should college athletes be paid essay pdf

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, should college athletes be paid an expert debate analysis.

Extracurriculars

The argumentative essay is one of the most frequently assigned types of essays in both high school and college writing-based courses. Instructors often ask students to write argumentative essays over topics that have “real-world relevance.” The question, “Should college athletes be paid?” is one of these real-world relevant topics that can make a great essay subject! 

In this article, we’ll give you all the tools you need to write a solid essay arguing why college athletes should be paid and why college athletes should not be paid. We'll provide:

• An explanation of the NCAA and what role it plays in the lives of student athletes
• A summary of the pro side of the argument that's in favor of college athletes being paid
• A summary of the con side of the argument that believes college athletes shouldn't be paid
• Five tips that will help you write an argumentative essay that answers the question "Should college athletes be paid?" 

The NCAA is the organization that oversees and regulates collegiate athletics. 

What Is the NCAA? 

In order to understand the context surrounding the question, “Should student athletes be paid?”, you have to understand what the NCAA is and how it relates to student-athletes. 

NCAA stands for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (but people usually just call it the “N-C-double-A”). The NCAA is a nonprofit organization that serves as the national governing body for collegiate athletics. 

The NCAA specifically regulates collegiate student athletes at the organization’s 1,098 “member schools.” Student-athletes at these member schools are required to follow the rules set by the NCAA for their academic performance and progress while in college and playing sports. Additionally, the NCAA sets the rules for each of their recognized sports to ensure everyone is playing by the same rules. ( They also change these rules occasionally, which can be pretty controversial! ) 

The NCAA website states that the organization is “dedicated to the well-being and lifelong success of college athletes” and prioritizes their well-being in academics, on the field, and in life beyond college sports. That means the NCAA sets some pretty strict guidelines about what their athletes can and can't do. And of course, right now, college athletes can't be paid for playing their sport. 

As it stands, NCAA athletes are allowed to receive scholarships that cover their college tuition and related school expenses. But historically, they haven't been allowed to receive additional compensation. That meant athletes couldn't receive direct payment for their participation in sports in any form, including endorsement deals, product sponsorships, or gifts.  

Athletes who violated the NCAA’s rules about compensation could be suspended from participating in college sports or kicked out of their athletic program altogether. 

The Problem: Should College Athletes Be Paid? 

You know now that one of the most well-known functions of the NCAA is regulating and limiting the compensation that student-athletes are able to receive. While many people might not question this policy, the question of why college athletes should be paid or shouldn't be paid has actually been a hot-button topic for several years.

The fact that people keep asking the question, “Should student athletes be paid?” indicates that there’s some heat out there surrounding this topic. The issue is frequently debated on sports talk shows , in the news media , and on social media . Most recently, the topic re-emerged in public discourse in the U.S. because of legislation that was passed by the state of California in 2019.

In September 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a law that allowed college athletes in California to strike endorsement deals. An endorsement deal allows athletes to be paid for endorsing a product, like wearing a specific brand of shoes or appearing in an advertisement for a product.

In other words, endorsement deals allow athletes to receive compensation from companies and organizations because of their athletic talent. That means Governor Newsom’s bill explicitly contradicts the NCAA’s rules and regulations for financial compensation for student-athletes at member schools.

But why would Governor Newsom go against the NCAA? Here’s why: the California governor believes that it's unethical for the NCAA to make money based on the unpaid labor of its athletes . And the NCAA definitely makes money: each year, the NCAA upwards of a billion dollars in revenue as a result of its student-athlete talent, but the organization bans those same athletes from earning any money for their talent themselves. With the new California law, athletes would be able to book sponsorships and use agents to earn money, if they choose to do so. 

The NCAA’s initial response to California’s new law was to push back hard. But after more states introduced similar legislation , the NCAA changed its tune. In October 2019, the NCAA pledged to pass new regulations when the board voted unanimously to allow student athletes to receive compensation for use of their name, image, and likeness. 

Simply put: student athletes can now get paid through endorsement deals. 

In the midst of new state legislation and the NCAA’s response, the ongoing debate about paying college athletes has returned to the spotlight. Everyone from politicians, to sports analysts, to college students are arguing about it. There are strong opinions on both sides of the issue, so we’ll look at how some of those opinions can serve as key points in an argumentative essay.

Let's take a look at the arguments in favor of paying student athletes!

