Should College Football Players be paid - Research Paper Example

This unfair situation should be remedied by immediately establishing steps towards the payment of the football players. Unfortunately, there is strong opposition against such effort, primarily from the school administrators themselves. Nevertheless, it must be made clear that the payment of the players’ services is not just because they are making their schools famous. Even without monetary compensation, these players would certainly work hard to win championships because of their loyalty to the schools where they belong.

Still, they deserve to be paid because the schools are actually earning from them also, not just for indirect promotions, but for actually taking part in a revenue-generating spectator sport. The NCAA, particularly its football tournaments, has become a big business, which is why the players should get what is due to them for their hard work. Should College Football Players be Paid? College football players contribute so much in promoting their respective schools. They certainly do not only make the colleges and universities in which they are enrolled in proud; they also encourage other prospective students to entertain studying it too.

As a result, these athletes may well be considered as the schools’ instruments for increasing the number of enrollees per school year or semester. Since these academic institutions also function as businesses, earning income through tuition, increased enrollment naturally means more revenues to be collected. In a way, college football players should be provided with a percentage of the income they generated for the school. They should be paid not for making their school proud but for utilizing their skills in order to make it earn.

The sentiment in favor of having college football players paid by the school is actually gaining support from different sectors already. This is particularly because the public is already very much aware that the NCAA is already a multi-million dollar business. A report from USA Today points out that the “NCAA averages better than half a billion dollars a year in revenue” and that does not include payouts from the 28 football bowls, which exceed $184 million and go to the conferences” (Whiteside 2004).

This means that aside from the indirect financial advantages that schools can generate from enrollment, these could also profit from the premier collegiate tournament itself, especially because the games are often televised and just like the professional leagues, also earn from the TV endorsements. These millions of dollars definitely are not gained because of the member-schools of the NCAA doubled or tripled their respective enrollment rates. Instead these are generated because the student athletes trained hard in order to perform well in the games.

Their diligence in the training programs in which they all underwent ultimately raised the level of quality of the games, particularly football. In fact, many observers would point out that many college football players already possess the skills commonly seen among the pros. Another argument why school administrators can certainly allocate funds for paying their respective football players is that some coaches in Division 1-A actually make more that $1 million dollars a year. In the Southeastern Conference or SEC, where the some of the country’s top college football teams are found, “