Waking up before the sunrise is a daily routine. Early morning film sessions, class, then practice, which dominates the day. There are few moments in between for food and socializing, but the life of a student athlete is anything but ordinary. Sleep, eat, practice and school are all an athlete knows, and with the pressures of campus life it becomes even more difficult. No time for much of anything, let alone getting a job. Like most students, these athletes need money, but do not have a spare moment to work. Without any source of income, athletes are put at a major disadvantage. Their full-time job is athletics, in addition to rigorous college-level courses. The possibility of becoming a professional athlete and making millions becomes very appealing. This course of action leads to student athletes making money illegally, dropping out of school, or leaving school early without a degree in an often futile attempt to play at the professional level. Waking up before the sun is a daily routine. Early morning film sessions, class then practice, which dominates the day. There are a few moments in between for food and socializing, but the life of an athlete is anything but ordinary. Sleep, eat, practice and school are all an athlete knows, and with the pressures of campus life it becomes even more difficult. No time for much of anything, let alone getting a job. However, now that student athletes are compensated, they no longer need to worry about money. They can fully focus on school and sport. They can achieve success in both areas without worrying about money. Graduation rates are higher, academic grades are higher. Later in life, players more successful in their respective professional fields because of the ma... ... middle of paper ... ...ommentary: Should NCAA should get rid of Amateurism for its Athletics.” Morning Edition (NPR). 07 May 2013. Points of View. Ebscohost. 05 Jan. 2015. Greenlee, Craig T. “College Athletes deserve some equity.” Black Issues in Higher Education. 27 Apr 2014. 62 (1). Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. Jackson, Derrick. “Op-ed: It’s Time to Pay Student Athlete.” Interview with Lynn Nery. NPR Talk ok the Nation. 06 June 2013. Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. King, Bill. “The Junkyard Blawg: Play for Pay?” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 03 May 2012. Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015. Maisel, Ivan. “Don’t expect athletes to be paid anytime soon.” Sporting News 10 Oct. 2014. 52 (1). Elibrary. 05 Jan. 2015.
Most student-athletes grow up as very innocent lads bedecked with tremendous talents and become very promising in sports. Thus, they become rays of hope for their families, neighborhoods, and schools yet to be determined. Like the lamb in William Blake’s poem The Lamb, they are fed “by the stream & o’er the mead; gave…clothing of delight, softest clothing, wooly, bright…making all the vales rejoice.” (Smith 24) Then they are exposed to the life of hard work in which only the fittest survives. This makes them ready for the different challenges in the sports scene.
Critics feel that the term amateurism is only a term used in collegiate sports to show the distinguish the difference between professional and collegiate so that they don’t have to pay college athletes. College athletes are just as talented and just as exposed as professional athletes. The argument is for there to be a share in the profits for wage compensation amongst players is know as pay-for-play. College athletics is a corporate enterprise that is worth millions of dollars in revenue. Pay-for-play is an assumption that colleges and universities receive huge revenues from marketing their collegiate sports programs and that the profits from these revenues are not shared with players who perform in the arena. Which some feel that they should.
Should college athletes receive pay for what they do? You’ve probably seen this pop-up a million times, and thought about it. You’ve probably figured why should they? Aren’t they already receiving benefits from a full-ride scholarship? But then an athlete will get caught up in a scandal like Johnny Manziel, where he signed footballs for money.. then you think well why shouldn’t he receive that money? And you then contradict yourself. But shouldn’t they receive money from outside sources, and then the benefits from the school. Not get a salary from the school just the benefits they’re already receiving, and money from sponsors. Wouldn’t that make sense considering the money they’re making the school? According to an ESPN report Alabama University makes $123,769,841 in total revenue from sports. (College Athletics Revenue) Yes ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY THREE MILLION. Yet an athlete from Alabama can only receive benefits from a scholarship.. That doesn’t seem right. You would want to be payed when the opportunity arises. It should only be fair these players get a piece of the revenue pie, after all they are the ones creating the revenue. The players should be getting benefits to allow them to pay for basic college needs, grow up to be responsible adults, and allow the NCAA to thrive. This would allow for the NCAA to truly thrive as a sporting association.