The Pros: Why College Athletes Should B e Paid

Since the argument about whether college athletes should be paid has gotten a lot of public attention, there are some lines of reasoning that are frequently called upon to support the claim that college athletes should be paid. 

In this section, we'll look at the three biggest arguments in favor of why college athletes should be paid. We'll also give you some ideas on how you can support these arguments in an argumentative essay.

Argument 1: The Talent Should Receive Some of the Profits

This argument on why college athletes should be paid is probably the one people cite the most. It’s also the easiest one to support with facts and evidence. 

Essentially, this argument states that the NCAA makes millions of dollars because people pay to watch college athletes compete, and it isn’t fair that the athletes don't get a share of the profits

Without the student athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t earn over a billion dollars in annual revenue , and college and university athletic programs wouldn’t receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NCAA each year. In fact, without student athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t exist at all. 

Because student athletes are the ones who generate all this revenue, people in favor of paying college athletes argue they deserve to receive some of it back. Otherwise, t he NCAA and other organizations (like media companies, colleges, and universities) are exploiting a bunch of talented young people for their own financial gain.

To support this argument in favor of paying college athletes, you should include specific data and revenue numbers that show how much money the NCAA makes (and what portion of that actually goes to student athletes). For example, they might point out the fact that the schools that make the most money in college sports only spend around 10% of their tens of millions in athletics revenue on scholarships for student-athletes. Analyzing the spending practices of the NCAA and its member institutions could serve as strong evidence to support this argument in a “why college athletes should be paid” essay. 

I've you've ever been a college athlete, then you know how hard you have to train in order to compete. It can feel like a part-time job...which is why some people believe athletes should be paid for their work!

Argument 2: College Athletes Don’t Have Time to Work Other Jobs

People sometimes casually refer to being a student-athlete as a “full-time job.” For many student athletes, this is literally true. The demands on a student-athlete’s time are intense. Their days are often scheduled down to the minute, from early in the morning until late at night. 

One thing there typically isn’t time for in a student-athlete’s schedule? Working an actual job. 

Sports programs can imply that student-athletes should treat their sport like a full-time job as well. This can be problematic for many student-athletes, who may not have any financial resources to cover their education. (Not all NCAA athletes receive full, or even partial, scholarships!) While it may not be expressly forbidden for student-athletes to get a part-time job, the pressure to go all-in for your team while still maintaining your eligibility can be tremendous. 

In addition to being a financial burden, the inability to work a real job as a student-athlete can have consequences for their professional future. Other college students get internships or other career-specific experience during college—opportunities that student-athletes rarely have time for. When they graduate, proponents of this stance argue, student-athletes are under-experienced and may face challenges with starting a career outside of the sports world.

Because of these factors, some argue that if people are going to refer to being a student-athlete as a “full-time job,” then student-athletes should be paid for doing that job.  

To support an argument of this nature, you can offer real-life examples of a student-athlete’s daily or weekly schedule to show that student-athletes have to treat their sport as a full-time job. For instance, this Twitter thread includes a range of responses from real student-athletes to an NCAA video portraying a rose-colored interpretation of a day in the life of a student-athlete. 

Presenting the Twitter thread as one form of evidence in an essay would provide effective support for the claim that college athletes should be paid as if their sport is a “full-time job.” You might also take this stance in order to claim that if student-athletes aren’t getting paid, we must adjust our demands on their time and behavior.

Argument 3: Only Some Student Athletes Should Be Paid

This take on the question, “Should student athletes be paid?” sits in the middle ground between the more extreme stances on the issue. There are those who argue that only the student athletes who are big money-makers for their university and the NCAA should be paid.  

The reasoning behind this argument? That’s just how capitalism works. There are always going to be student-athletes who are more talented and who have more media-magnetizing personalities. They’re the ones who are going to be the face of athletic programs, who lead their teams to playoffs and conference victories, and who are approached for endorsement opportunities. 

Additionally, some sports don't make money for their schools. Many of these sports fall under Title IX, which states that no one can be excluded from participation in a federally-funded program (including sports) because of their gender or sex. Unfortunately, many of these programs aren't popular with the public , which means they don't make the same revenue as high-dollar sports like football or basketball . 

In this line of thinking, since there isn’t realistically enough revenue to pay every single college athlete in every single sport, the ones who generate the most revenue are the only ones who should get a piece of the pie. 

