sports over the non-revenue-generating sports, cause disputes due to unfairness of the more profitable programs being able to recruit the best athletes, and propose many...
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...you dedicate over 40 hours a week to something without getting paid? Well, there are many people and even sports fans alike that believe college athletes do not deserve to be paid; but they do not realize everything they are going through. These kids are not only athletes but students as well. They not only dedicate over 40 hours a week to their sport, they have to maintain their grades and attend all of their classes. They must work harder to get all of their work done and reach their goals while participating in sport. This leaves little time for students to hold a job. By achieving their team goals they earn money for their school and athletics programs. Their contribution goes unrecognized, their fans only pay attention to the scores...
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...Among all the clubs and social events that the school offers, there is one organization that stands out; one that requires more work than any of the clubs and one that involves 1/3 of all students. Yes, I’m talking about student athletes. Around 8 million students play sports in college, according to USNews. The most popular sport is basketball, 18,150 schools have a boys basketball team and 17,767 schools have a girls basketball team. The most participated sport is football, more than 1.1 million students playing in 14,000 schools. Some students describe it as a privilege, some as a distraction from school. Many think that it gives too many privileges. However, everyone agrees that it’s hard work that not everyone is able to...
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...Derek Layton Professor Bird EN 300 11/18/14 Are College Athletes Going to be Paid? The NCAA is one of the top organizations in the world that brings in billions of dollars in revenue on college athletics alone most notably with college football and college basketball. Yes some of these athletes do get compensated with some sort of scholarship which does help out with their expenses but the chances of an athlete receiving an athletic scholarship that is worth anything meaningful is less than 2%. A full ride scholarship might as well be compared to as finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. In cases that an athlete does receive a scholarship this does not come close to covering the expenses of tuition yet alone all of the other expense such has room and board, food and everything else a human being needs to survive. Playing a colligate sport is just as demanding as a full time job and according to a survey done by “[1] The NCAA in 2011 playing football required 43.3 hours per week; college baseball, 42.1 hours; men's basketball, 39.2 hours; and women's basketball, 37.6 hours.” So these athletes have no time with school and their respective sport to find a job to help them with other expenses so they have to rely on student loans, grants or their parents to help them get through school. This also makes it much more difficult for a student athlete to pursue a more rigorous degree such as sciences and engineering. One problem that I have with the NCAA is all...
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...According to NCAA statistics, almost all colleges and universities award their students with scholarships. In Division II and I schools, the amount provided for the scholarship is 2.7 billion for athletics scholarships every year to more than 1500 student-athletes. In Division III colleges, more than 180,000 students do not get athletic related financial help, but most of them receive help in the form of need-based scholarship or the student grants. In high school level, in contrast, only a few of the students are awarded an athletic form of a scholarship to participate in college competition (NCAA 1). In fact, only two percent of the total high school student-athletes get the scholarship or financial aid. Besides, NCAA student-athletes have...
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...Name Instructor Class Date Why Student Athletes Should not be Paid Since the 1950s, college sports have slowly turned into a profitable industry. Aside from creating prestige to the schools, college sports are generating millions of dollars for their schools through the involved student athletes (Bennett). In view of this, student athletes have become an excellent investment to many schools. In fact, many schools are willing and prepared to pay these young athletes additional monetary rewards aside from the provision of customary scholarship benefits to entice them to enroll in their schools. Because of the widespread practice of providing monetary rewards to college athletes, its legality has become the topic of many debates. Personally, I strongly believe that student athletes should not be provided with additional monetary benefits in view of the fact that such practice is contrary to the fundamental purpose of college scholarships, which is to provide quality education to exceptional students. Moreover, once monetary benefits are given to college athletes, they will no longer be considered as amateur athletes but professional athletes as the payment of money is tantamount to employment, thus compelling the athletes to somewhat perform in accordance to the desires of their school (Sturgill). Finally, paying college athletes will normally lead to financial constraints and may cause the school to drop other sports and other academic activities to their programs, which...
