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Jameson Morris

Laura McBride

ENG 102

November 24, 2015

Paying College Athletes

Growing up in the United States almost everyone has seen a fair share of college sports

games, and in fact most people really enjoy them. Many people have friends that played college

sports, and thousands played college sports themselves. Almost everyone knows what March

Madness is, and college football season is extremely popular. College sports are a big part of

sports entertainment, and some feel that the players do not get the compensation that they

deserve. This has been an ever-popular topic in the past years. Should players be paid? If so, how

much? How would this be done? The amount of questions is limitless, although the answer is

simple; College athletes are already paid. They are paid through scholarships. Paying college

athletes, or even having a small stipend per player, has been heavily discussed over the past

couple years. Although there are some problems with the current scholarship system, it is still the

best way to provide fair competition and a learning environment for student athletes.

Certain college sports, such as football and basketball, get almost as much exposure as

their professional counterparts. So how are they different? Well for starters, professional athletes

are paid and college athletes are not. In professional sports, franchises can offer as much as they

want for certain players to play for them. The main incentive to play for a particular sport’s

organization may be the amount of money offered to play. How are they able to regulate talent if

you can just buy players? Well the system is quite simple; there are salary caps, or a certain

amount of money a team can spend as a whole, per season to regulate talent. Another way they

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regulate the flow of talent is by allowing the worst teams to get the highest picks in the drafts.

This allows teams that were low on talent to draft the best players to equal out the competition

with the more talented teams from the previous year.

College sports do not pay the players directly; players are offered scholarships, which

have relatively the same benefits at every university. Averaging $20,000 a year for private

institutions scholarships are pretty advantageous (Ehrenberg). Players pick where they would

like to attend school and participate on athletics based on factors other than money. Players look

at the quality of education and the quality of the sports team they will play for. Other factors

considered are campus life and proximity to home. After making their decision about where to

play, they practice and prepare for the season. One of the distinguishing factors of college sports

from professional sports is the fairness of the system. You never know who the best college team

is going to be each year because of how the system is setup; an underdog can rise from the ashes

of its former team and can dominate its competitors the following year. College athletes are also

playing for something more. They are playing to represent their institution and they are also

playing to showcase their talent in hopes of one day playing professional athletics. That desire

and drive is evident in gameplay and that is what makes college athletics exiting and interesting

to watch.

The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) was formed in 1910 and has been

run under the same compensation system since it has existed, scholarships. Scholarships are

quite simple. A player is offered free tuition and housing in exchange for their talents. So, in the

simplest terms, college athletes are paid to play. They are given their specific amount of

scholarship money per year in exchange for their service on a sport’s team. This arrangement is

valuable to anyone who plays sports and is also interested in getting an education. A scholarship

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provides the most important type of compensation, future compensation. Scholarships offer

student athletes a sustainable future through education.

The current scholarship system offers many benefits to the student athlete. Let’s look into

the reason playing college sports is intriguing for the athletes. Many college athletes played

sports while in high school and growing up, and many of them dreamed of playing sports for a

specific college. Sometimes it’s not always about the money or the scholarship. Sometimes it’s

just about someone’s love for his or her sport. Playing at the collegiate level is not easy to

achieve, and it provides a high level of competition for those who wish to play. Through playing

for a college sports team, you get free athletic training. Where else could an athlete be

compensated to play and be given free training other than professional sports? Another reason

students participate in college sports is to take advantage of the educational opportunity

scholarships offer. A lot of students come from poor families and don’t have money to attend

college, but many of these poor students are exceptionally talented at sports. Attending a school

on a scholarship is mutually beneficial. The student gets a free education, and the school gets a

talented player. The last reason students play college sports is to gain exposure for professional

sports’ drafts. If a high school athlete is talented enough to play professional sports in the future,

then they will often attend a college for a year or two to gain experience, credibility, and

exposure. After playing they enter into a draft in hopes of playing sports for a living. So in

essence, college sports provides student athletes with a free, or discounted, education, housing,

athletic training, and exposure. What other amateur institution would provide all these services to

an athlete free of charge, especially an athlete that doesn’t have professional potential? College

sports offer many opportunities that wouldn’t be present under other systems such as paid to

play.

