Paying College Athletes

[Mihir Sheth]

1. Do college athletes deserve to be paid?

2. What kind of college players deserve to be paid? Do some players deserve more than others? (Consider Cam Newton, Ed O'Bannon, poor players, injured players, etc.)

3. What do you think can or should be done to address this “shame?”

[Demetri Bartowski]

I really enjoyed having his discussion in class.

Question 1: I feel that college athletes do deserve to get paid, but I feel that their pay is their full-ride scholarship. If they would receive additional pay, then it should be based on their performance on the field.

Question 2: When it comes to scholarships, I think that all athletes should get a full-ride. When it comes to additional pay, I think it should be based on performance in games

Question 3: I wouldn't consider it a "shame" that college athletes don't get paid extra money. They get their tuition paid for and they will have little or no debt once they leave college. I feel that that is ample amount of pay for college athletes.

[Dreamon]

This is an important topic, particularly since we are at Penn State.
1. I think the all college athletes should get a free ride through college, a 4 year scholarship minimum as payment for all the revenue brought in by the team. Payment after that should be then based on performance, if you score and play well you will be paid extra.

2. The ones who perform well, score, and play good games deserve to be paid. It shouldn't necessarily be popularity, but performance. If someone is injured because of playing in a game, the medical bills should be paid, but no compensation for their "accident"

3. Make a change. Give something back to the "student athletes" who are the reason for one of the university's biggest revenue streams. If your good at something, never do it for free.

[feek]

1) I do believe that college athletes deserve to be paid. They are paid in terms of scholarships to the school, which in my opinion, is quite substantial. I do not believe that all student-athletes deserve to be paid more on top of a scholarship. In my opinion, having your tuition paid for, or at least partially paid for, is more than enough pay to these student athletes.

2) On top of scholarships, if anyone is to be paid I believe it is the stars of the team. One student of the class, I forget whom, stated that they believed every member of the team should be paid the same amount. I do not believe this is a good idea. The star quarterback and the third string wide receiver should not be paid the same amount in my opinion. I feel that there should be bonuses for members of the team who step up and who's performance game to game is outstanding.

3) I'm assuming that you are referring it as "shameful" that student-athletes are not paid. I would not refer to it as shameful. Many student-athletes receive athletic scholarships, which save them thousands and thousands of dollars as compared to the average student who is not apart of an athletic team.

[Oneib Khan]

Throughout the discussion my mind kept telling me that college players shouldn't get paid outside of scholarships. I always felt like that would ruin the whole idea of a person working their a** off and rising in rank until they got to the big leagues. However, by not getting paid, I just mean nothing substantial. Living money is perfectly fine. I really do wish that the NCAA would, though, acknowledge the difference between a student and an athlete. The concept of a "student-athlete" just holds people back. Sure, it'll help the 9?% of players that don't get anywhere and end their sport careers in college, but for the other people who have aspirations, determination, and a chance to get into the professional realm of sports there should be a distinction. I guess it's possible to make this distinction by paying the players.

With that, I don't think that the NCAA should be destroyed completely, because it does help act like a governing body. No matter what the field is, there will always be some organization regulating it. I do agree, however, that the profits it receives are beyond ridiculous and should be toned down a lot. It definitely needs to lose some of the grip it has on the sports world too.

[Hunter Rauch]

You guys had a pretty strong discussion. I'm really not a sports person, so I wasn't actually fully aware of the situation before this project, but now that I am I agree that it's a serious problem.

Questions:
1: To be honest, I don't think that athletes really deserve to be paid. I think that the scholarships they receive are more than enough. On a larger scale, I don't really think that the NFL players deserve to be paid as much as they are. This is probably because I'm not a sports guy and don't really get the appeal.

2: I don't think that they deserve to be paid unless they're injured, and even then I think that the university they play for should be held responsible for their medical bills.

3: If anything can be done about it, it's to stop the NCAA from profiting from the players. The universities should profit and the players can have their scholarships, but the NCAA doesn't really deserve the money they're getting.


In general, I think that the NCAA is a silly thing that people are using to profit from young people playing sports. The NFL and whatnot are kind of a problem too, because they set unrealistic standards for the lives of athletes. Again, I'm not a sports person, so take this with a grain of salt.

[gyl5071]

1. I strongly believe that college athletes should be payed because sports create billions of dollars of revenue for universities. Why should the athletes that are making money for their college not be compensated for their duties? For example, if an employee is working for a company and helping them increase their revenue shouldn't they be payed? Indeed they should be payed because they are the sole reason on why the company is up and running and producing its money. At the very minimum, I believe that they should be awarded some "spending money" per week even though these athletes generate far more money then to receive minimum wage every week.
2. I think that the players that produce more money for the school should definitely get payed more for their contributions than the players that aren't as productive. For example Cam Newton should receive significantly more money than say a player that does not start for their team and has little affect in the outcome of the game. I also believe that if a player gets injured while playing a sport that the college should pay for all their medical and recovery bills. If someone was working on the job and got injured, they would receive workers compensation. Why wouldn't players that are producing billions of dollars for universities not be compensated if they were hurt while doing their "job".
3. To correct this problem or "shame" I believe that the NCAA should be boycotted and that colleges should all agree that it is not needed. Conferences and colleges individually are fully able to control and regulate their own football games without the help of the NCAA. The NCAA is just stealing players money and are creating rules and sanctions that is out of their scope of authority.