College students play sports for their own schools but without pay. Will college students be paid? Robert Griffin III stated that,”There’s far more that goes into being a professional athlete. So many differences that people don’t realize. It’s not just about playing football and getting paid to do it. There’s a lot of things you have to deal with.” On the flip side of things, Sean Kilpatrick stated that “the least you can do is give (athletes) a share when they leave or graduate.” Clearly, a sizable amount of people can indicate that both of these respective athletes are most likely on different sides.

There are many reasons why student-athletes should or should not be paid, but the reasons for the student-athletes not being funded have more transcendence and are less expensive. One reason on why student-athletes will not be paid is mainly because it is so expensive to pay every student athlete in the world. For example, if there are 100,000 college athletes and schools have to pay them at least $10,000 per year, schools would have to pay students a grand total of $100,000,000! In addition, the student-athletes would have to pay taxes as well. Plus, schools would have to pay for staff members on the team because several are volunteers and would like to be paid at least a small margin amount of money since the students are being paid. As a result, schools would be forced to pay even more money for other extracurricular activities because other students who participate in things that differ from sports would also like to be paid the same or even more the amount of money than student-athletes would be paid. Extracurricular activities include arts, literary arts, music, honor societies, media and journalism, drama, dance, student government, etc. As a result, it would probably make colleges unable to pay for other things such as new parts of the facilities, new buildings, fields, etc. Adding on, colleges may even have to cut extracurricular activities if they cannot afford to pay the students. Some students may purposefully get held back just so they can take advantage of colleges paying students and play college sports for the rest of their lives instead of chasing after the dream of playing professionally.

The benefits of a college athlete being paid is that it gives young students income so they could expand on their lifestyle and push for things that are a necessity. Another benefit is that it provides a source of money that college athletes can live off of if the wage is enough for one’s lifestyle. The disadvantages of being paid are peers wanting to be paid for different activities and the fact that college sports may lose a portion of it’s true meaning. According to a study made by Dennis A. Johnson ED.D, in recent memory, Harvard used a coxswain who was not even an enrolled student in a intercollegiate competition. Additionally, according to the Denver Post, critics and plaintiff’s lawyers suggest that students who play sports should have paid salaries. However, The Denver Post itself disagrees with that statement and believes that college athletes are students, not employees.  In my opinion, college athletes shouldn’t be paid for the time being, but in the near future,schools may have to put it into consideration with the demand of the students.