Should college Athletes be paid for playing

Introduction

The use of student-athlete in field of sport have been generating a lot of money in form of revenues for their various institution, which has raised question among many people the reason they should not get paid for their prowess in sport.  According to Kaufman (2007), the student-athletes make millions of dollars for various athletic departments, and if possible they should get compensated. Nevertheless, according to national collegiate athletic association guidelines, the athletes are not supposed to get any profitable use of their likenesses and personas and certainly not expected to get financial compensation for engaging in sporting activities. This has been deduced to imply that they cannot make any agreement for support in their activities of sporting as like it has been the case with the professionals. Rather, students are supposed to benefit from tuition fee payment from their activities of sporting. However, the bone of contention has been that higher institutions the students play for can get into endorsement agreement or any other kind of commercial engagement through the use of players identities. And this would hypothesize that the students give up their publicity rights to their institution, which raises ethical and legal concerns. This uniformity in views among various players comprised the motivation for the recent study.  Basing on detailed student-athletes review literature this paper will look at why the student-athlete should get paid and the pros of doing that.

Education model for student-athletes

The directing student-athletes frameworks have been grounded on the education model/ NCAA amateur, and fundament the type of relationship between the body and the institutions.  The frameworks get fixed in the constitution of NCAA and the by-laws and, even though, the student may not be among the direct party of the agreement. He or she is still tied by the terms of the contract as proposed by their institution since they get regarded as beneficiaries (Muller, n.d) in respect to this, the education of the student model and participation of amateur in sports is generally guided by the embodiment tenets of selflessness, sacrifice, devotion and purity in involvement of activities of sporting, reimbursed in form of scholarship.

The scholarship offers the student a good basis for their quest in sporting activities whereas at the same time learning the academic programs. As the article 12 state about the NCAA by-laws the student-athlete will get utilized in reference to ‘student whose enrolment got solicited by athletics staff member or a befitting delegate with a opinion towards the ultimate participation of the student in the program of intercollegiate athletic. Aside from this arrangement, a student is capable of gaining the same status that is if the student reports for a squad of intercollegiate that is in the athletics department jurisdiction (Muller, n.d). When students get accorded the student-athlete status, he or she is accountable for tuition payment according to the guidelines of NCAA, in conjunction with the education/amateur frameworks. However, the student should maintain the status of amateurish to go on being a recipient of such payments of tuition, as stated in the article 12.1 of the guidelines of NCAA. As per the guidelines, a student can lose the status of amateur if his or her skill of sporting are to be utilized whether direct or indirectly, for payment in any form meaning gets directly or indirectly a reimbursement of expenses or a salary from a professional sports organization that is based on the skills of the athlete his her participation.

A student-athlete who is receiving payment of college tuition as stated in the guidelines of NCAA gets excluded from getting any financial compensation for exploits in sports.  Such kinds of students are not supposed to take part in professional sports if on vacation and return to their school teams when receiving payment of the salary that is stated. Additionally, a picture of a student in advertisements and commercials can only be utilized to broadcast congratulation of sponsors to the team or tea. And if there is no products reproduction, with an associate business, there is a consent that is signed.

According to the highlights above, it is clear that a student-athlete who gets registered under NCAA is not able to get any commercial gains, which include getting paid and use of individual identity for contracts and endorsement for as long he continues being registered under the body. This has been the beginning of mounting debates concerning whether such firm guidelines do not level up to student-athlete getting exploited and if they should be gotten rid of to allow the students to get profit from their individual skill and talents as it has been the case with the professional athletes. Contrary, there have been discussions that the model of education/amateur accords a framework that is ideal for furthering sporting and academic prowess that can fundament the upcoming stocks of people capital.

Reasons as to why student should get compensated

A developing literature body in later days has universally shown the need to compensate students for the prowess in sporting. The beginning of arguments is from the view that the body of NCAA in conjunction with respective institutions has taken advantage of student-athlete personal.  In this respect, the key bone of contention comes from the strict guidelines that restrict the capability to generating money but the one that accords opportunities on the basis of which the institution can benefit commercially from the students services. The guidelines have implied that only a student stands to benefit from incentives restricted to the board, tuition and rooms. For instance, it has been observed that whereas the NCAA forbids the student-athletes from selling their picture commercially and benefits from such considerations, it permits the same among the higher institutions.

