This article is 6 years old

Should Colleges Pay Compensations to Student Athletes?

Sports

Illustration by Ari Libenson

Every year, more than 460,000 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes participate in a sports industry that generates billions of dollars for schools, but none for the players themselves. This industry is made successful due to the rules in professional sporting leagues that require athletes to play in college.

Even the country’s most elite players must fulfill their time in the NCAA. National Basketball Association (NBA) athletes must either play one year in the NCAA or be nineteen years of age. For the National Football League (NFL), players must be three years out of high school. Since the best players are either in the NFL or NCAA, those three years are almost always played in the NCAA. While the athletes spend their mandated time in their respective sports, the talent they have worked so hard to acquire is of no monetary value for them.

Whether or not the NCAA should let the players be paid by the schools is still a firm no. This is due to logistical problems and unfair advantages to wealthier schools. However, it is time to let players profit off of their own talent and skip their stay in the nation’s elite sports schools.

College serves no educational purpose for elite athletes destined to play professionally. For the 98 percent of players that do not go onto to be a professional, their education will be extremely important. However, for  the players that are in the NCAA purely to fulfill their requirement there is no reason to focus time and energy on education. While some may argue that the education of these players is vital, especially since they are at risk for career ending injuries or changes of heart, the players should have the ability to decide what is best for them.    The NCAA should want players dedicated to their  education. If the requirements were removed, athletes in the NCAA would be there on their own volition, which would be a good thing for everyone.

While college athletes cannot profit off of their own fame, the colleges they attend quite easily can. In an extremely hypocritical situation, athletes cannot use their fame from college sports to make money for themselves, but the schools can use their fame to make the school money. Some say that athletes not making money is justified by the fact that they get a free education, but this is a flawed argument. A mere two percent of NCAA athletes are on scholarship, and the average athletic scholarship is $10,400, while college tuitions often exceed that quota. For the elite college athletes that will go onto be stars in professional leagues, their time in college is actually a large loss of money.

Take Anthony Davis as an example; he played one extremely successful year at University of Kentucky before signing his NBA contract. His contract was a three year-sixteen million dollar contract.

  Although he lost millions of dollars by playing in college, the solution is not to have colleges pay their players. This would create unfair advantages for richer colleges. A better fix would be to let Davis and his fellow college stars  accept endorsement deals. The players should be financially compensated for their fame rather than being punished for playing in the NCAA.

As Ben Simmons, a rookie NBA star who left Louisiana State University after one year, said “Everybody’s making money except the players. We’re the ones waking up early as hell to be the best teams and do everything they want us to do and then the players get nothing.”

The NCAA’s archaic rules need to reviewed. While players should not receive money directly from schools, it is time to allow them to profit off of their talent and accept endorsement deals. The requirements for players to play a set amount of years in the NCAA should be removed. All of these changes will not benefit the colleges or the NCAA. Instead these new policies will help the players maximize the worth that they have created from years of hard work.