When thinking of why college athletes deserve to be paid, I have to first answer the question of what is a scholarship?  When a student-athlete goes to school they can receive two types of scholarship, academic or athletic.  Often times, student-athletes do receive both.  A scholarship can vary for student-athletes dependent upon what division the school is in (ie. Division 1, Division 2, Division 3, MCLA, etc).  In both Division 1 and 2, student-athletes can receive what is called a “full-ride scholarship.” By definition of the NCAA, “Full scholarships cover tuition and fees, room, board and course-related books. Most student-athletes who receive athletics scholarships receive an amount covering a portion of these costs.”  It is very rare that full ride scholarships are given out and as per the NCAA, “only about 2 percent of high-school athletes are awarded scholarships.”  This goes to show just how much hard work and determination goes into receiving a scholarship of any kind for a student-athlete in hopes to pursue post-secondary education.

  photo-1526506118085-60ce8714f8c5

Building off of this, a debate that can often be brought forth is, well if student athletes get scholarship, they are being paid in a way but its going towards their schooling.  Although people that see this to be the case, it isn’t true.  Each year schools are given ‘X’ amount to put towards their athletic scholarships.  In doing so, the school is essentially giving money they do not own but have allocated for athletics. At the end of the tenure of that student attending the institution they will still have this money after said student athlete leaves.  It would be as if making the excuse that because someone is extremely intelligent, that receiving academic scholarship is unfair to those who do averagely in schooling.

photo-1492538368677-f6e0afe31dcc

To connect this to the big picture, of why student-athletes should get paid, not only does this not count towards them being paid, but the school continues to profit off the admission sales, jersey and merchandise sales.  These student-athletes are the ones putting people in the seats and making the sales, yet they see nothing.  To dive into this further, next week I will go into why college athletes are not paid currently.

http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/future/scholarships

To preface the blog next week, below is a video that does a thorough job of  explaining why student-athletes aren’t currently paid.