The National College Athletic Association believes offering free scholarships is payment enough for the student-athletes, and should suffice for the players offering their services to generate revenue for their school. The school provides free education to these student-athletes and offers the first recruiting platform for professional sports like the National Football League (NFL) and National Basketball Association (NBA) (Hawkins, 2010). Even with all of this, there is no way the National College Athletic Association can put up a big fight contrary to paying its student-athletes if football and basketball are the only sports played in college.
Division, I football and basketball produce most of the revenue numbers and are the only sports that are profitable. It is difficult to allow a football and basketball player to receive payment but it is tougher for all other sports; including division II and III to get on the pay list (Zimbalist, 2006).
On the contrary, players have just as much reason to think they need payment. The National College Athletic Association Division I football generates about 12 billion dollars internationally in a year. This is like taking the top films of the last 10 years, combining them, and not paying the movie stars even a single penny. The National College Athletic Association basketball March Madness competition makes $760 million (Hawkins, 2010). Most of the players argue that they are more than just student-athletes are. Watch ESPN a television program on Tuesday night and one can see that a basketball team from California is playing in Florida.
Hockey teams from Alaska travel to away events for two weekends in a row without resting. They depart on a Tuesday and return on a Sunday the following week. Traveling and playing make these student-athletes to miss classes and lessons. An example of a documentary that discusses the problems of not paying athletes is “ Schooled” (Frisch, 2014). Arian Foster an all-star running back for the Houston Texas remembers when he was in school back then and how he and his teammates would plead to the coach to buy them food because they had no money (Frisch, 2014). The coach did buy them food even though it is a violation of NCAA rules, which could end their scholarships.
In conclusion, my opinion is that students should not receive payment because they receive free education and free scholarships. There is no need to look for a solution to the many issues circling this debate because it will only complicate this issue. There are no straight answers to this problem, but in the near future, someone will come up with one.