To prove this point, you can look at revenue numbers as well. For instance, the womens' basketball team at the University of Louisville lost $3.8 million dollars in revenue during the 2017-2018 season. In fact, the team generated less money than they pay for their coaching staff. In instances like these, you might argue that it makes less sense to pay athletes than it might in other situations (like for University of Alabama football, which rakes in over $110 million dollars a year .) 

There are many people who think it's a bad idea to pay college athletes, too. Let's take a look at the opposing arguments. 

The Cons: Why College Athletes Shouldn't Be Paid

People also have some pretty strong opinions about why college athletes shouldn't be paid. These arguments can make for a pretty compelling essay, too! 

In this section, we'll look at the three biggest arguments against paying college athletes. We'll also talk about how you can support each of these claims in an essay. 

Argument 1: College Athletes Already Get Paid

On this side of the fence, the most common reason given for why college athletes should not be paid is that they already get paid: they receive free tuition and, in some cases, additional funding to cover their room, board, and miscellaneous educational expenses. 

Proponents of this argument state that free tuition and covered educational expenses is compensation enough for student-athletes. While this money may not go straight into a college athlete's pocket, it's still a valuable resource . Considering most students graduate with nearly $30,000 in student loan debt , an athletic scholarship can have a huge impact when it comes to making college affordable . 

Evidence for this argument might look at the financial support that student-athletes receive for their education, and compare those numbers to the financial support that non-athlete students receive for their schooling. You can also cite data that shows the real value of a college tuition at certain schools. For example, student athletes on scholarship at Duke may be "earning" over $200,000 over the course of their collegiate careers. 

This argument works to highlight the ways in which student-athletes are compensated in financial and in non-financial ways during college , essentially arguing that the special treatment they often receive during college combined with their tuition-free ride is all the compensation they have earned.

Some people who are against paying athletes believe that compensating athletes will lead to amateur athletes being treated like professionals. Many believe this is unfair and will lead to more exploitation, not less. 

Argument 2: Paying College Athletes Would Side-Step the Real Problem

Another argument against paying student athletes is that college sports are not professional sports , and treating student athletes like professionals exploits them and takes away the spirit of amateurism from college sports . 

This stance may sound idealistic, but those who take this line of reasoning typically do so with the goal of protecting both student-athletes and the tradition of “amateurism” in college sports. This argument is built on the idea that the current system of college sports is problematic and needs to change, but that paying student-athletes is not the right solution. 

Instead, this argument would claim that there is an even better way to fix the corrupt system of NCAA sports than just giving student-athletes a paycheck. To support such an argument, you might turn to the same evidence that’s cited in this NPR interview : the European model of supporting a true minor league system for most sports is effective, so the U.S. should implement a similar model. 

In short: creating a minor league can ensure athletes who want a career in their sport get paid, while not putting the burden of paying all collegiate athletes on a university. 

Creating and supporting a true professional minor league would allow the students who want to make money playing sports to do so. Universities could then confidently put earned revenue from sports back into the university, and student-athletes wouldn’t view their college sports as the best and only path to a career as a professional athlete. Those interested in playing professionally would be able to pursue this dream through the minor leagues instead, and student athletes could just be student athletes. 

The goal of this argument is to sort of achieve a “best of both worlds” solution: with the development and support of a true minor league system, student-athletes would be able to focus on the foremost goal of getting an education, and those who want to get paid for their sport can do so through the minor league. Through this model, student-athletes’ pursuit of their education is protected, and college sports aren’t bogged down in ethical issues and logistical hang-ups. 

Argument 3: It Would Be a Logistical Nightmare

This argument against paying student athletes takes a stance on the basis of logistics. Essentially, this argument states that while the current system is flawed, paying student athletes is just going to make the system worse. So until someone can prove that paying collegiate athletes will fix the system, it's better to maintain the status quo. 

Formulating an argument around this perspective basically involves presenting the different proposals for how to go about paying college athletes, then poking holes in each proposed approach. Such an argument would probably culminate in stating that the challenges to implementing pay for college athletes are reason enough to abandon the idea altogether. 

Here's what we mean. One popular proposed approach to paying college athletes is the notion of “pay-for-play.” In this scenario, all college athletes would receive the same weekly stipend to play their sport . 

In this type of argument, you might explain the pay-for-play solution, then pose some questions toward the approach that expose its weaknesses, such as: Where would the money to pay athletes come from? How could you pay athletes who play certain sports, but not others? How would you avoid Title IX violations? Because there are no easy answers to these questions, you could argue that paying college athletes would just create more problems for the world of college sports to deal with.

