The College Sports Dilemma

“College Sports Dilemma” Over the years, college athletics has seem to become more of a “business”, instead of it being more about the student athlete`s. While the top sports universities continue to be successful and make money off of ticket sales, television revenue, merchandising and alumni support; not all schools can keep up. If a universities sports team is not winning enough, they will often have to rely on general funding from the university to help balance the budget for the athletics department. When universities have to take money out of the academic mission to help balance the budget for the athletics department, this then raises questions on the priorities of the universities. To help clarify the issue, there will be a lot of

Ramogi Huma, who is a former linebacker for UCLA says in “A Fair Day`s Pay for a Fair Day`s Work,” “the NCAA argues that college athletes are paid with a free education. The reality is that players ' opportunities are not free, and half of the revenue-producing athletes don 't graduate.” Most athletes are either dropped from their scholarship and can no longer afford to go to college to graduate or they decide to leave early to play at the professional level. If the NCAA allowed college athletes to be paid, then this would significantly increase the graduation rate at universities. College athletes could be considered employees with all the hours they put in to practice and traveling with their teams. At some schools, the road to the NCAA men`s basketball championship can require a student athlete to miss almost a quarter of their classes in the spring semester. Since athletes put so much time and effort into preparing for games and traveling during the season, they do not have the time to get a job to earn any money. Which means they do not have much to work with when they want to do something during their free

First off, not all scholarships are 100 percent paid for. A good amount of student athletes are on or get just half a scholarship or even less and while education is important for people to have, it cannot pay for any health bills if an athlete is injured. Brian Frederick, who is a professor at Georgetown University for the Sports Industry Management Program says in his article “Fans Must Understand That College Sports is Big Business,” “if a student-athlete is hurt or unsuccessful, the coaches and administrators suddenly discard the noble ideals of ‘education’ and a player is left with nothing.” Majority of the athletes that get a scholarship to play a sport cannot afford to get an advanced education without it. For student athletes, a scholarship is their golden ticket to go to a university, which is an experience everyone should have. However, if the student athlete does not meet certain requirements on the field or court or even worse, they get injured, then they can lose that scholarship in a matter of seconds. Also, if the athlete gets injured, they are more than likely going to need help paying the hospital bills. Frederick states, “how can a ‘free education’ compensate them for debilitating injuries caused during their time on campus?” So it seems that since the player was playing a sport to entertain fans that the