College athletes need to be paid! College sports take up as much time as a full time job. While other students are able to work and make precious money, athletes are practicing and playing games, therefore making them unable to receive a sustainable paycheck. A study from College Sports Madness shows that Collegiate athletes are playing sports up to 40 hours a week! That’s more time than most people work a week. And keep in mind these kids are still studying and are attending school in order to play their sport. This leads to their only source of income as relying on their parents.
Schools thrive off sports. Afterall, where do you think all of that income goes? Most of the income will never be seen by the athletes. Schools use this tremendous income to pay the coach and to keep some for their own good. None of this money goes towards the athletic compartment. How much harm would be done if they gave some of it back to the athletes themselves? According to Mark Drozdowski, a former writer for the New York Times, colleges brought in 14 billion dollars in 2019 alone. This is a crazy number to think about. There is no doubt in my mind that this is not enough money to pay athletes with. If for some reason that this is not enough money, college athletes should receive compensation for their jersey sales. A Trevor Lawrence, Clemson jersey, sells for $80, and Trevor Lawrence receives $0 dollars from that. That is just a tough pill to swallow. How would you feel if people are profiting off of your name and you do not get a single penny from that?
You can make an argument that College athletes receive Scholarship money, so why should they need to be paid? But, the truth is only 1% of college athletes that get awarded with a scholarship receive a full ride. Not to mention, that’s only within 1% of athletes that receive a scholarship. This is unacceptable, not everyone is lucky enough to go pro and make millions of dollars.
The NCAA needs to pay their athletes. This would help greatly in so many ways. One way is the athletes would have less stress on themselves. They would not have to worry about if they have enough money to eat after a 3 hour practice. Even if all of the athletes have split “contracts” that is still better than nothing. There are many ways for this to happen,but it needs to be done no matter what way it is implemented.
That is a tough pill to swallow, sincerly will gregor
I know Will!
Excellent editorial totally blessed my eyes with these statements.
Thanks Jesse,
I agree with you on this topic. However, the NCAA is a non-profit organization so they wouldn’t be able to pay college athletes. They NCAA are basically the government of college sports. They do receive money but they distribute it to sponsors, television programs, and colleges apart of the NCAA and the rest goes to their own operations. In this case, the NCAA is in charge of whether or not college athletes get paid. They would have to allow college athletes to receive compensation from their colleges rather than the NCAA paying them themselves.