While there can be a debate that the restrictions that are put across by NCAA as concerning the college using the student’s pictures in sale of products commercially might have attempted to solve the issue, but still there are loopholes that dominate. In respect to this, it is viewed that schools go on to generate a lot of money using these ventures, but still the students cannot get paid for it. And as it can get argued that the player’s right has withdrawn those rights by agreeing with the guidelines of the university and the NCAA, the ethicality of this goes on being questioned. An example to illustrate this is the money got from selling of the jerseys. Being that the players get identified by the number of jerseys they ware, it would be difficult to separate the persona of the student from the commodity and still the student receives nothing for that n deliberation. This would going to the right of the student to publicity, and has been cited as an unfair enrichment of institutions at the student’s expense.

It is noted that many institutions, while expected to stick on to the guideline of NCAA on commercial exploitations of the persona of the student, have nonetheless permitted productions of video game where institution fight uniforms and songs used. On the other hand, it cannot be disputed that while the violating of publicity has been talked about in other domains, these goes on being a natural occurrence in student’s athlete case.

The other main bone of contention that has got cited in supporting the student athlete’s reimbursement has been with respect to the real form of incentives that the student receives from their prowess in sporting. The student athletes are normally expected to get fees for tuition, books and accommodation that is too small compared to the benefits that their universities and the NCAA receive. Muller explains this by stating that while NCAA gets in the agreement of billions with the CBS, the money that is paid for fees, housing and books is measly and it does near the amount of college education that is given in return. Due to such perspectives, it has been discussed that student athletes get compensated for their activities of sporting as the benefits otherwise accumulating are marginal.

The issue raised has been in relation to the education quality that the youths get. For instance, it has been enhanced that on several occasion; the student’s athletes receive different treatment from their educators when comparing with other students. In respect to this, it has been observed that the student-athletes performance differs from their counterparts, may be due to the underlying motivations they receive from schools and the extra time they spend will in sports (Olbrecht, 2009). Also, this may arise in regard that many o f such students may join college with low high school grades or low Sat. However, the problem has been the treatment that the teachers give to the students.

According to (Muller n.d) the teachers in universities accord an incomplete grade to such students on several courses so as allow those students to take part in sporting activities at the time of eligibility. Needless to say that the grades get changed to an F once the eligibility of the student expires, and their value to the institution coming from the student is not there.  On some occasions, the lecturer will award a passing grade to the student as long as the student is suitable or at times forego awarding those students grades. The result from these has been that many of the student-athletes go on struggling in their venture for education, and probably they lag behind their colleagues (Olbrecht, 2009).  This turns to more poignant when it is given consideration that some institutions select such students as being a risk and academically struggling and put them in Mickey Mouse classes for the reason of making them suitable to playing.

Conclusion

Compensating student athletes is not just a moral issue but t a moral issue too. This is the same as several subjects in life; it creates huge debates amongst people. Several will ask the reason the students should be given money to play whereas he or she is getting free education. Other may differ and say why institutions should not pay the students when the value of the education they are receiving cannot get compared to the money they make after playing.  Texas has reported having received $163.2 million, Ohio University $140 million and Alabama $143 million (Berkowitz, Schnaars, & Upton, 2014). Then again what of the small institutions that do not get such huge amount of money and are not privileged to sign rewarding television deals, and take part in big market appealing games. Whereas to the athlete, the cost of going to a university that benefit from their scholarship is decreased greatly, the advantage of job networking is huge. For instance, the industry of sports advertisement that use a lot of money per year and the companies which give jobs like the Gatorade, Nike, and ESPN and they are household names.

References

Mueller, K. (n.d). No control over their rights of publicity: college athletes left sittingtheBench. Availablehttp://www.law.depaul.edu/students/organizations_journals/student_ orgs/lawslj/Volume%202,%20Issue%201/Mueller%20rights%20of%20publicity.pdf

Kaufmann, S. (2007). Should college students be paid? Available

Olbrecht, A. (2009). Do academically deficient scholarships athletes earn higher wages subsequent to graduation? Economics of education review