Pay for Play?

Pay for Play?

Another season of fall sports earning universities a boatload of revenue passes without athletes seeing a penny of the income. How can this be? Capitalism is the main idea practiced in the United States; why not incorporate that into college sports? Fans do not just go to a sporting event to watch. They buy tickets to be entertained and amused by their favorite players. Yes, players are the biggest reasons stands are filled, but the idea of paying amateur athletes is not the way to go. Scholarship athletes receive a great deal of benefits that should suffice an amateur athlete. Getting an education or what America values most for free can be very rewarding. Besides all of the benefits athletes receive, giving athletes cash would change the college game immensely. Paying athletes would take the passion and intensity out of the college game and turn it into a business, lose parity due to the size of schools, and athletes would start to put less time and focus into academics and more in athletics.
Being a student athlete is about getting an education first and foremost and having athletics influence your college experience and growth. The president of the NCAA Myles Brand states, “Intercollegiate athletics is not the entertainment division of the higher education business; it enhances the educational experience of student-athletes. Student-athletes are not a human resource in the great business machine of intercollegiate athletics; they are the object of intercollegiate athletics” (Brand). Some athletes do not realize what non-tangible lessons they are getting out of their athletics. Opportunities and memories are given out regularly when participating in a college sport. Being the object of intercollegiate athletics should be appreciated.   If athletes were paid there is a guarantee that some interest would be lost in their education. They would also put more time and effort into what is giving them cash at the moment. Athletes already put in ludicrous amounts...