Should NCAA athletes be paid?

NCAA student athletes should get paid depending on what division they play in.

Question: Should NCAA athletes be paid?
Position1 of 2›: NCAA athletes should be paid
Argument‹2 of 2: NCAA student athletes should get paid depending on what division they play in.

Division I athletes balance a demanding practice schedule, travel time for games, and school. Student-athletes go above and beyond what a normal student does. Schools should compensate them accordingly.

The argument

Division I athletes work tirelessly to help their teams win, working about 40 hours per week for their schools in practice time and game time. In addition, student-athletes must travel for away games, increasing the time dedicated to their sport. Compensation in the form of a scholarship simply isn't enough. Many student-athletes struggle with financial security, something which could be fixed by employment. However, Division I athletes dedicate so much time to their respective sports that it makes it impossible to get a steady job. Additionally, the financial insecurity most athletes face forces them to drop out of college early, making their athletic scholarship effectively worthless. Division II and student-athletes should be evaluated on a case by case basis to determine if they will be paid. Depending on their skill level, the athletic department should pay the student-athlete a portion of the revenue that they help bring in to the school, whatever that may be. Division III student-athletes should get paid only if their athletic abilities generate sizable revenue for their school. While athletes struggle with financial security, the NCAA makes $1 billion per year. Furthermore, the NCAA prohibits athletes from making money through endorsements or autographs. The NCAA effectively bans athletes from making money off of the things they excel at--athletics. The NCAA should not only pay student-athletes (depending on their division) but allow all student-athletes to make money through endorsements.

Premises

[P1]Division I athletes work roughly 40 hours a week for their schools and cannot hold a steady job, so a scholarship alone leaves many in financial insecurity that can force them to drop out, rendering the scholarship worthless. [P2] Meanwhile the NCAA earns $1 billion a year yet bans athletes from earning through endorsements or autographs, so it should pay athletes—scaled by division and the revenue they generate—and let all of them profit from their talents. [C] Therefore NCAA athletes should be paid, with compensation depending on the division they play in.

Counter-arguments

Compensation in the form of scholarship to a school that awards degrees to student-athletes who stay for the full four years is fair. A degree can get anyone a lifetime of opportunities in the field of their choosing. Student athletes work exceptionally hard for their schools, and they are compensated equitably. While the NCAA shouldn't have to pay student athletes directly, athletes should be allowed to make money through endorsements while playing at the collegiate level to relieve the burden of financial insecurity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The hours worked and the financial insecurity do establish that a scholarship can be inadequate — a point the counter partly concedes — but that supports better support or endorsement rights rather than the division-based pay scheme the title proposes. [Rejecting P2] The revenue figure is given without a source and is not the same as money available for salaries; paying in proportion to revenue would concentrate payment in a few programmes and sports, a consequence the argument never weighs and which its own case-by-case treatment of Divisions II and III implicitly concedes.

Proponents cited

Richard Sherman
“No, I don't think college athletes are given enough time to really take advantage of the free education that they're given, and it's frustrating because a lot of people get upset with student-athletes and say they're not focused on school and they're not taking advantage of the opportunity they're given. I would love for a regular student to have a student-athlete's schedule during the season for just one quarter or one semester and show me how you balance that. Show me how you would schedule your classes when you can't schedule classes from 2-to-6 o'clock on any given day. Show me how you're going to get all your work done when after you get out at 7:30 or so, you've got a test the next day, you're dead tired from practice and you still have to study just as hard as everybody else every day and get all the same work done. Most of these kids are done with school, done with class by 3 o'clock, you've got the rest of the day to do as you please. You may spend a few hours studying, then you may spend a few hours at the library checking out books and doing casual reading, and then you may go hang out with friends and have a coffee. When you're a student-athlete, you don't have that kind of time. You wake up in the morning, you have weights at this time. Then after weights you go to class and after class, you go maybe try to grab you a quick bite to eat. Then after you get your quick bite to eat, you go straight to meetings and after meetings, you've got practice and after practice, you've got to try to get all the work done you had throughout the day you've got from your lectures and from your focus groups.And those aren't the things that people focus on when talking about student-athletes. They are upset when a student-athlete says they need a little cash. Well, I can tell you from experience, I had negative-40 bucks in my account. Usually my account was in the negative more time than it was in the positive. You've got to make decisions on whether you get gas for your car or whether you get a meal for the day. You've got one of the two choices. People think, ‘Oh, you're on scholarship.' They pay for your room and board, they pay for your education, but to their knowledge, you're there to play football. You're not on scholarship for school and it sounds crazy when a student-athlete says that, but that's those are the things coaches tell them every day: ‘You're not on scholarship for school.' Luckily, I was blessed to go to Stanford and a school that was primarily focused on academics, so it was a blessing. It was a little bit better. As Jim Harbaugh would attest, we were also there for football. But there were still guys like Andrew (Luck) who majored in engineering, an incredibly tough road to take when you're in football, because a lot of the classes conflict with your time as a football player. You have an engineering class from 2 to 3:30, there's no way you can do both. You can't go to meetings and take your engineering class from 2 to 3:30, so what do you do? What do you do? Do you switch your major or do you tell your coach, ‘Hey, I've got an engineering class from 2 to 3:30 and I have to go to that.' That's a conflict of interest. That's what people don't realize. But it's not something that hurts the bottom line in a lot of people's lives, so I don't think it'll be something that will be addressed.”
Michael Bennett
“I think the NCAA is one of the biggest scams in America, because these kids put so much on the line, and they study hard, they play football as hard as they can, but if they don't crack the NFL, then [the NCAA] says, 'We gave you a free degree.' That's like me owning a restaurant and saying, 'I'll give you a free burger.'... I'm just giving you something I already have. Athletes don't get enough credit, and a lot of the schools don't really do anything for the guys after they graduate. I think there are very few schools that actually care about the players.”