Should College Athletes Be Paid Essay

They have worked their whole lives, since they were able to walk, to run, some even before they knew what all this work was even worth. Many college athletes put in work from a very tender age, then continue to work their entire lives to have the opportunity to play in college and one day possibly have the opportunity to play the sport they do not only love, but something that they sacrifice for on a daily basis thought-out their lives. The on-going debate of college athletes being compensated for their time and long “job-like” hours that athletes put into their athletic careers is a heated one, that has resulted in many programs filing complaints that student-athletes deserve to be paid for their work. Of course there are always two sides …show more content…
Many of the critics of college athletics have the viewpoint that many college athletes, especially the large market athletes, are being “used” in a sense to bring in immense amounts of money towards the institutions, but in no way are the athletes reimbursed for the profit they helped to bring into the university. Another valid argument that agrees that college athletes should be paid is the “big business” side of collegiate athletics (Sanderson). College sports have a market that rivals that of professional sports, with multi billion-dollar revenue, all from athletes that will never see any of that profit. With the massive amount of profit what these institutions are doing could also be seen as a form of “abuse”, colleges are taking advantage of the talent that these players naturally have and have worked for, in the process these Universities are making hundreds of millions off of these athletes. The top tier basketball and football programs in the country make well over a million dollars of revenue ever season (Finnegan),