Kyle Emanuele

4/5/16
English 102
Argumentative Essay

NCAA Exploiting College Athletes: Should college athletes be paid?

Sports have become one of the worlds most popular events to watch and play in the past
hundreds of years, dating back to the late 1800s when the first ever baseball game was played.
As time went on, leagues began to form for the sports world, including the NFL, the MLB, NHL,
NBA, PGA Tour, and many soccer leagues around the world such as the Premiere League and
Bundesliga. But then in the middle 1900s, the NCAA came along with implementing athletics at
universities around the country. Over the past few decades, college sports have become one of
the most entertaining sports to watch on television and at different schools. Allen R. Sanderson
explains, What transformed college athletics and the NCAA from a "cottage industry" 60 years
ago to the 800-pound financial behemoth it is today? First and foremost is the growth of
television that fostered unprecedented expansion in broadcast revenues. He later went on to say,
Exposure via television also nudged the industry from one of local or regional interest to a
national market, leading to an explosion in the number of contests and televised games, and even
changes in the time of day or day of the week when they take place to accommodate endless
broadcast network and cable demands for lucrative live-sports programming (Sanderson). This
quote explains how the NCAA has had such a big impact not only on the sports industry, but on
the media industry as well over the past decades. The NCAA involves many different sports
including football, soccer, basketball, swimming, baseball, and many more. Some of the worlds

greatest athletes of all time have played under the NCAA at some point in their sports career,
including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, to name a few. An ongoing controversy
over the last decade has brought the collegiate athletic world in a swivel, and that is should the
NCAA be paying college athletes other than paying them through scholarships? Through the
athletes dedication to the sport and all the revenue they bring into the NCAA, NCAA studentathletes should be rewarded for their contribution to the success of the NCAA with money
instead of scholarships.
First of all, the NCAA exploits its student athletes by not paying them. Not only does the
NCAA not pay the athletes, the student-athletes are not aloud to be sponsored by any company or
get any sort of pay for the merchandise profit they bring to the NCAA. Although there has been
some controversy around this topic for a while, not until recently in 2009 has it been brought up
in court. In 2009, Ed OBannon was saw himself in an NCAA basketball video game, and
realized that he didnt receive any sort of pay for having himself in a video game. The NCAA
was making all the profit from this video game, and all the athletes in the video game received
nothing. OBannon realized that this ongoing problem needed to be solved, so he brought it to
court in a well known case OBannon vs the NCAA. Marquette Law Review explains, Unless
something changes in the near future, it is likely that OBannon will become a banner case for
student-athletes bringing Section 1 claims against the NCAA, just as Board of Regents was for
the NCAA for the past thirty years. And it is about time. It later explains, The economic
realities of FBS Football and Mens Basketball in the twenty-first century are such that there is
no longer a viable reason to treat these players as though they are amateurs. They are not. And
OBannon takes the first step towards this new paradigm in college athletics (Marquette Law
Review 524). This quote explains how this is still an ongoing case, and once the court rules that

the NCAA should give student athletes the necessary sponsorships and compensations they need,
then this controversy will finally be put to rest.
Also, with the NCAA exploiting its own student athletes for their own gain, they are
making tons and tons of revenue each year off of the student athletes, and the athletes get only
scholarships in return. According to the article The Case for Paying College Athletes, the table
shows that in 2004, the average amount of money a college was making for football was 28.3
million dollars in revenue. In just 9 years, that number has risen all the way to 61.9, more than
doubling the amount in 2004. Furthermore, in 2004 the amount of athletes on scholarship has
risen from around 577 all the way up to 611. After this much rise in revenue and publicity for the
world of college sports, there is no other option but to reward the student athletes by paying
them. With student athletes providing a great source of revenue for the university, it also attracts
other students to come to successful division 1 sports schools. Allen R Sanderson explains, The
presence of high-profile sport programs, like various other campus amenities, may attract
additional applicants and enrollments. He went on to say, North Carolina State University
enjoyed a 40 percent rise in applications after winning the NCAA Mens Basketball
Championship in 1983 under charismatic coach Jim Valvano (Sanderson). This quote explains
that the student athletes and the success of sports programs is what drives people to enroll into
their respective universities. With that being said, the student athletes should be rewarded for
their contribution to the universities athletics. Allen Sack argues, Athletes who are recruited and
subsidized to provide commercial entertainment for millions of Americans are a very different
matter. Because they are already essentially paid to play, they deserve the same rights and
benefits as other employees, including medical benefits, workers' compensation when injured,
and the right to use their God-given talents to build some financial security for their families

