Luke Martin



Luke Martin

Dr. Quinn

English 1110

12 April 2011

How Much Can We Give Them?

Each year in the United States over 100,000 collegiate student-athletes participate in a variety of different sports and currently they do not receive paychecks for their performances. Many people have asked the question, should college athletes start getting paid? The simple answer to that question is no. The answer is no because the system that is in place now for current athletes is perfect since it gives athletes opportunities, but does not spoil them. There would be many downfalls if the NCAA and universities started to pay their athletes. College athletes would feel as if they are professional athletes and that is exactly what they are not. They are simply playing a sport, whichever one it may be, and that is it. Sports are games and unless one is playing at the professional level one should not receive any sort of cash payment. High school sports also generate money for their high school, but those athletes are not paid. They play because they love competition, teamwork, and the sport. There is no reason to pay college athletes because they are students first and academics should be one’s first priority, they already receive their fair share in extras, many of the athletes receive financial help through athletic scholarships, and the NCAA is an amateur enterprise and no amateur athlete in any sport is paid.

The main reason colleges exist is to allow people the chance to get an education and earn a degree. Student-athletes are no exception to this. Just as other students are involved in clubs or groups, athletes play sports. Those students are students first and then they are members of their club. In the name student-athletes, student comes before athlete showing that being a student should be one’s first priority. Athletes are no exception and should not be paid because the reason they are at college is to get an education and playing a sport should just be an extracurricular activity. Earning a degree is something that not everyone can do and once one has that, the sky is the limit. Moreover, Athletic Director at the University of North Texas, Cinnamon Sheffield has key reasons as to why student-athletes should not be paid. Sheffield states, “The main reason they [students] will be coming to UNT is to earn a degree which they will own for the rest of their lives.” Sheffield nailed it when she mentions how the most important reason students attend college is to earn a degree regardless of their athletic ability. That is exactly why student-athletes should not be paid because they are there to earn a degree not earn a paycheck by playing a sport. She also continues by saying, “We remind them that athletics is a privilege, academics are the priority” (Sheffield). This also backs up as to why college athletes should not be paid. Academics is the most important thing while one is at college and if they started to pay athletes their mentality would be changed and they would be more focused on the paycheck they receive from their sport rather than their classes.

Dr. Steve Chen, a professor in Sport Management at Morehead University and writer of “Should Student-Athletes Get Paid”, feels the same way when it comes to paying college athletes. Chen believes that academics are the main purpose of college. He feels that a college’s primary objective is to provide students with a quality education that prepares them to be equipped with the tools to survive in the real world. Paying athletes would take the student away from student-athlete and that would defeat the purpose of a college’s main objective. Athletes do not realize the importance of the education they are earning while they play their sport and that is why they should not get paid, it is not a job rather just a sport.

Another reason that college athletes should not be paid is because they are, under NCAA rules, to be considered amateurs. In the National Collegiate Athletic Association Rules it states, “College athletes are not to be paid, not to cash in on their prominence, never to cross any kind of line of professionalism.” Steve Wieberg, of the USA Today, studied the rules that the NCAA has placed on paying college athletes. He concludes that, “Athletic programs are meant to be an integral part of the educational program” (Weinberg). The reoccurring theme here should be obvious now —education is the most important part of the student’s time in college and being an athlete should come second.

Dr. Steve Chen, agree and writes, “once student-athletes start receiving benefits in monetary form, they will no longer be amateur athletes, and when monetary rewards are given, the athlete is then a professional.” Being a professional means it is a job and that now school is taking the back seat to this ‘job.’

The great thing about amateur athletes and watching them play is that they play with more heart and determination then professionals. College athletes play because of the love of the sport and that is what is so great about it, they play for pride not a paycheck. This is a crucial reason why college athletes should not be paid because sooner or later it will turn in to a professional business and then players will start to hold out and not play because they want more money, exactly how it happens on the professional level.

In addition, Steve Weiberg, writes in “NCAA Stands Firm against Professionalism”, that, “athletes are an integral part of the student body, thus maintaining a clear line of separation between college athletics and professional sports (Weiberg)." A clear separation is needed between the professional and college level. College is for learning and the professional level is a job. Without college athletes being amateur it would change the business aspect at the professional level. It would change it by causing a draft out of high school for colleges to draft players and buy them and then they would have to do it all over again once they decide to leave college (Wieberg). Author of “College Sports and the Myth of Amateurism”, Allen Sack, writes on his own experiences as a scholarship football player at the University of Norte Dame. “Not receiving additional payments for my performance on the football field showed me that education was the real reason I was in college and that we are not professionals, because the majority of us are not going on to play at the professional level” (Sack). This shows us that because he did not collect any sort of extra payment athletes can survive without getting more than they are already get. Sack, also goes on to mention that because he was not getting paid it made the competition that much better since he was playing because he genuinely wanted to. College athletics have to stay at the amateur level in order to keep it different from the professional level and the only way to accomplish this is to not pay the athletes.

