College athletes provide immense value to their universities but are only compensated through scholarships. While scholarships cover tuition and housing, they do not cover other living expenses. A small stipend could help cover these costs while maintaining the fairness of the NCAA system. Implementing a 1% tax on media contracts could fund such a stipend without disrupting the current model. Paying athletes direct salaries would be too costly and damage competitive balance, destroying what makes college sports unique. Overall, a small additional stipend is a reasonable compromise that benefits athletes without commercializing the NCAA system.

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Jameson Morris
Laura McBride
ENG 102
November 24, 2015
Paying College Athletes
Growing up in the United States almost everyone has seen a fair share of college sports
games, and in fact most people really enjoy them. Many people have friends that played college
sports, and thousands played college sports themselves. Almost everyone knows what March
Madness is, and college football season is extremely popular. College sports are a big part of
sports entertainment, and some feel that the players do not get the compensation that they
deserve. This has been an ever-popular topic in the past years. Should players be paid? If so, how
much? How would this be done? The amount of questions is limitless, although the answer is
simple; College athletes are already paid. They are paid through scholarships. Paying college
athletes, or even having a small stipend per player, has been heavily discussed over the past
couple years. Although there are some problems with the current scholarship system, it is still the
best way to provide fair competition and a learning environment for student athletes.
Certain college sports, such as football and basketball, get almost as much exposure as
their professional counterparts. So how are they different? Well for starters, professional athletes
are paid and college athletes are not. In professional sports, franchises can offer as much as they
want for certain players to play for them. The main incentive to play for a particular sport’s
organization may be the amount of money offered to play. How are they able to regulate talent if
you can just buy players? Well the system is quite simple; there are salary caps, or a certain
amount of money a team can spend as a whole, per season to regulate talent. Another way they

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regulate the flow of talent is by allowing the worst teams to get the highest picks in the drafts.
This allows teams that were low on talent to draft the best players to equal out the competition
with the more talented teams from the previous year.
College sports do not pay the players directly; players are offered scholarships, which
have relatively the same benefits at every university. Averaging $20,000 a year for private
institutions scholarships are pretty advantageous (Ehrenberg). Players pick where they would
like to attend school and participate on athletics based on factors other than money. Players look
at the quality of education and the quality of the sports team they will play for. Other factors
considered are campus life and proximity to home. After making their decision about where to
play, they practice and prepare for the season. One of the distinguishing factors of college sports
from professional sports is the fairness of the system. You never know who the best college team
is going to be each year because of how the system is setup; an underdog can rise from the ashes
of its former team and can dominate its competitors the following year. College athletes are also
playing for something more. They are playing to represent their institution and they are also
playing to showcase their talent in hopes of one day playing professional athletics. That desire
and drive is evident in gameplay and that is what makes college athletics exiting and interesting
to watch.
The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) was formed in 1910 and has been
run under the same compensation system since it has existed, scholarships. Scholarships are
quite simple. A player is offered free tuition and housing in exchange for their talents. So, in the
simplest terms, college athletes are paid to play. They are given their specific amount of
scholarship money per year in exchange for their service on a sport’s team. This arrangement is
valuable to anyone who plays sports and is also interested in getting an education. A scholarship

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provides the most important type of compensation, future compensation. Scholarships offer
student athletes a sustainable future through education.
The current scholarship system offers many benefits to the student athlete. Let’s look into
the reason playing college sports is intriguing for the athletes. Many college athletes played
sports while in high school and growing up, and many of them dreamed of playing sports for a
specific college. Sometimes it’s not always about the money or the scholarship. Sometimes it’s
just about someone’s love for his or her sport. Playing at the collegiate level is not easy to
achieve, and it provides a high level of competition for those who wish to play. Through playing
for a college sports team, you get free athletic training. Where else could an athlete be
compensated to play and be given free training other than professional sports? Another reason
students participate in college sports is to take advantage of the educational opportunity
scholarships offer. A lot of students come from poor families and don’t have money to attend
college, but many of these poor students are exceptionally talented at sports. Attending a school
on a scholarship is mutually beneficial. The student gets a free education, and the school gets a
talented player. The last reason students play college sports is to gain exposure for professional
sports’ drafts. If a high school athlete is talented enough to play professional sports in the future,
then they will often attend a college for a year or two to gain experience, credibility, and
exposure. After playing they enter into a draft in hopes of playing sports for a living. So in
essence, college sports provides student athletes with a free, or discounted, education, housing,
athletic training, and exposure. What other amateur institution would provide all these services to
an athlete free of charge, especially an athlete that doesn’t have professional potential? College
sports offer many opportunities that wouldn’t be present under other systems such as paid to
play.

