Should college athletes get paid?

by Robert Dickey

Which is better: College sports or professional sports?  Professional football or college football?  The NBA playoffs or March Madness? These topics will forever be debated but there is still something different about college sports that athletes and some fans want to see changed. College athletes do not get paid.

The argument for athletes that play for a big name college is simple. Proponents of pay for college athletes argue that division one players that plan to play professionally deserve to get paid for their hard work and dedication. They further believe it is not fair that players whose names you never hear get paid just because they are on an NFL practice team while players who are preforming at the highest level of college don’t get anything. Niko Poulakidas, a junior at WMHS, believes that college athletes should have the right to get rewarded for their efforts.

 “They work just as hard as regular athletes so they should be able to get paid for that,” stated Poulakidas.
Matt Pollard a sophomore at WMHS, also thought that college athletes are worthy of getting paid.
“They’ve made it that far and they’re that good so they should be able to make money for it,” Pollard said.

Although many agree with Pollard and Poulakidas, there are some that felt that the way things are now are just fine. They argue that division one college athletes are being recruited and given full scholarships to huge schools where they are given massive exposure. For example, the average tuition to attend Duke University in 2014-15 was $61,793 meaning if an athlete got a full scholarship they would certainly be given tuition money because of their athletic ability. A player going to Duke gets more exposure and scholarship money for playing than a player going to a different division one school, since that Duke player would be put on TV.  
Owen Langone, a sophomore at WMHS, believes paying college athletes could cause problems of equity.

“I don’t think they should get paid because some are more famous than others because it wouldn’t be fair,” stated Langone.
Whether the athletes will ever get paid or not is something only time will tell. Yet for now college athletes stay without extra money in their pockets for their talents.