In April of 2014, a group of Northwestern University Football players filed a petition fighting for their right to be paid as “employees” of their university. They filed this petition because they believed that due to the amount of time and work that they put in towards their football program they should be compensated for it. However, getting the opportunity to play a sport in college should be a privilege rather than a job, seeing as the sport is almost always one which you love to compete in and enjoy. After all, the only reason that these people are on a team is because their school and coaches offered them the chance to play, so why should they have the opportunity to get paid for it? Because of this, I believe that college athletes should …show more content…
Most of the time for many schools, the revenue that a school brings in does not cover the costs of running athletic programs. So how would most of these athletes be paid as workers when most schools aren’t making enough money to give all of them? There would also be more financial problems if schools started paying student athletes, such as the question would female and male athletes be paid equally. Another important question is this: would all sports be paid equally? After all, the only two big money makers in college sports are Football and Men’s Basketball, so if every college athlete was paid equally then the majority of the money would be coming from those two programs alone. Also, would all athletes on a team be paid equally, or would you get paid more the better you are at your sport? Ultimately, there would be a large number of unintentional consequences for schools that would follow through with …show more content…
When you start to pay the players, then all it becomes is a day-job for these students. A quote from a sports editor from The Pendulum states, “It’s about the grind. The 5am workouts that take every ounce of will to wake up for, the pain that comes with a hit, and the sweat that drips past an exhausted smile that emerges with the completion of the last level of a daunting fitness test. It’s about getting to play the game you have an unexplainable obsession with for four more years. And that is a privilege, not an occupation. ” These student-athletes are living the lives which many young kids aspire to live, but are simply never given the opportunity to have or are not good enough. They should be taking the opportunities that come with playing a sport, which many are not able to receive, and use it to their advantage, rather than trying to profit off of