For the past couple of years, really since the advent of the blogger era, one of the common themes from bloggers is that college athletes should be paid. The two sports that they point to, basketball and especially football, make a lot of money for colleges across the country, and there is a growing segment of the population that is lobbying for athletes to be paid.
Let’s run down the traditional arguments against a paid college athlete: It defeats the purpose of amateurism. College athletes ARE paid, with scholarships other students would love to have, as well as the showcase for their future profession, should they go into professional sports, or even the name recognition that will open doors for them in the short term. The money from these proceeds go back into the school and their athletic funds, not some wealthy business owner.
But still, those arguments aren’t enough, and the proponents of additional salary for college athletes continue to plead their case. Colleges make so much money off of football that the athletes deserve a piece of the pie. This would be a more legitimate argument if this was the case across the board.
In an era where people complain about Boise State and TCU not getting a chance, what do you think would happen when the SEC or Big Ten could start paying their students off their profits? It would ruin competitive balance, as Boise and TCU and all other schools fail to match larger conference payrolls. The reason that we need to hold off on paying athletes, aside from the reasons I illustrated two paragraphs ago, is that in order to keep things fair for all 120 teams in FBS, or the 300+ teams in Division 1 college basketball, you can’t pay the top athletes, because not every school would be able to do so.
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