Student Athlete Argumentative Analysis

The debate of compensating student-athletes for their time, skill, and revenue brought in, has been growing in discussion over the recent years. College athletes have consistently brought in large quantities of profits for their schools and the NCAA and they don’t see a penny of that money. Northwestern football players sought to unionize in 2014 because, according to Ramogi Huma, the founder and current president of the National College Players Association (NCPA), which publicly puts pressure on the NCAA to expand the athletes’ rights and benefits, “The current model resembles a dictatorship, where the NCAA places these rules and regulations on these students without their input or without their negotiation.” (SI) In 2009, Ed O’Bannon filed

Redick, a former star college basketball player for Duke University and current NBA player for the Los Angeles Clippers, have all strongly aligned themselves in favor of paying student-athletes what they need and what is deserved. Critics worry about losing the integrity of the game and some say the scholarship is enough for the athletes. However, there is an opportunity to solve this debate by opening up a free-market for all athletes and schools. I am arguing that there should be an open and free market for student-athletes and if schools need to pay more than a scholarship to get them to attend, then the players should be able to sign the deals and get paid. Overall, student-athletes should have the opportunity to be compensated for their skill, time, and talent, because those reasons can all lead to an excess of profits for

Opponents believe that it could harm the sports because athletes would lose their amateurism, which is something unique to the NCAA. But what is amateurism? Jay Bilas comments "It’s whatever the NCAA says it is. So it can mean whatever they define at a given time. And the definition has changed over the year. And it 's changing again, a little bit, because they’ve run into trouble legally. But, fundamentally it’s just one of these things that aren’t right. Maybe it was okay when the money was within the bounds of reason. But it’s not in the bounds of reason anymore.” (Complex.com) The money truly isn’t in the bounds anymore and it’s time for change. Also, it may seem like the bigger schools would just out pay for all the talent, but don’t they sign the best talent currently? The compensation system would allow smaller schools at getting better talent because, for example, a smaller school could offer a larger school’s 3rd best player a better compensation package than the larger school could because they have to handle paying the other, market-driven, higher priced