Why College Athletes Shouldn't be Paid - Sarah Anne Semke

My thesis for my research topic is that college athletes should be paid to play their sport at their university and that they should be given the opportunity to work with businesses and companies in advertising and marketing for pay. I believe that being a college athlete is more of a job that an extracurricular and I believe they deserve the opportunity to showcase their talents in the media and they deserve pay for the long hours they put in and they should be financially compensated for their time and effort.

The opposing side of my thesis is probably the more common view among Americans and sports watchers. Many people agree that college athletes are students first and athletes second, they believe the academic portion should take precedent. These athletes get a four year college education paid for by the school so they don’t deserve any other financial aid. College is a place students go to learn first and then secondly play sports and paying athletes may make that line a little more blurry and make it seem like sports are more important than education.

Another argument for not paying athletes is that student athletes receive a lot of special treatment and perks and do not deserve additional financial aid. Athletes are given thousands of dollars worth of gear, clothing, shoes, transportation, tutoring, medical attention, and other small perks by teachers and faculty at the schools, they already receive financial aid in material forms.

Those who pay for their children to go to college without any financial aid worry that if college athletes begin to get paid, tuition will spike more than ever and will require regular students to essentially be paying the athletes payroll. Many people see this as turning a university into a bank for athletic programs and fear their tuition dollars already go toward too much sports stuff and not enough toward academic enhancement.

These are all valid arguments and I am going to try my best to disprove them in my paper on why athletes should be paid and should be allowed to be sponsored.