In 2017, the NCAA made over 1 billion dollars. All the money went back to the coaches, schools, and athletic programs (Bokat-Lindell). If the NCAA is getting a large amount of money from the athletes, then why are the student athletes not benefiting from their names? People say the scholarships athletes are getting is their payment, but is it? Athletes can not keep the scholarship money or give it to their families. The argument of why don't they just get a job is another issue. The Business Insider says that college athletes spend up to forty hours a week in practice (Jacobs). Practicing this long during the week leaves little time to commit to a job. In order to provide a fair relationship between the college and the athlete, the athlete should be paid for their actions they do to bring income for the college.

People are more likely to go to a game or event if a particular player is playing. Therefore, the college is making money off of their player’s names. For example, player A is a top 5 draft prospect for the NFL draft and he wears number ten. Now, all around the country, people will buy his number 10 jersey. Although it doesn’t have his name on it, everyone knows that it is his jersey and number. Therefore, player A does not make any profits because all the profits made will go to the college. Take for instance player B is a no name athlete at a small college. Therefore that college would not be making any money off of player B for that sport. Colleges make most of their money off the big names in sports.

If you take only March Madness, the playoff bracket for college basketball, it made over 900 million dollars (Parker). If you take the 64 teams times 10, for the amount of players on each team, you would get 640 players. Furthermore, if you divide the 900 million dollars by the 640 players, you get roughly 1.4 million dollars that one student athlete has made in one academic year from the NCAA. Taking a look at the big picture, there are over 460,000 student athletes (“Student-Athletes”) and a college profit of over 1 billion dollars (Bokat-Lindell). Consider the 1 billion dollars divided by the 460,000 student athletes, each student athlete would have been paid over 2 million dollars. Many people ask the question why would we pay D2 and D3 athletes if D1 athletes are making the majority of the money from either tv programing, bigger stadiums, etc. NCAA workers are organizing D2 and D3 sporting events then why are they making profits off of the hard work of D1 athletes?

Athletes are not getting paid their fair share. The student athlete risks their lives and futures to have the school make money off of them. The NCAA preaches to be fair and good sportsmanship, when in reality they need to realize the success of the student athlete for the college.

Works Cited

Bokat-Lindell, Spencer. “Should College Athletes Be Allowed to Get Paid?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/opinion/california-student-athletes-paid.html.

Jacobs, Peter. “Here's The Insane Amount Of Time Student-Athletes Spend On Practice.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 27 Jan. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/college-student-athletes-spend-40-hours-a-week-practicing-2015-1.

Parker, Tim. “What Does the NCAA Really Net from March Madness?” Investopedia, Investopedia, 31 Oct. 2019, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/031516/how-much-does-ncaa-make-march-madness.asp.

“Student-Athletes.” NCAA.org - The Official Site of the NCAA, www.ncaa.org/student-athletes.