There is still the argument that players are not compensated enough for all the revenue they bring in. However, students are very nicely compensated, though it is not in the form of a paycheck. Many full-ride athletes receive everything they need to succeed in the classroom and on the field. They can receive everything from free books, room, board, and special academic advising (Horne). Also, anyone could tell who the athletes are by just walking around a college campus. Most athletes will have team only apparel, like hoodies, sweatshirts, warm-ups, book bags, and sometimes even shoes (Horne). They receive all of this free of charge. In addition to all of this, athletes will eat only the best food available. Many are on very specific diets that required special food preparation. And when teams travel, they go high class from the flight, to the hotel, to the meals while there away, everything is top notch. Don’t forget, the students pay nothing for all of this. Lisa Horne, a senior writer for , pondered the question, “How much more can we give them?” She calculated the bill for a Division I football team traveling from the east coast to Los Angeles. It came to over $300,000 dollars, just for the few days they were gone. In the 2007 football season a total for all of the NCAA team’s travel expenses came to $42.6 million. Horne also totaled the amount of benefits players receive, including travel, room, board, food, tuition, and extras and it came to be ‘upwards of $80,000’. Just imagine if this was considered income, and they had to pay income tax on all of it, dang!

However, some would argue that colleges should pay their athletes since the athletes are the ones generating millions of dollars for the school. However, that is not the case. College Athletic departments have not been known to make profits through their sport teams. Wieberg again reports that, “Only 14 [schools] were operating in the black last year.” The only two sports that make the big money are football and basketball. Baseball, hockey, volleyball, soccer, swimming, softball, and other varsity sports play many games and travel quite a bit, but these sports do not have the large fan base the other two sports do. The sports that lack the fan support cause universities to lose money, so the larger sports have to make up for the money that is lost. Moreover, the sports that do not make as much would reflect on the athletes’ salaries. The athletes in the less popular sports would not make as much as the popular sports and that alone can cause many issues. Apart from the money aspect of college athletics, college athletes are treated like gods. They receive more than enough publicity nationwide. They become huge role models for many young people. College athletes become so popular they turn into household names. They are household names and are college kids playing a game. Stores sell their jerseys with their numbers on the back and ESPN spends just as much time talking about college sports as professional sports; sometimes even more depending on the time of year. There are more important and meaningful things in college sports than money.

In professional sports, the teams that have won the most championships are the Yankees, Red Sox’s, Patriots, Lakers, and Celtics to name a few. What these teams all have in common is that they are big market teams. They are located in big cities where there are a lot of people meaning a lot of money. The teams are able to buy the best players, pay the best coaches, and build the best stadiums. Dan Cassavaugh, of Imprint Magazine, writes that, “Big name schools like Duke, Texas, North Carolina, and USC would be able to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get the best athletes to play.” College sports would turn into the MLB, NBA, and NFL very quickly. There would be the Yankees, Patriots, and Lakers of college sports. Another question and problem would quickly arise too, ‘How much can we pay them?’

Bigger schools and schools with winning traditions would obviously have an upper hand when it comes to the new recruits with the pure fact that they could pay them more. This would only cause more problems in sports, and there is already enough drama surrounding money in sports, and college would be no different. Even if the NCAA were to place a cap on how much schools could pay the athletes, schools, coaches and recruiters would still find a way to stir up controversy over how much they are getting. Allowing student-athletes to be paid to play opens many doors to corruption and controversy. Boosters and alumni would be given free range on giving players extra ‘bonuses’ for their game performance.

All in all college athletes do not have to be paid in order to succeed and excel on the field as history has shown us. There have been games at the college level where athletes have left everything they had on the field or court in order to win the game. Athletes do not need paychecks in order to perform. A college education is something that no one can take away as. And receiving that education and all the extra gear and team apparel an athlete receives free of charge is enough to convince some players to play in college. The main reason an athlete decides to attend a college for sports is because of the scholarships. The NCAA reported that over $1 billion is spent on scholarships each year. That is a major reason why college athletes do not need to be paid. Keeping the amateurism of college athletes is very important to the NCAA. Overall, there is no reason college athletes should be paid to play the sport they love since they are already some of the most privileged students on campus.

Works Cited

Cassavaugh, Dan. “The Other Side: College Athletes shouldn’t be paid.” Imprint Magazine. Web. 27 March 2011.

Chen, Steve, and Stephanie Sturgill. "Should Student-Athletes Get Paid?" The Sport Digest. Web. 28 Feb. 2011.

Horne, Lisa. "Why College Football Players Should Not Get Paid To Play." Bleacher Report Entertaining Sports News, Photos and Slideshows. Web. 28 Feb. 2011.

Sack, Allen L. "College sports and the myth of amateurism." Christian Science Monitor 17 Mar. 2003: 9. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2011.

Sheffield, Cinnamon. "UNT Student Athletes Are Students First." University of North Texas. 23 Sept. 2010. Web. 3 Mar. 2011.

"Undergraduate Athletic Scholarships - ." Public Home Page - . Web. 28 Feb. 2011.

Weiberg, Steve. "NCAA stands firm against professionalism." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Feb. 2011.

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