College Athletes Should Be Paid

One of the most popular and controversial topics in all sports, especially college sports, is the issue of whether or not college athletes should be paid for playing for universities. Debates over this dispute of pay for college athletes is common on sports and news channels. The current NCAA rules enforce what is called “Amateurism,” which in general terms means that athletes cannot be on professional teams and cannot be paid for the sport they play. However, the 2017-2018 NCAA rulebook also states that to be eligible for intercollegiate competition, athletes are not allowed to “play with professionals or agree to be represented by an agent” (NCAA 61) along with a few other restrictions. This rule and the controversy surrounding it has led

The common belief of this side is that college athletes deserve to make money for creating a billion dollar business for the NCAA due to money making things like sponsorships, televised games, and merchandise. One man who believes athletes should be paid is writer Marc Edelman, who says that student-athletes should be paid because “the typical Division I college football player devotes 43.3 hours per week to his sport -- 3.3 more hours than the typical American work week” (Edelman). Edelman, and others with similar beliefs regarding the NCAA no pay policy think it’s absolutely ridiculous and unfair that college football players work longer than the average American worker and receive no pay. Even though student-athletes like American workers create money for their company, college players are still not paid. Another issue many people on this side have with the NCAA rule preventing athletes from getting paid is that many lawsuits and investigations have occured because of this one single rule. For example, in september of 2017, the FBI went public about its investigations involving multiple Division 1 college basketball athletes, and universities. These investigations found out that there had been multiple occurrences where college basketball players had been given money by a coach and business like Adidas to commit to a certain university. This has led to the suspensions of many players, and has led to the firings of many college basketball coaches who now also face federal charges. The belief of Marc Edelman and other people who think the no pay policy must go is that “the only way to truly stamp out bribery and corruption in big-time college sports would be to overturn the NCAA's no-pay rules” (Edelman). The reason crimes like bribery occur in “big-time college sports” is because the NCAA doesn’t allow its athletes to be paid. This causes many kids of desperate families