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1. First Year Seminar
17 September, 2014
College athletes taking a stand for themselves
The article “A rim-rattling ruling in college sports; Athletes aren't blind to the billions they earn for the
NCAA” argues that college athletes should be paid a portion of the money instead of colleges profiting
from it all. Author Michael Dobie states that athletes “spend as much as 50-6- hours per week on football,
and cannot be considered “primarily students””(1). Considering this statement, you could say college
athletes are more employees than students. If this is proven true, college athletes deserve to be
compensated in some way. The article also says “College sports at that level is a business, and nothing
flows to the players on whom the enterprise depends”(1). If some athletes didn't dedicate as much time
as they did on their sport, college sports would go down the drain. Say a quarterback for a high caliber
college didn't get out and throw the football and practice at least once a day, he wouldn't be as good. If
college sports teams competitive drive went down no one would go see the games and that would drive
the revenue for the NCAA down. The way the NCCA is run is more like a business than an association.
That's what Michael Rosenberg concludes in his article “Workers Comp” in Sports Illustrated. In his
writings he includes “I suspect, when it comes to that, the NCAA with just admit these people are
employees and negotiate with them. It will be a business decision”(2). Since the NCAA doesn't want to
lose its “students”, they will try their best to work things out. According to the NCAA regulations t hat
summarize the eligibility of an athlete, “you are not eligible for participation in a sport if you ever: (1)
Taken pay, or the promise of pay, for competing in that sport [Bylaw. 12.1.2]”(3). The NCAA would have
to make new regulations if they students were to be paid or else they would be ineligible to play any sport.
The only thing the athletes get for playing now are scholarships and a reduced tuition for playing and how
much also depends on how well they play. In that aspect it would make sense every athlete try their best
in order to get the most money out of their colleges, but now they want more. For now, since college
athletes can't be paid, “Instead the union would probably negotiate for better hours, improved health care,
more vacation- all the things most employees want”(1), Rosenberg also writes in his article. More
vacation time would mean different game schedules, possibly spread more throughout to make the
season longer, or less games altogether. If less games were to happen, the NCAA would probably lose
money, but not as much as it would if they started losing players. The NCAA makes so much money that I
think it can afford to pay players, if not at least give them very good compensation.
With so much time dedicated on sports, academics gets pushed to the side in a student's athletes life that
leads in a decline in learning. Dobie includes research in his article that states a “reported that 60 percent
of football and basketball players there (University of North Carolina) read at a level between fourth and
eight grade”(1). It's amazing that students with such a low reading level could have made it to college, but
with their athleticism they made their way through. If this continues, it could pose a problem that school
isn't important in these student-athlete's lives and they won't have motivation to work if they can play a
sport. It is unfair that for students who work all 4 years when a football or basketball player can enter the
draft only after a year or two. If an athlete loves playing a sport to be dedicated enough to get to play at a
college level, then chances are they want to play pro which then they will make way more money than at
college. Even if athletes wanted to be more involved in their school work, it would exhaust them to the
point they couldn't function. Between classes, practice, and school work, there is not enough time in the
day for anything else. The athletes have no time for a job to be able to make money on their own. It is
said that “ Helping these student-athletes find ways to participate in academic related activities to the
extent they are involved in athletic related activities will likely lead to gains in student learning”(4),
according to Joy Gaston Gyles and Shouping Hu in their work “ The Influence of Student Engagement
and Sports Participation and College Outcomes Among Division I Athletes”. This assumption is a bit
obvious, but if there was a plan to split up the time dedicated to sports and half were dedicated on school,
both sides would gain.
The authors of the articles I picked are qualified to write such articles, but some articles are written by
authors that might not have a clue about student-athletes being paid. If an author spent years studying
student-athletes and did extensive research of exactly how much the NCAA made off the athletes would

2. make them more than qualified to write such a paper. The credibility of an author can also enhance if they
have connections to an inside source, or to someone who was involved with the Northwestern University
case for students to unionize. Depending on where the author went to school and how much schooling
they got and what their major is plays a part on how credible they are. A science professor writing an
article about sports isn't a very credible source. If the author has a bad experience with the NCAA, it
might change their of the association and might lean towards student -athletes being paid more. Other
informational that would build credibility to an author is what publisher the article was published under, if i t
was well known company or not. Building credibility as an author is important if you want to be well
known, but it may be difficult to do.
There are also reasons not to trust an author when you think they are not credible. If the information is
outdated in a recent article, it can not always be trusted because new information may already have been
released. If an author goes to an unreliable source, but puts that in their article anyways, it can lead to
misinformation. In an article where the author is very passionate about a subject they may tend to lean
one way which can lead to them being bias. Using a bias source then using it can lead to bad information
since it is more opinionated than factual.
To stop the spread of un-credible sources and articles, you can report the article so which it may or may
not be taken down. If there is a comment section on an article and you know it is wrong information, you
can comment telling everyone else the article is bad and not to use it. When writing your own article,
make sure to use non-bias and credible sources to help spread the right information instead of having a
read learn about the wrong things. Make sure to always do research before going into detail and fully
explaining something so you don't look foolish later on. If something doesn't seem or sound right in an
article, I wouldn't trust it. Don't always trust the first thing you see or hear, there are plenty of sources
about the subject and many can be false. In order to stop the spread of false information, we need to start
doing hard research and fact checking!