By Peyton Capellen Posted December 20, 2016
College athletes are like any other college student. They wake up every morning and go to classes with everyone else, but unlike other students, their day is only just beginning when classes end. Athletes then go to practice with their teams for several hours.
College athletes work just as hard as the professionals, they fill stadiums and arenas with thousands of fans, yet they are not paid a penny. This is a high-profit business and the athletes are the only ones not making anything. Coaches, and even some assistant coaches, make millions.
The 2015 men’s NCAA basketball final four tickets cost around $1,150 for a single seat. The games were also broadcast on four different television networks and had a total of over 43 million viewers worldwide. In 2010 the NCAA signed a 14-year contract with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting for $10.8 billion. With all this money the NCAA is raking in each year you would expect they could afford to pay their players but they are defined by the NCAA as “amateur” athletes. The NCAA makes almost 1 billion dollars in total revenue each year. They also make a significant amount of apparel such as jerseys, shirts, and hats.
Some athletes are awarded scholarships to pay for college although many are not. Several colleges across the U.S. began offering athletes cash stipends in 2015, with a range of around $2,000 to $5,000 a year according to CNN. This gives the athletes some money to spend on things like student loans, laundry money, food, and gas. Hopefully, this will spread to many more colleges in the following years as it is only available in a select few right now. On average the athletes spend 40 hours a week practicing according to USA Today. Many of these athletes struggle to make ends meet. Athletes end up working part-time jobs to feed and clothe themselves. Some fans may not care too much about college athletes getting paid assuming the athletes will when they go pro, however, only 2% of all college athletes will go pro.
As tensions continue to rise about this topic it will be interesting to see what may happen in the following years and if the NCAA will give in to the idea of paying their athletes.