Throughout the country young men and women are losing their priority for an education. To attend a university should be a highly cherished privilege, and it should be an even greater honor to play athletics for the university. Therefore, the writer supports the decision that the “student” comes before “athlete” in student-athlete. Playing for pay should be considered a job for “professionals”. In the rulebook, the NCAA views college athletes as armatures. This statement sums it up best. When athletes go to college, not all of them go in with the mindset that athletics is going to be their future job....
Playing a sport in college is equivalent to working a full-time job (Thomas). There are rules that allow major-college football coaches to only demand twenty hours of the players time each week (Wieberg). However, studies show that those athletes are doubling those hours per week during the season (Wieberg). Other sports are putting in the equivalent of a full time work week (Wieberg). Some NCAA officials are concerned with the amount of time spent stating that beyond forty hours is inhumane (Wieberg). Most of the athletes compete and do whatever it takes to succeed, so they enjoy spending countless hours on sports (Wieberg). Many athletes even have struggles in the classroom because they do not have enough time to study. Student-athletes at top Division I schools think of themselves as athletes more than students (Wieberg). Less than one percent of college athletes actually make it professionally (Wieberg). That means these kids should focus more on their education than on athletics. In reality, these official...
PR, Newswire. "Economically Speaking, College Athletes Should Not Be Paid." PR Newswire US 23 July 2012: Regional Business News. Web. 8 Apr. 2014.
Zimbalist, Andrew S. Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism And Conflict In Big-Time College Sports. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
The argument that college athletes should be paid as been ongoing for many years. With the growing rise of college athletes’ popularity in the media, many people believe that college athletes should be paid, but they do not see the negative effects of the payments. The payments of college athletes could cause their price of enrollment to rise, forcing many students to transfer to other universities or not attend college at all. It may also cause fan ratings to drop because the relatability factor would disappear. Along with university budget cuts appearing, academic scholarships and athletic scholarships would disappear. College athletes should not be paid because college athletes are students and not professional players, the deep connection
Woods, Al. “College Athletes Should Be Paid.” Sports and Athletes: An Anthology. Ed. Christine Watkins. Greenhaven Press, 2009. 87-94. Print.
The payment of NCAA student-athletes will deteriorate the value of an education to the athletes. The value of an education for a young man or woman cannot be measured. It is our gate way to success as...
Mitchel, Horace and Marc Eldelman. Should College Student- Athletes be Paid? 6 January 2014. 6 April 2014 .
01 Sept. 2011. Russo, Christopher, and Allenor St John. " Money for Nothing." The Mad Dog 100: the Greatest Sports Arguments of All Time. New York: Broadway, 2004.
Forbes, 30 January 2014. Web. 29 April 2014. Gutting, Gary. “The Myth of the ‘Student-Athlete’.”
For decades there has been a debate on student athletes and their drive to succeed in the classroom. From the very beginning of organized college level athletics, the goal to want to succeed in athletics has forced students to put academics to the back burner. In spite of the goal to want to succeed over a hundred years of attempts to check limits of intercollegiate athletic programs on colleges' academic standards still seems to struggle to this day. This brings to surface one of the most asked questions in sports, “What effect does college sports have on academics and economics?” Herbert D. Simons, Derek Van Rheenen, and Martin V. Covington, authors of “Academic Motivation and the Student Athlete” researched the topic on whether athletics and academics benefit each other. Bryan Flynn, the author of “College Sports vs. Academics” poses the question “Should institutions of higher learning continue to involve themselves in athletic programs that often turn out to be virtual arms races for recruiting talented players who bring big money and prestige, but put academics to the back burner?” Although both authors agree that sports have an impact on an athlete’s academics, the focus of their argument differs.
In one historical moment from Pamela Grundy's book Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina, she writes about men's college athletics between 1880 and 1901. Grundy states that "metaphors of competition gained new prominence, particularly among the members of the state's expanding middle class, which was coming to dominate public affairs" (Grundy, 12). Male college students living in North Carolina began to excel in organized athletics during this time period. "The contests on the field seemed to mirror the competitive conditions prevailing in the society at large, and the discipline, self-assertion and reasoned strategy that sports were credited with teaching meshed neatly with the qualifies required for business and political success" (Grungy, 13). People who supported athletics wholeheartedly believed it taught good values such as discipline and good character, while there were some who opposed this saying that sports were a distraction for students and thus a hindrance to their educational goals. White college men perceived athletics as a way to show their superiority and justify their presence in business as well as politics. They believed athletic sports were essential in their "vision o...