Spencer McCord

Multimedia Staff

Should Athletes Deserve Payment For Their Hard Work

Everybody wants to make money doing what they love, so why shouldn’t student athletes?

Student athletes are some of the hardest working students at a
university.

Between their sport and classwork, these students have almost no time to themselves.

Athletes can spend upwards of 40 hours a week just practicing, which is the same as a full time job.

This leaves athletes with very little time to study and do schoolwork. It also leaves them with no time to make money of their own.

A lot of athletes have scholarships when they attend these schools, which a lot see as their payment from the school.
While a scholarship from a school is nice, it leaves the athlete with no money of their own to spend.

Athletes across all college sports make millions of dollars in revenue for their college. Yet, they see none of this money that they make.

Colleges could use a part of the money made from sports to pay athletes for the hard work that they put in.

One of the biggest issues people have against college athletes being paid is that they aren’t professionals in their sport. Of course only a very select few will be able to make pros, but all of the college athletes put in the same work to bring in money.

College is a lot different than high school.

In high school, you only worry about your sport for a few months which gives you time to get a job during your offseason. In college, you worry about your sport year-round.

You may get 2-3 months of time off from your sport but that gives you almost no time to get a job.

Now saying all of this, athletes shouldn’t be paid the millions they would earn being professionals.

They should get paid maybe only a couple thousand spread out throughout the year.

These athletes need to be repaid for all of the good that they do for the school in their years of competing for it.

Nick Hounshell

Sports Editor

Paying Athletes Creates More Problems Than it Solves

All athletes have one goal: to play professionally. From the athletes’ first step on a court or field, they all dream of the NBA, the NFL, the MLB, and more.

However, not many make it.

Of all college sports, baseball is the only one where more than 2% of the athletes make it to the top. Why should we treat the entire collegiate athletics population as if they were all already professionals?

If universities were to pay their athletes, this would do nothing to make the traditional college student happy. Why should someone who can swing a bat get paid, while someone with a high ACT or GPA not? It is simply unfair.

These college athletes already get paid: with scholarships. The average cost of attending college is over $20,000 a year. At this rate, these athletes earn more than a minimum wage job, all while playing a sport.

The idea of paying athletes is one that would result in the colleges losing money as well. On top of that, many colleges are already losing funding towards their programs.

EKU had to cut their Men’s and Women’s tennis programs, and if athletes were to be paid, many more schools would follow suit.

While many larger schools with huge programs would largely be unaffected financially, this would negatively affect the large majority of college sports.

The big revenue sports, like football and basketball, would in turn become some of the few programs to stick around, while other sports like tennis, bowling, and fencing would become almost nonexistent.

What do these college athletes need money for either? The schools pay for their families to travel to the games and sometimes more (Thanks, Rick Pitino).

The whole goal of college sports is for athletes to earn their way to the biggest leagues, and by paying the players, the competitive nature of collegiate sports wouldn’t be the same.

On top of this, if athletes were to be paid, they would have no reason to go to class. The whole goal of college is to educate, and many athletes would suddenly use it as a way to make money.

Yes, athletes do deserved to be paid in the pro leagues, but they need to earn their spot there first.