while still in college. The denial of these rights is morally unconscionable (Sack). Sack is
saying how since they are essentially employees under the NCAA, they deserve the same rights
as any one else working under a company. In the article Should college student-athletes be
paid?, the author explains that the NCAA makes so much revenue, there is no reason that they
cant pay college athletes some of the money they make each year. The article also goes in depth
as to how the NCAA is actually breaking the law. Marc Edelman explains, Not only are the
NCAA rules that prevent colleges from paying student-athletes immoral, but they also are likely
illegal. Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, in pertinent part, states that every contract,
combination or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce is declared to be illegal.
Applying this language, any agreement among NCAA members to prohibit the pay of studentathletes represents a form of wage fixing that likely violates antitrust law. He goes on to say, In
addition, the NCAA's no-pay rules seem to constitute an illegal boycott of any college that would
otherwise seek to pay its student-athletes (Edelman). This quote explains that not only is it
immoral to not pay college athletes, it is actually against the law. According to the NCAA, the
student athletes work under the NCAA and under the Sherman Antitrust Act, the NCAA should
be paying ALL of their employees including the student athletes.
Although it is clearly evident that student-athletes should be paid by the NCAA with
money instead of scholarships, there are other reasons as to why they should not be paid by the
NCAA. First of all, people argue that the term student-athlete is misinformed. The word
student comes before the word athlete, and that is the incentive by the NCAA to award
student-athletes with a free education rather than money to be spent on anything. Horace
Mitchell argues, Students are not professional athletes who are paid salaries and incentives for a
career in sports. They are students receiving access to a college education through their

participation in sports, for which they earn scholarships to pay tuition, fees, room and board, and
other allowable expenses. Collegiate sports are not a career or profession. It is the students'
vehicle to a higher education degree (Mitchell). This quote explains that the motivation for
student-athletes is to get a great education at their respective universities, with the athletics
coming second. Education is a very important part when playing a sport at a university, but when
athletes come from poor families and need money for working under the NCAA, then the case
for paying college athletes becomes pretty apparent. In an article titled, Should College Athletes
be paid to play?, Donald Remy who is the NCAAs general counsel and vice president for legal
affairs, gave his take on why college athletes should not be paid. He says,
Athletes attend college as a privilege and are provided the unique opportunity to earn a degree
and at the same time compete in intercollegiate athletics. That opportunity is incongruent with
the notion of being an employee (Cooper). Remy explains that being a student-athlete has
nothing to do with being an employee under the NCAA, which is wrong. He defends the fact that
being a student-athlete is a privilege, and they shouldnt receive any compensation other than
scholarships for free education. Horace Mitchell argues, A fundamental NCAA commitment
under the collegiate model is to student-athlete well-being, where institutions have the
responsibility to establish and maintain an environment in which student-athletes' activities are
conducted to encourage academic success and individual development as an integral part of the
educational experience. He further explains, Another commitment is to sound academic
standards. Intercollegiate athletic programs should be maintained as an important component of
educational programs, and student-athletes should be an integral part of the student body. Each
institution's admissions and academic standards for student-athletes should be designed to
promote academic progress and graduation and be consistent with the student body in general

(Mitchell). Along with Remy, Horace Mitchell agrees that playing college sports is secondary to
education and getting a college degree should be the number one priority instead of worrying
about getting paid by the NCAA.
In retrospect, the NCAA should be paying student athletes with money instead of giving
them full scholarships. Between it being immoral for the NCAA to not give its employees any
compensation, and them making millions of dollars in revenue every year, it is clear that the
NCAA needs to make some changes and start paying student athletes. Nick Romeo of the Boston
Globe explains, Division 1 football and mens basketball are the major cash-generating sports in
college athletics. Americas 25 highest-paid football coaches at public universities earned an
average annual salary of $3.85 million in 2014. Some argue that the scholarships that athletes
receive are generous compensation, but as percentage of total revenue their value is paltry
(Romeo). Romeo explains how there is no excuse for the athletes to not be paid by the NCAA,
when the NCAA makes all this revenue every year. Scholarships are a good reward to the
athletes, but compared to the amount of money the NCAA makes, it is not right to give the
student athletes such a low number. Changes to how the NCAA operates in giving student
athletes compensation needs to happen fast, because the student athletes need to be rewarded for
their success to their university and to the NCAA itself. In conclusion, the NCAA needs to pay
student athletes with a different compensation other than education scholarships.

Work Cited
COOPER, KENNETH J. Should College Athletes Be Paid To Play?. Diverse: Issues In Higher
Education28.10 (2011): 12-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Mitchell, Horace, and Marc Edelman. Should College Student-Athletes Be Paid?.U.S News
Digital Weekly 5.52 (2013): 17. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Romeo, Nick. Does the NCAA Exploit Student-athletes? The Boston Globe.
BostonGlobe.com. Web. 22 Feb. 2016

Sack, Allen. Should college athletes be paid?. Christian Science Monitor 07 Mar. 2008: 9.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.
Sanderson, Allen R. Enough Madness: Just Pay College Athletes. Chicagotribune.com. N.p.,
n.d. Wed. 02 Feb. 2016
Sanderson, Allen R. "The Case for Paying College Athletes." JSTOR [JSTOR]. N.p., n.d. Web

STEELE, MICHAEL. Obannon V. Ncaa: The Beginning Of The End Of The Amateurism
Justification For The Ncaa In Antitrust Litigation. Marquette Law Review 99.2 (2015):
511-540. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.