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College athletics has plenty of benefits for not just the student athletes, but also the
school as a whole. Karen Weaver stated, “College presidents often think of athletics as the front
porch of their campuses”(Weaver 15). This statement means that sports are one of the ways
colleges attract students through name recognition. In fact, it’s proven that “football and
basketball success can have sizable impacts on the number of applications received from a
school” (Pope 750). This impact can be 2 to 15% of total applicants depending on the sport and
the level of success (Pope 750). This increase in applications allows the university to be more
selective during its admission’s process and in the end become a more academically sound
school because of how selective they can be when admitting students. What student doesn’t want
to go to a school with a good sports team? Quality sports’ teams give hard working students a
break from the stress of college life. If college sports were paid-to-play, and not associated with
colleges, then increases in applications attributed to quality sports’ programs, which result in a
more competitive academic environment may not be seen.
Many people are concerned with the impact of scholarship limits, specifically the impact
these limits have on the student athletes. One example of a limiting rule would be that players
might not have their meals provided for them when off campus. For example, if a team went to a
tournament, or to play a road game, their food would not be provided. Not necessarily because
the college didn’t offer that food, but because the NCAA restricted it. How are student athletes
supposed to pay for their own food on the road when they have no time for a job? Shabazz
Napier said, “There are hungry nights that I go to bed and I’m starving”(Reed 3). The NCAA has
since terminated this restriction, although there are many other limiting rules that are still in
place.

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In recent years, some studies have shown that not all the costs of attending school are
covered by scholarships, and that non-money making sports only have a few scholarships to give
out per year. All the money used in the scholarship process has a specific purpose. The main
purpose being class tuition and the second being boarding costs. Due to the nature of
scholarships, there isn’t any money allocated to miscellaneous college costs. Most college sports
programs have practice and game schedules that require anywhere from 40 to 50 hours of
athletic participation per week. This rigorous athletic schedule gives them little time for
schoolwork and absolutely no time to have a job. This is why a small stipend should be issued to
each player attending college on a full-ride sport’s scholarship.
Scholarships are the current way of operation in Division One sports, although they are
not the only option. Many former players are pushing for another system where athletes are paid-
to-play. In this system athletes would be given salaries, in addition to having a scholarship to
that intuition. The argument towards this type of system is that paying them would fully
compensate them for their service to the university. Some players make substantially more
money for their school than the school pays them for their scholarship. Louisville’s top
basketball player’s market value is $1,632,103, and Louisville pays for his scholarship, totaling
$17,370 per year. That is a difference of $1,614,733 (Reed 5). Most people would ask where
does all that money go? Part of the money is used to sustain other sporting programs at the
college. It would be wonderful to have the ability to pay every college athlete a salary on top of
their scholarship, although there are many problems with this approach.
“The commercialization of intercollegiate athletics threatens academic values” with the
average university already struggling, paying players, and further commercializing college
athletics, would just further hurt our true objective of education (Earl 1). The first, and biggest,

