Essay Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

Ever since January 18th, 1896 the day college basketball was invented and November 6th, 1869 the day college football was invented there has been controversy over college athlete being paid. Some people believe that college athletes are classified as amateurs and that they should not reap any benefits such as money for participating in their sport. Some people believe that all college athletes deserve to receive compensation in exchange for their talents. Lastly, some people believe that only a selected few athletes deserve to be paid such as college football and college basketball players. Division I college football and basketball players should be paid because of the vast amount of money annually grossed by the NCAA and Universities. Football …show more content…
More people are fans of college football and basketball than the other college sports and that is why the money pours in from each of those two departments. Eighty one percent of the annual revenue of the NCAA comes from media rights which includes a $10.8 billion dollar, 14 year agreement with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting for rights to the Division I men's national championship. The other sources of revenue come from a variety of other places such as 1 percent from contributions: facilities, other, 2 percent from NIT, LLC Eligibility Center, LLC College Football Arbiter officials, 4 percent from investments, and 11 percent from the championships. With the total amount of money grossed by the NCAA for the 2011-2012 season being $871.6 million dollars (Revenue 1). This number has increased over the years and now has reached a total of $1.057 billion dollars in 2014-2015 (Revenue 1). College athletics as a whole brings in around “$12 billion dollars annually, this is the $1 billion from the NCAA added to the $11 billion made from the universities from school ticket sales and student fees” (Gerencer 1). While NBA players are able to bring in million