Should College Athletes Get Paid Essay

College athletes have gained a lot of popularity among Americans in the past few decades. This has resulted with an increasing revenues for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and not just NCAA but the colleges as well. However, one side is not getting any profit, and that side is college athletes. College and basketball programs earn billions of dollars each year through marketing, broadcast contracts, ticket sales and merchandising. The March Madness basketball tournament alone earns more than $1 billion each year in ad revenues, far more than the Superbowl. Schools and the (NCAA) both benefit tremendously from the windfall, as do coaches, many of whom are paid more than a million dollars each year. But the athletes themselves? They do not get a penny. The question becomes, why should they get paid? Reasons for they are; they spent tremendous time on practices, they struggle to earn

(Business Insider) However, the average American full time worker spends 40 hours a week working 5 days from 8am to 5pm. So on average an athlete spends 3.3 hours more then the average full time worker, but they still don’t get paid. Athletes don’t consider the sport a fun activity any more, at that point it becomes their full time job. But let’s not forget that they have to go to school too. If an athlete is taking 10 hours of classes each week and spends recommended 4 hours of studying for an each class, that means, that athlete needs to spend 40 hours each week on studying and attending classes. So at the end, that same athlete needs to work 83.3 hours a week to keep his/hers scholarships and remain having good grades in school. This is as same as having two full time jobs. ESPN’s commentator, Michael Wilbon says "The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students-- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law"