En 102 - Should College Athletes Be Paid to Play

Should College Athletes Be Paid to Play

Shawan Harris

EN-102

Miami Jacobs Career College

March, 2012

Abstract

In this paper, I plan to research the controversy over whether or not college athletes should be compensated for playing sports. I intend to cover topics such as; would the incentive of a paycheck serve to distract the student from their studies, at what level should they start receiving pay, and I plan on taking a look at some expert opinions on the subject. By the end of this paper, I hope to present a very compelling argument. Keep in mind that I am neutral on the subject, I leave it to the reader to decide if it's a good idea or not.

Should College Athletes be Paid to Play

There has always been a lot of pressure on the back of college athletes to do better, and to play better. They have had to deal with this for years without pay, but would it be a good idea to offer pay to college athletes, or would the incentive of a paycheck only serve to distract the students?

There are of course opposing views on this subject. One view supported by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, says, "Should college athletes be paid? Why, they already are."(Davis, 2011) There is a belief that college sports have already been riddled by scandals involving seedy recruiting, nefarious boosters and academic fraud. Un known to the public, most athletic department actually loses money most years due to trying to fund their programs. So the question is, how are the struggling athletic departments going to be able to come up with even more money per year to compensate their athletes to play? The money they would have to use would come out of the university's general funds, which means taking money away from academic scholarships, classroom resources and professors salaries. The proposed problem is athletes already have their tuitions paid for. Even their room and board is paid along with meal plans and other perks. (Davis, 2011) There are many programs that help pay the costs of college athletes to return to school after they finish their athletic careers.

There are also incentives to help former athletes get their degrees due to recently enforced rules by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, these allow the school to count the degrees of former athletes towards their graduation mandates.

When C. J. Masters dropped out of Kansas State University in March 1993, he was just six classes shy of a degree in criminology. The starting safety on the 20th-ranked football team wanted to devote all of his energy to the forthcoming National Football League draft.

For months