Summary: Student Athletes Should Get Paid

In 2013 Colleges earned a generated revenue of $48.2 million from their football programs alone (Sanderson and Siegried). Colleges are generating more than enough money from just their athletics to pay their players. In 2011 the NCAA reached a 14 year deal with CBS Sports worth $10.8 billion. Part of the deal makes all games in the NCAA division one tournament to be shown on four channels. Money is not the issue. Colleges receive hundreds of millions of dollars from their sports teams each year. Student athletes should be getting paid. Where is the money these athletic programs are earning going? There are many different categories in which a college program needs to put their money in order to create the best profit they can for the next

This was to get ore kids to go to college which is a good thing for the NCAA but is not very beneficial for a great basketball player who doesn't want to waste time in college when he could go straight to the pros and make money right away. One issue with this rule is that it creates risk for the athlete. If the athlete goes straight into the NBA draft and is drafted the player is an instant millionaire. When a player is forced to sit out one year before going pro it not only takes away one full year of pay but also creates a risk of injury. If an injury occurs then his chances of making it into the NBA has slimmed down tremendously. This is because NBA teams don’t want to take a risk drafting an injured player. College athletes don’t want to go to college if they are already good enough to go pro because of the risk that they are taking. If student athletes were getting paid they likely wouldn't be so opposed to having to go to college for one or maybe even four

It might lead some players to stick around and work on a degree, their skills or maturity. (Keolanui)  One of the main reasons student athletes who could go pro don’t stay for four years is because when they are in college they are living off of basically nothing. If you add money which they deserve into the equation, it might make them want stay for a couple more years and maybe even wait to go pro so that they can earn their degree. There is a similar rule in the NFL. The NFL has a rule that you must be three years out of high school to enter the NFL draft. This creates even bigger issues for the student athletes. Football being a more physical sport makes the risk even larger for the student athlete. “They work long hours, report to an unusually demanding boss and risk significant bodily harm in bringing glory to their institutions. And yet the result of all this is not a paycheck, but a bill” (“At Risk”). Most people don’t realize that when a student athlete has a season ending injury, they have to pay for the expenses. Those expenses are extremely hard to pay off when the athlete has no source of income because he or she has no time to get a job. This would be confusing to a student athlete who is helping to bring in their school millions of dollars per year