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Student Athletes Should Not Be Paid

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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 …show more content…
Many student athletes come from lower class poor households, where excelling in sports created a chance to go to college that they otherwise would not have. Colleges tend to hand out athletic scholarships, which cover the tuition and dorm costs, but the student athlete must pay for everything else, including food. This leaves the student athletes in a difficult situation. Since most student athletes do not come from wealthy families they can’t rely on their parents for financial help, there is not enough time in their schedule for a part time job, and most importantly the NCAA has strict penalties for accepting any amount of money from boosters. Penalties that could cripple a collegiate career. For example Shabazz Napier, the starting point guard for the University of Connecticut Huskies during their championship run, has publicly said that he would often go to sleep hungry because he could not afford anything to

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