Declaration Project

Athletes sweat, shed blood, tears and put in the effort to achieve their goals in winning any competition, which could include winning a game or championship. That’s where the paychecks should start flying in — and thus every athlete should get paid, especially college athletes.

The average player in the NBA receives $5.15 million dollars annually.  MLB players receive 3.2 million dollars, NHL players 2.4 million dollars, and NFL players  1.9 million dollars.

Where are the paychecks for the college athletes? They sacrifice their days, nights, and their education. College athletes get up at dawn to work out, eat breakfast, then go to class. They have more classes after lunch and then practice again. This is already a ten-hour schedule.

On average, college athletes have to work 43 hours a week. It would be nice if the NCAA took these statistics into consideration; a college athlete works as hard as any other athlete, and should be recognized for how much time they spend working each and every day. Also, the NCAA needs to realize that scholarships are not enough due to the fact that most of the money only pays for college tuition.

The NCAA makes about 1 billion dollars annually, and this sum will increase due to the rise of March Madness and their marketing strategies. There isn’t another organization that is competing with the NCAA, so the NCAA shouldn’t make any excuses for not paying college athletes. The top three football colleges and universities made about 50 million dollars in 2014 alone. March Madness makes approximately 70 million dollars a year. That indicates that the rise in the interest in college sports is growing rapidly across the nation.

But the main reason why college athletes should get paid is because the NCAA acts like an employer to its athletes. An employee is a person who works for group in exchange for compensation. The way college athletes are being treated — as employees– is by risking their education and their health in exchange for representing their college or university.

Right now there is no real solution to this problem; it is a relatively new topic under discussion. To solve this problem, the college athletes of the NCAA must advocate for  their salary to the universities and the NCAA, since these entities make so much money off of their blood, sweat and tears. By taking away the regular value of scholarships and increasing its value similar to a pay-check. Instead of colleges giving away the scholarships, the NCAA should give them because simply on how much their annual revenue is. For the everyday person or that passionate fan  who wants college athletes to get paid, they  need to treat the NCAA like it’s a corporation ( which it is ). The people either need to boycott so the league will lose their daily profits, start a group that supports this idea that gains public attention about how economically ludicrous the NCAA is, or maybe college classmates of these athletes shouldn’t attend any games or maybe  classes in retaliation of their hard working classmates.  We need to inform the normal person that a large corporation shouldn’t have all of the revenue from someone’s sacrifice for their dreams in becoming a professional athlete.  

— Angie Wasie, Boston College