College Atheletes Shoud Be Paid

The NCAA rules are so binding, fairness is many years and many reforms down the road. By paying players, though, the NCAA could improve a flawed system. Many athletes come to college to study their sports, hoping to land a job in their chosen field.

Universities used to have athletics to provide recreational and social opportunities. Today college ball is just a stepping-stone to the professional leagues. Football and basketball do not have minor leagues like baseball. Universities, then, offer experience to athletes and a close-to-professional-level product to the public, and the public eats it up. In November of 1999, the NCAA signed a $6.2 billion contract with CBS Sports to televise the men’s basketball tournament. This is commonly known as March Madness. They also have a contract with ABC Sports for the Bowl Championship Series for football. ESPN also pays to televise the women’s basketball final four.

Athletic scholarships are for only one year. If the athlete does not play well enough, his/her scholarship may not be renewed. If while spending his/her time practicing and playing their chosen sport the grades could suffer and the athlete could become academically ineligible. This could cost the athlete their scholarship and often force them to leave school.

So now it is time to give a little back to the athletes who have made all this possible. The most common idea for now is for the NCAA to start handing out stipends of approximately $1,000 a year to all athletes. This could be about the same amount that regular students make from the campus work/study jobs that athletes are prohibited from having. This would cost the NCAA about $140 million a year or about 25 percent of their CBS Sports contract.

Life would not be quite as hard for many of these student athletes if they were allowed to hold part-time jobs, but NCAA does not allow scholarship players to be employed during the school year. They can only earn a maximum of $2,500. The student athletes live an entirely different life than other scholarship students on campus. The academic scholarship student is not denied the opportunity to find other wor

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