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College athletics has plenty of benefits for not just the student athletes, but also the

school as a whole. Karen Weaver stated, “College presidents often think of athletics as the front

porch of their campuses”(Weaver 15). This statement means that sports are one of the ways

colleges attract students through name recognition. In fact, it’s proven that “football and

basketball success can have sizable impacts on the number of applications received from a

school” (Pope 750). This impact can be 2 to 15% of total applicants depending on the sport and

the level of success (Pope 750). This increase in applications allows the university to be more

selective during its admission’s process and in the end become a more academically sound

school because of how selective they can be when admitting students. What student doesn’t want

to go to a school with a good sports team? Quality sports’ teams give hard working students a

break from the stress of college life. If college sports were paid-to-play, and not associated with

colleges, then increases in applications attributed to quality sports’ programs, which result in a

more competitive academic environment may not be seen.

Many people are concerned with the impact of scholarship limits, specifically the impact

these limits have on the student athletes. One example of a limiting rule would be that players

might not have their meals provided for them when off campus. For example, if a team went to a

tournament, or to play a road game, their food would not be provided. Not necessarily because

the college didn’t offer that food, but because the NCAA restricted it. How are student athletes

supposed to pay for their own food on the road when they have no time for a job? Shabazz

Napier said, “There are hungry nights that I go to bed and I’m starving”(Reed 3). The NCAA has

since terminated this restriction, although there are many other limiting rules that are still in

place.

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In recent years, some studies have shown that not all the costs of attending school are

covered by scholarships, and that non-money making sports only have a few scholarships to give

out per year. All the money used in the scholarship process has a specific purpose. The main

purpose being class tuition and the second being boarding costs. Due to the nature of

scholarships, there isn’t any money allocated to miscellaneous college costs. Most college sports

programs have practice and game schedules that require anywhere from 40 to 50 hours of

athletic participation per week. This rigorous athletic schedule gives them little time for

schoolwork and absolutely no time to have a job. This is why a small stipend should be issued to

each player attending college on a full-ride sport’s scholarship.

Scholarships are the current way of operation in Division One sports, although they are

not the only option. Many former players are pushing for another system where athletes are paid-

to-play. In this system athletes would be given salaries, in addition to having a scholarship to

that intuition. The argument towards this type of system is that paying them would fully

compensate them for their service to the university. Some players make substantially more

money for their school than the school pays them for their scholarship. Louisville’s top

basketball player’s market value is $1,632,103, and Louisville pays for his scholarship, totaling

$17,370 per year. That is a difference of $1,614,733 (Reed 5). Most people would ask where

does all that money go? Part of the money is used to sustain other sporting programs at the

college. It would be wonderful to have the ability to pay every college athlete a salary on top of

their scholarship, although there are many problems with this approach.

“The commercialization of intercollegiate athletics threatens academic values” with the

average university already struggling, paying players, and further commercializing college

athletics, would just further hurt our true objective of education (Earl 1). The first, and biggest,

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problem that comes to mind when talking about the pay-to-play system is money. Where is all of

the money necessary to pay college athletes going to come from? Division One (the top tier of

college athletics) has 335 schools that participate every year. Andrew Zimbalist, an economics

professor at Smith College, states, “You have 23 that have an operating surplus, but probably

only half dozen that are making money if you include capital costs. You’re really talking about a

handful of schools that have a surplus” (Reed 5). Only a couple of schools operate with a surplus

under the current system where we do not pay players. It would be nearly impossible to pay

players and have college athletics continue as they currently are. Substantial program cuts would

have to be made just to consider such a system. Most likely, only money making sports would be

able to survive such a harsh change.

