Should college athletes get paid?

Ex-college athlete Ed O’Bannon filed a lawsuit against the NCAA and the Collegiate Licensing for using student athletes in advertisements to promote themselves in 2009. The lawsuit essentially demands for the student athletes to be paid for being in the commercial.

The NCAA responded to this by stating that college sports are amateur sports, not professional sports where the athletes are paid. The judge ruled against the NCAA.

Clearly, colleges are willing to get every last dime out of their athletes. However, they find no problem with not giving any money back to them. Colleges have convinced their athletes that it is their duty to play for them, rather than a job that they get paid for.

The problem with solving this exploitation is that there are two extremes: not paying athletes at all or giving them large salaries. There is no in between.

A gray area exists because of how much money certain sports make. Basketball and football are the only sports that actually earn serious cash. Most other sports actually cost colleges money. This makes it difficult to pay all athletes money, since basketball and football players would be supporting the pay of athletes and never be paid what they’re truly worth.

However, even college athletes in more popular sports like basketball and football are not treated perfectly. In an extreme case, reported by Fox Sports in 2014, current Miami Heat point guard Shabazz Napier said that his team had “hungry  nights” where they “did not have enough money to get food in” when he played in college. The food he was given did not match the amount of money he earned for his school, the University of Connecticut.

Athletes depend on healthy bodies, and therefore must get enough food to keep up with the more rigorous exercise.  Adequate food should be provided by the college they play for. Colleges have no problem with providing a weight room, filled with expensive equipment, for athletes to train, and yet they often deny them the proper nutrition they need to get the most out of the weight room.

But that’s not to say that student-athletes are treated poorly. Many getany get scholarships that sometimes cover tuition, housing, food and even school supplies. Others barely have their basic necessities covered by their scholarships, and are still forced to follow strict academic restrictions and dedicate hours of each day to practices.

This inconsistency between college sports regulations raises concerns about the treatment of college athletes. They are expected to work hard for their sports, leaving little time to work or study. It is not right for colleges to expect college athletes to put in the amount of work they do and make schools the amount of money they do, and still not get acknowledged by receiving something in return.

Another problem that colleges face is whether or not certain class requirements should be met in order for athletes to be allowed to play. Despite the NCAA requiring athletes to have a minimum of a 2.3 GPA to play, it is very easy to find loopholes.

A prominent example of one of these loopholes being used to get around the GPA requirement is shown in the UNC football case in which former athlete Mike McAdoo sued UNC because they put athletes in classes that never met so they could automatically get past the GPA requirement.

This is just one of many times that colleges have made it easier for their athletes to pass the GPA requirements.

Even when considering the grade issue, the money issue is still more widely discussed. On one hand, giving student athletes large sums of money would just increase tuition costs for regular students. It would not be right to overpay athletes if it meant charging more for students who go to college for solely academic purposes.

At the same time, however, giving college athletes money based on how much money their sport gives the college would leave unpopular sports with underpaid athletes when compared to athletes of more popular sports. When all athletes, no matter the sport, are working equally hard, it’s unfair for some to be paid more than others.

One of the current problems is that athletes spend so much time on their sport that they do not have time to get a job and earn money for food and other necessities like most other students do.

To prevent both under and over-paying athletes, a  compromise for all colleges must be reached: College athletes should have most of their necessities paid for, but they should not get a separate salary.

All these issues show why both extremes of this issue are not going to work. Doing what one extreme wants will only make the other extreme unhappy. It is important to find a balance between the two extremes that both sides of this debate argue for. Nothing is ever solved with extreme solutions. In fact, treating college athletes as what they are — people — is the best solution of all.