Essay Sample on Student-Athletes: The Powerhouses of the Sports Industry

Introduction

Student-athletes play a very significant role in the growth of the sports industry in the country. The student-athletes enable colleges and universities to excel excellently in sports as well as win various medals. Furthermore, some colleges receive funding from both the state government and national governments because of excellent performance in sports. Despite the importance of student-athletes in the colleges and the entire sports industry, there is a long-term debate regarding the payment of student-athletes. Some parties believe student-athletes should be paid, whereas others argue that such students receive a lot of privileges hence no need for their payments. Some of the privileges that student-athletes receive in most colleges are annual scholarships worth between $15,000-25,000 or more. The student-athletes are promised a career in sports after college, where that is approximately one million dollars. Furthermore, they receive privileges such as perks, mainstream, and social media popularity as well as access to fancy hotels on reduced charges or sometimes for free.

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The proposers of the student-athletes to be paid argue that colleges generate millions of incomes from sporting activities. As a result, the proposers feel that the colleges are using the student-athletes to generate extra money for themselves. Or instance, the average value of a football scholarship per annum is $20,000 or more per each player (Bradbury, and Pitts 978). This scholarship generates $70,000 per annum to the college. Therefore, on each of the college students under the football scholarship program, the college generates $50,000. It is essential to note that the scholarship lasts for four years, hence the college will have earned $200,000 on a player under the scholarship program (Bradbury, and Pitts 985). Therefore, since the college earns a lot of money from each of the college athletes, they should at least consider paying the student a quarter of the revenue that they gain every academic year from the athlete.

Secondly, college athletics is very popular across the united states and attracts a lot of fans. These fans donate and buy tickets during various matches. The NCAA collects these funds; hence the organization generates millions of dollars per annum. The NCAA funds the colleges from those revenues, and it also decides the value of each of the scholarships and the number of scholarships that a college should issue on every sports program. The NCAA argues that by awarding the sports scholarship, it allows the students to pursue higher education, and therefore the student-athletes should not be paid. However, I think that access to higher education is a basic right for every American child. In other words, if college sports never existed, students will still attend colleges to pursue various courses. Therefore, arguing that NCAA gives a chance for student-athletes to pursue a university education, which they would have otherwise not pursued, is a lame excuse to avoid paying the student-athletes.

Another reason that NCAA should consider paying the student-athletes is that their incidences where the students fail to graduate or have graduated with grade school reading levels. This is because these students were never guided to pursue any specific degree that would lead to a particular career. Additionally, participating in sports as well as pursuing a college education is considered as working two jobs. The student-athletes dedicate a lot of effort to training and playing various matches as scheduled by the NCAA (Corrada 3-19). Therefore, training for sports and working hard to purchase the degree program are two jobs. It is unfair to put too many efforts into two jobs. Yet, you end up unpaid.one can consider this as unfair practice because the student-athlete needs savings, which they will use to finance their businesses or other live activities in the event they fail to graduate. In other words, the proposed student-athlete salaries will compensate for the lack of a formal career, yet the individual attended university for four years.

The third reason for advocating for payment of the student-athletes is that the NCAA does not purchase insurance covers for the athletes. Lack of insurance makes the student-athletes vulnerable in the event they get serious injuries when they are training or playing college sports. For instance, if a player gets a permanent injury either on their leg, arm, back, head, or other parts of their body, that's the end of their sporting activity.

Additionally, injuries that result in disability leads to the scholarship of the particular student being terminated. In such a scenario, the student learner has lost both a chance for free education to achieve a certain formal career as well as the opportunity to have a sports career after the university days. The worst point is that such a learner does not have savings or does not earn compensation benefits for having been a great player during the college. It's time for the NCAA to consider paying for insurance covers for the student-athletes as well as paying them weekly allowances. That way, they will have secured their future financially, even if the student-athletes suffer from injuries that lead to permanent disability.

Of course, there are reasons that the opposer provides for not paying salaries to the student-athletes. One of the main reasons is that the students acquire college education for free. The student college athletes are awarded scholarships that are worth between $75,000 to $200,000 for four years, which is a substantial amount of money(Wolken). Therefore, paying the student-athletes will increase their income hence less concertation in both academics and sports. Notably, the student-athletes are relatively young, and they have insufficient skills inefficient use of money. Therefore, a lot of money at their disposal results in disruption and concertation to their education hence no reason to pay the student-athletes.

The next reason is that paying student-athletes is likely to cause tension among players and teams. For instance, it is difficult to arrive at a standard payment amount to all the players in a team because they play different roles and their players that are more committed to the team than others. For instance, it is logical to pay a striker more than a second-stringer. In such an event, tension will arise between such players because the student-athletes that earn lesser feel that they are treated unfairly. Therefore, to avoid such tensions and divisions among the players, students' athletes should not be paid.

The third argument against paying the student-athletes being paid is that introduction of payments will result in athletes being less interested in growing their talents and sports career(Colwell 908-915). Instead, the student-athletes will be interested in making more money. This means that the sports program paying higher allowances will attract more students than those paying lower allowances. Consequently, the athletes will be tempted to engage in some sports programs that they are not well talented and skillful to get high payments. In other words, the introduction of payments in college sports will result in low-quality athletics performances because the majority of the players in various teams will be playing for the sake of paychecks but not growing their talents in sports. Therefore, such scenarios are avoided by failing to issue paychecks to student-athletes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my stand is that student-athletes should be paid. The student-athletes work very hard in sporting activities to ensure that their colleges win various matches. At the moment, they also have to perform excellently in the failure of their academic programs to which their scholarships are likely to be withdrawn. The payments should be informed of weekly paychecks, which should be moderate amounts. The student-athletes should receive financial education to prevent them from misusing the payments. For instance, they can use part of the payments to purchase insurance covers for injuries that are likely to result in discontinuation in sports activities. It's time for NCAA to consider paying student-athletes.

Work Cited

Bradbury, John Charles, and Joshua D. Pitts. "Full cost-of-attendance scholarships and college choice: Evidence from NCAA football." Journal of Sports Economics 19.7 (2018): 977-989. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527002517696958

Wolken, Dan. "Rhing We'd Change in Sports:NCAA needs to Let Athletes Profit Off from The Talent Now." USA Today Newspaper (2019).

Corrada, Roberto L. "College Athletes in Revenue-Generating Sports as Employees: A Look into the Alt-Labor Future." Chicago-Kent Law Review, Forthcoming (2020): 02-20. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3528713

Colwell, Christine. "Playing for Pay or Playing to Play: Student-Athletes as Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act." Louisiana Law Review 79.3 (2019): 12. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6737&context=lalrev