Research: Should College Athletes Be Paid

Should College Athletes Be Paid? College sports have become one of the largest spectacles in our country. Hundreds of thousands of people come to watch the heat of competition, and the universities bring in millions of dollars from the sporting events. There are even video games of the sports that are made that can bring in equal amounts of money. There has been continued debate about if the athletes should be paid to play, or if the money from their scholarships is enough. There are many reasons why athletes should be paid, they are: universities are making extreme amounts of money off of the players names, there is a large time commitment, and players may not be able to afford college. The first reason why athletes should be paid is because the …show more content…
Combined with the money from the broadcast rights, this accounts for 96% of the NCAA 's total annual revenue”(Cheney-Rice). This means that the NCAA is almost completely funded by the tournament. If that stat doesn’t surprise you, then observe the amount a team will make every round they advance in the NCAA Tournament. Mackenzie Thirkill wrote an article “Where Does All the NCAA Tournament Money Go?” and in it she outlines the increased amount of money a team gets for moving from one round to the next. She claims that by just making the tournament a team gets about 245 thousand dollars, and if they win their first game then their money will double. Now if a team is lucky enough to advance to the Final Four, then they can earn an absurd seven point seven million dollars. Besides the money what the average person doesn’t understand is that just being in the final four will actually bring far more benefits. Better players will come to the program, and more fans will come to the games. Thus bringing in more money for the university, and this process continues, yet the players barely see a dime of that extra