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problem that comes to mind when talking about the pay-to-play system is money. Where is all of
the money necessary to pay college athletes going to come from? Division One (the top tier of
college athletics) has 335 schools that participate every year. Andrew Zimbalist, an economics
professor at Smith College, states, “You have 23 that have an operating surplus, but probably
only half dozen that are making money if you include capital costs. You’re really talking about a
handful of schools that have a surplus” (Reed 5). Only a couple of schools operate with a surplus
under the current system where we do not pay players. It would be nearly impossible to pay
players and have college athletics continue as they currently are. Substantial program cuts would
have to be made just to consider such a system. Most likely, only money making sports would be
able to survive such a harsh change.
Money is not the only way the pay-to-play system would hurt college athletics. Many
would argue that paying college athletics would destroy the competitive balance of the sport. The
most successful college teams would be able to offer much more money than their competitors,
which would lead to a talent drain for other schools. Professional sports drafts are conducted so
that the worst teams get higher picks so the chance to succeed is even. College sports would have
no way to regulate talent under a pay-to-play system. This would destroy the reason so many
fans love college sports. The current level of competition would no longer be present
Another way the pay-to-play philosophy would hurt college sports is college teams would
basically be turned into professional sports clubs operating underneath a college. We don’t want
another professional sports league. It would create a whole different dynamic. These institutions
would now be competing with already established sports leagues. How would you regulate age?
Participation would now be a job and you couldn’t reject someone based on age. College sports
would be destroyed. At least, what college sports is supposed to be, student-athletics.

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The options for solutions are quite limited. Although I would be in support of a small
stipend for full ride scholarship holders on top of their current scholarship. This stipend could be
enough money to pay for the little things that scholarships don’t acknowledge or cover. By
implementing this stipend, students wouldn’t have to worry about the miscellaneous costs that
pop up when attending college, and college sport’s fans would be able to keep the current
scholarship system that they love.
Where would we get the money for this stipend? One possibility is to implement a 1% tax on all
media contracts that involve college sports’ teams. This tax would be able to found a general
NCAA fund. With college athletics being a “60 billion dollar” industry and almost all the money
going to media corporations (McCormick 6) there would be plenty of money to implement a
small stipend. All money from the tax would be deposited into the fund. Every Division One
program would count and submit a form declaring how many full ride athletes they have, and the
NCAA would then distribute the proper amount of money to each school. Each school would be
responsible to distribute the stipends to their players. This would help schools maintain their
athletic programs.
More and more citizens criticize the college athletic programs, and what they stand for.
Analysts say that they are taking advantage of athletes and that colleges are unfair to them by
using the scholarship system. If some athletes were to start refusing to play under scholarship,
other athletes would be given an opportunity that they didn’t have before. College sports are an
opportunity, an educational opportunity, and an athletic opportunity. What other venue would
pay over a thousand dollars per student-athlete to provide such an opportunity? If an athlete is
good enough to play professional sports, then that option is available to them. If they are not
good enough for professional sports, then why complain about a system which benefits them.

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Those who play sports for a college and have a scholarship should be grateful. There are
thousands of people who would love to be in that situation.
In closing, college athletes do not deserve to be paid. They have already been
compensated. Sports fans want to keep the current nature of the NCAA. Additionally, it would
only be fair if we could pay all the players, but that is simply not possible. And finally, paying
athletes would destroy the nature of the NCAA. College sports are as fair now as they will ever
be, and any significant change could destroy that. The best way to provide a fix to the areas
where scholarships are lacking, while maintain the current nature of the NCAA, would be to
provide a small stipend. College sports should continue under scholarships. If college athletes
become paid, then college sports will no longer have the distinct characteristics that differentiate
them from professional sports.

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Works Citied
Earl, James W. “The Faculty’s Role in Reforming College Sports.” Academe 90.5 (2004):53-7.
ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
Ehrenberg, Ronald “Tuition Rising: Why College Costs so Much.” International Journal of
Educational Advancement 9.1 (2009): 54-6. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
Karaim, Reed. “Paying College Athletes.” CQ Researcher 11 july 2014: 577-600. ProQuest.
Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
McCormick, Robert A, and Amy Christian McCormick. “The Myth Of The Student
Athlete: The College Athlete as Employee.” Washington Law Review 81.1 (2006):1-157.
ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
Pope, Devin G, and Jaren C. Pope. “The impact of College Sports Success on the Quantity and
Quality of Student Applications.” Southern Economic Journal 75.3(2009): 750-80.
ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
Weaver, Karen. “A Game Change: Paying For Big-Time College Sports.” Change 43.1 (2011):
14-21. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

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