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...placed on athletic scholarships. Right now, with college sports being a multi-billion dollar industry, the income for a student athlete receiving what is considered a full scholarship, is at or below the national poverty level, due to NCAA restrictions. Students living in poverty level while their fair market value averages $265,000 annually, not including income from individual commercial endorsement deals. Students living in poverty while their coach makes an average of $3.5 million per year. Students living in poverty allowing for tax payers to fund food stamps and welfare benefits while their multi-million dollar income...
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...Thomas Bessinger Professor Hortman February 18, 2014 Should Student-Athletes get paid? A very popular question that has been lingering around the sports world for sometime now is whether or not student-athletes should get paid. There are a lot of different opinions about this topic. The NCAA does not allow student-athletes to receive any type of benefits of any kind from the university; if the student-athlete does, he is no longer an amateur athlete and can no longer compete at the college level. This problem has been common over the past years and is causing athletes and universities to be penalized. If the NCAA would allow student-athletes to receive some benefits this would not be as common. Therefore, student-athletes should get paid because they are making money for their university, many student-athletes cannot have a job, and it is unfair for the NCAA to profit off of student-athletes. This reasoning has led many people to try and incorporate change in the collegiate world. Student-athletes, particularly at “big time” schools, have been bringing in millions of dollars in for their universities. The universities are selling jerseys that have the athletes’ names on the back, but the student-athletes are not receiving anything from that (Chen, 2013). Student-athletes are not even allowed to sell their jerseys or other apparel that is given to them by the university. In 2010 the NCAA did an investigation and found out that AJ Green sold one of his jerseys for $1000...
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...Athletic events are by far a stand out part of the college experience for many students. Sporting events bring not only the students together, but the fans and community. So, the debate over whether student athletes should be paid to pay has mixed opinions. The NCAA has firmly committed to their bylaw 12, which is spoken about in Steve Weirberg’s in Despite Criticism, NCAA Takes a Firm Stance on Professionalism. The infamous bylaw states “College athletes are not to be paid, not to cash in on their prominence, never to cross any kind of line of professionalism” (pg.681). They recieve endless benefits that the average student does not, they are able to learn from some of the best coaching staff, travel, and have the potential to turn into a...
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...I'd ask. "Am I boring you? How can I help?'' Adjunct professors actually care about such things. "No, the class is good,'' is what I'd hear. "I had to work late last night.'' They'd be stocking supermarket shelves until 4 in the morning. They'd be tending bar. One worked as a security guard at an apartment building. They'd fall into bed six hours before they had to be in my class. I think about these kids now, whenever the siren sounds for college athletes to be paid. What about my students? What does it say to them? These were not people who asked to be paid to attend college. These were folks who paid for the privilege. And let's be clear: College is a privilege. It is earned, not bestowed. Some, in fact, are still paying. It's one thing to go to school for free and to leave free of debt. It's quite another to work your way through and depart with a five-figure yoke around your neck. Should college athletes be paid? Why? At the highest levels, here is what they endure. Here's some of the hardship involved if you are an athlete, attending a university for free: A four-year audition for prospective employers. Or three years, or two. Or basically, whenever you and your pro league of choice agree you've passed the audition. I don't know about you, but when I was a college junior, schlepping to town council meetings on Tuesday nights for my Journalism 301 class, no newspaper editor was there to praise my fascinating reporting on zoning changes in a...
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...The Deal With Student Athletes Almost every student coming out of high school would like to further their education at a college or university. Unfortunately, many students cannot afford the cost of attending college. This leaves students with few options, either abandon their hopes and join the workforce with no college education. The other option is to take on loans resulting in massive student debt after graduation. Another option, which I will be focusing on, is to receive a scholarship to compete in college sports. There is a catch if one decides to take this route, athletes are not allowed to make or accept any compensation whilst attending the university. This has led to players controversially getting kicked off teams and losing their scholarships. This issue has people torn as to whether the students should be paid or not. Journalists use similar rhetorical strategies to try to convince their readers despite having opposing views of the same topic. One person...
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