Money is not the only way the pay-to-play system would hurt college athletics. Many

would argue that paying college athletics would destroy the competitive balance of the sport. The

most successful college teams would be able to offer much more money than their competitors,

which would lead to a talent drain for other schools. Professional sports drafts are conducted so

that the worst teams get higher picks so the chance to succeed is even. College sports would have

no way to regulate talent under a pay-to-play system. This would destroy the reason so many

fans love college sports. The current level of competition would no longer be present

Another way the pay-to-play philosophy would hurt college sports is college teams would

basically be turned into professional sports clubs operating underneath a college. We don’t want

another professional sports league. It would create a whole different dynamic. These institutions

would now be competing with already established sports leagues. How would you regulate age?

Participation would now be a job and you couldn’t reject someone based on age. College sports

would be destroyed. At least, what college sports is supposed to be, student-athletics.

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The options for solutions are quite limited. Although I would be in support of a small

stipend for full ride scholarship holders on top of their current scholarship. This stipend could be

enough money to pay for the little things that scholarships don’t acknowledge or cover. By

implementing this stipend, students wouldn’t have to worry about the miscellaneous costs that

pop up when attending college, and college sport’s fans would be able to keep the current

scholarship system that they love.

Where would we get the money for this stipend? One possibility is to implement a 1% tax on all

media contracts that involve college sports’ teams. This tax would be able to found a general

NCAA fund. With college athletics being a “60 billion dollar” industry and almost all the money

going to media corporations (McCormick 6) there would be plenty of money to implement a

small stipend. All money from the tax would be deposited into the fund. Every Division One

program would count and submit a form declaring how many full ride athletes they have, and the

NCAA would then distribute the proper amount of money to each school. Each school would be

responsible to distribute the stipends to their players. This would help schools maintain their

athletic programs.

More and more citizens criticize the college athletic programs, and what they stand for.

Analysts say that they are taking advantage of athletes and that colleges are unfair to them by

using the scholarship system. If some athletes were to start refusing to play under scholarship,

other athletes would be given an opportunity that they didn’t have before. College sports are an

opportunity, an educational opportunity, and an athletic opportunity. What other venue would

pay over a thousand dollars per student-athlete to provide such an opportunity? If an athlete is

good enough to play professional sports, then that option is available to them. If they are not

good enough for professional sports, then why complain about a system which benefits them.

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Those who play sports for a college and have a scholarship should be grateful. There are

thousands of people who would love to be in that situation.

In closing, college athletes do not deserve to be paid. They have already been

compensated. Sports fans want to keep the current nature of the NCAA. Additionally, it would

only be fair if we could pay all the players, but that is simply not possible. And finally, paying

athletes would destroy the nature of the NCAA. College sports are as fair now as they will ever

be, and any significant change could destroy that. The best way to provide a fix to the areas

where scholarships are lacking, while maintain the current nature of the NCAA, would be to

provide a small stipend. College sports should continue under scholarships. If college athletes

become paid, then college sports will no longer have the distinct characteristics that differentiate

them from professional sports.

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Works Citied 

Earl, James W. “The Faculty’s Role in Reforming College Sports.” Academe 90.5 (2004):53-7.

ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Ehrenberg, Ronald “Tuition Rising: Why College Costs so Much.” International Journal of

Educational Advancement 9.1 (2009): 54-6. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Karaim, Reed. “Paying College Athletes.” CQ Researcher 11 july 2014: 577-600. ProQuest.

Web. 24 Nov. 2015.

McCormick, Robert A, and Amy Christian McCormick. “The Myth Of The Student

Athlete: The College Athlete as Employee.” Washington Law Review 81.1 (2006):1-157.

ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Pope, Devin G, and Jaren C. Pope. “The impact of College Sports Success on the Quantity and

Quality of Student Applications.” Southern Economic Journal 75.3(2009): 750-80.

ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Weaver, Karen. “A Game Change: Paying For Big-Time College Sports.” Change 43.1 (2011):

14-21. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

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