Should College Athletes Be Paid?

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Reese Guill, Messenger Reporter

This debate has been going on for a long time. College athletes deserve to be paid for everything that they do for the colleges they perform for. They deserve it because they literally risk their lives when they go on to the field or the court or whatever it may be, mainly football. They risk their lives and they do not even any kind of compensation for what they do for the colleges they play for. Some colleges, such as the University of Miami in Florida, University of Southern California and Southern Methodist University in Texas, however, have paid their athletes anyway, despite what the NCAA says about paying student athletes. The NCAA says that student athletes are only students and they do not deserve to be compensated for going onto whatever field they play on. Some big name colleges have been paying their student athletes for a long long time and they have been punished very harshly by the NCAA. Miami, SMU, and USC all were given the Death Penalty because of their football programs. They were all stripped of awards that they had received during the times when they were the best team in the country, they lost all of their recruiting scholarships for the next 3 or so years and they couldn’t participate in any kind of championship or bowl game. The student-athletes that should be paid, are the athletes that provide the most revenue for the colleges. Such as the basketball athletes and the football athletes. And maybe even the baseball and hockey athletes for certain colleges and universities. The other side of this argument is of course that the student athletes are in fact that, students first. The NCAA will always view student athletes as only students first until one student-athlete decides to fight back. This is why there is no longer any NCAA basketball or football video games now. Their likeness was being stolen from them without them getting any kind of compensation for it. Their names were not in the game at all, in the NCAA’s defense. But their likeness, like the way they play their game, the way they run with the football in their hands, the way they shoot the basketball, the way they dunk the basketball, you could tell that it was those players. The NCAA was exploiting the abilities of the student athletes. Here’s what the NCAA should do, just pay the athletes that bring in the most revenue. Pay the basketball and football athletes that are keeping your school alive and well-worked single-handedly.