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Jason Crandall

Mr. Gardner

Hairy Milk Bags

November 5, 2020

College athletes turning into professional athletes?

Allowing college athletes to be paid for playing their sport has been a very controversial

topic throughout the recent years. All the money the players bring to their program and sport

goes all towards the coaches and school. The NCAA (National College Athletic Association)

makes about 1 billion dollars from just sports, about 60 million dollars through marketing

endorsements, and 130 million dollars from tickets. All in one year. All that money goes towards

the colleges, the tournaments, the coaches, and none of it to the athletes. The only way they are

getting “paid” are scholarships. Scholarships are great and help a lot but they don’t pay for

everything that an athlete needs. The highest paid NCAA football coach makes around 9 million

dollars a year. The lowest paid NCAA football coach makes around 320 thousand dollars. 320

thousand dollars may not be a lot, but it is way more than what the athletes are making.

Depending on the sport and how good they are depends on how much money the coaches will

get paid. About 33% of college athletes will quit or have the college ask them to quit before they

graduate. A big part of college athletes quitting is not having enough money. With all this

information, how come college athletes aren't allowed to receive any pay or compensation for

their play?

Being a college athlete takes up all of an athlete's time, they have to work and deal with

school as well as practice and training for their sport. An athlete spends around 4 hours

practicing, 6-8 hours going to classes and studying, around 7 hours of sleep, and 1-2 hours eating
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and getting ready in one day. That leaves 3-4 hours of free time that will most likely go towards

more studying, more practice, and more time to eat and get ready. That leaves no time to have a

simple job, like at McDonalds. This is what the average college football player schedule looks

like everyday (see fig. 1).

(Fig.1) Willis, Zak. “A Day in the Life of a Division 1 Football Player.” ​NCSA Sports.​ NCSA,

Web. 1 November 2020.

The picture shows what a college football players schedule looks like during the football season.

It shows that most of the time spent by college student athletes is on practicing their sport and

working on school. Their whole day is focused on their sport that they play and their school

work. On the other hand, people say that during the offseason the student athletes have time

because they don’t have to practice. Even though they may not be in season and aren't playing

games they still have to stay in shape and practice the same amount as they do in season. If
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athletes spend all their time working on sports and school they will have no time to get a job and

make money.

86 percent of college athletes come from places that are under the poverty line. Meaning

that more than half of college athletes are from places that are poor. The college athletes that

come from poverty want to get into professional sports so they can make millions of dollars for

themselves and their families. 70 percent of NFL players and 45 percent of NBA players come

from poverty. They want to get to the professional level so they can make money of them being

good at what they do. As described in a video by Seth Travers, he talks about how most of the

college athletes play and get good in college so they can make it to the professional level and

make millions of dollars. People may say that they have scholarships so they don’t need any

money because everything is paid through a scholarship. The scholarship only pays for the

education and nothing else:

If people think an education is fair compensation they are wrong. 86 percent of college

athletes come from places that are below the poverty line. When these athletes are

leaving their poor homes, an education cannot help them with basic needs (DeWitt).

People think that having a scholarship is all you need to be able to afford being a college athlete.

For basic needs a scholarship does not help with them. If college athletes were able to receive

pay for playing their sport they will have money for basic needs as well as helping their home

and families.

The rules for receiving any sort of pay for playing their sport is very strict. If an athlete

receives even 1 dollar for playing they will get punished. On October 21, 2020 former LSU and

current Cleveland Browns wide receiver, Odell Beckam Jr was banned for handing money to the

players after LSU won the 2019 college football national championship. Not only did Beckam Jr
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get banned, 8 players lost their scholarships. @WalkWithLyle tweeted out “If Odell would have

done the same exact thing but did it on LSU campus and gave all that money to students on

academic scholarships no one would have cared and he would not have been banned.” This

shows that if the NCAA wasn’t so strict Beckam Jr wouldn’t have been banned. If they do

receive any money off of their play then they will be punished:

The NCAA is strong on three things, athletes can’t get pay off compensation, they cannot

receive gifts, and they can't receive money off likeness. If they do any of those they can

be suspended or lose their scholarship.

When a player sees a kid with their jersey on they would most likely want the money from the

people buying their name. But if they receive any of that money they can lose almost anything. If

the NCAA wasn’t so strict and would allow players to receive any small pay it would help the

player a lot. If the NCAA wasn’t so strict there wouldn’t be a worry about losing an education

and a scholarship.

Before I had done a lot of research on this topic I really had no idea what side I was on. I

agreed that college athletes shouldn’t be able to receive any sort of pay for play, but I also agreed

that college athletes should be able to receive any sort of pay for play. Now that I have

researched more on this topic I lean more towards the side of allowing college athletes to receive

pay. I believed that scholarships would help and pay for everything for an athlete. I have learned

that they don’t fully help. You can’t go through college easily with only an athletic scholarship.

If college athletes are allowed to receive pay for play through sponsors and endorsements then

there will be no problem. Now that I have a better understanding I can now say that college

athletes should be allowed to receive pay for play.

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College athletes should be allowed to receive any sort of pay for their play. It doesn't

have to be through the school but it can be through people buying their jersey or even anyone

just handing them something. College athletes don’t have any time to go out and get a job in

their free time. Their job is school and their sport. Most college athletes come from places that

are poor and their main reason to be in college is to get to the pros and gain money from there. If

they could receive pay from college that would help them a bunch and would skip going to the

pros if they don’t want to. If the NCAA wasn’t so strict athletes would be more comfortable.

There are also reasons that are still valid, like scholarships are technically paying players and that

players have a little more time in the offseason to be able to get a job. Both sides on this topic are

both very valid and are both very strong.

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Works Cited

Willis, Zak. “A Day in the Life of a Division 1 Football Player.” ​NCSA Sports.​ NCSA, Web. 1

November 2020.

Travers, Seth. “Why College Athletes Should Be Paid.” YouTube, Jan 5, 2020,

https://youtu.be/2-UBmhEL438

DeWitt, Henry. “NCAA should pay its athletes.”​ The Budget​. 31 Oct. 2019. Web. 1 Nov. 2020.

@WalkWithLyle. “If Odell would have done the same exact thing but did it on LSU campus and

gave all that money to students on academic scholarships no one would have cared and

he would not have been banned.” ​Twitter,​ 21 Oct. 2020, 12:31 PM.