Posing these difficult questions may persuade a reader that attempting to pay college athletes would cause too many issues and lead them to agree with the stance that college athletes should not be paid. 

5 Tips for Writing About Paying College Athletes

If you’re assigned the prompt “Should college athletes be paid," don't panic. There are several steps you can take to write an amazing argumentative essay about the topic! We've broken our advice into five helpful tips that you can use to persuade your readers (and ace your assignment).

Tip 1: Plan Out a Logical Structure for Your Essay

In order to write a logical, well-organized argumentative essay, one of the first things you need to do is plan out a structure for your argument. Using a bare-bones argumentative outline for a “why college athletes should be paid” essay is a good place to start. 

Check out our example of an argumentative essay outline for this topic below: 

• The thesis statement must communicate the topic of the essay: Whether college athletes should be paid, and 
• Convey a position on that topic: That college athletes should/ should not be paid, and 
• State a couple of defendable, supportable reasons why college athletes should be paid (or vice versa).
• Support Point #1 with evidence
• Explain/interpret the evidence with your own, original commentary 
• Support Point #2 with evidence
• Explain/interpret the evidence with your own, original commentary
• Support Point #3 with evidence
• New body paragraph addressing opposing viewpoints
• Concluding paragraph

This outline does a few things right. First, it makes sure you have a strong thesis statement. Second, it helps you break your argument down into main points (that support your thesis, of course). Lastly, it reminds you that you need to both include evidence and explain your evidence for each of your argumentative points. 

While you can go off-book once you start drafting if you feel like you need to, having an outline to start with can help you visualize how many argumentative points you have, how much evidence you need, and where you should insert your own commentary throughout your essay. 

Remember: the best argumentative essays are organized ones! 

Tip 2: Create a Strong Thesis 

T he most important part of the introduction to an argumentative essay claiming that college athletes should/should not be paid is the thesis statement. You can think of a thesis like a backbone: your thesis ties all of your essay parts together so your paper can stand on its own two feet! 

So what does a good thesis look like? A solid thesis statement in this type of argumentative essay will convey your stance on the topic (“Should college athletes be paid?”) and present one or more supportable reasons why you’re making this argument. 

With these goals in mind, here’s an example of a thesis statement that includes clear reasons that support the stance that college athletes should be paid: 

Because the names, image, and talents of college athletes are used for massive financial gain, college athletes should be able to benefit from their athletic career in the same way that their universities do by getting endorsements. 

Here's a thesis statement that takes the opposite stance--that college athletes shouldn’t be paid --and includes a reason supporting that stance: 

In order to keep college athletics from becoming over-professionalized, compensation for college athletes should be restricted to covering college tuition and related educational expenses.

Both of these sample thesis statements make it clear that your essay is going to be dedicated to making an argument: either that college athletes should be paid, or that college athletes shouldn’t be paid. They both convey some reasons why you’re making this argument that can also be supported with evidence. 

Your thesis statement gives your argumentative essay direction . Instead of ranting about why college athletes should/shouldn’t be paid in the remainder of your essay, you’ll find sources that help you explain the specific claim you made in your thesis statement. And a well-organized, adequately supported argument is the kind that readers will find persuasive!

Tip 3: Find Credible Sources That Support Your Thesis

In an argumentative essay, your commentary on the issue you’re arguing about is obviously going to be the most fun part to write. But great essays will cite outside sources and other facts to help substantiate their argumentative points. That's going to involve—you guessed it!—research. 

For this particular topic, the issue of whether student athletes should be paid has been widely discussed in the news media (think The New York Times , NPR , or ESPN ). 

For example, this data reported by the NCAA shows a breakdown of the gender and racial demographics of member-school administration, coaching staff, and student athletes. These are hard numbers that you could interpret and pair with the well-reasoned arguments of news media writers to support a particular point you’re making in your argument. 

Though this may seem like a topic that wouldn’t generate much scholarly research, it’s worth a shot to check your library database for peer-reviewed studies of student athletes’ experiences in college to see if anything related to paying student athletes pops up. Scholarly research is the holy grail of evidence, so try to find relevant articles if you can. 

Ultimately, if you can incorporate a mix of mainstream sources, quantitative or statistical evidence, and scholarly, peer-reviewed sources, you’ll be on-track to building an excellent argument in response to the question, “Should student athletes be paid?”

Having multiple argumentative points in your essay helps you support your thesis.

Tip 4: Develop and Support Multiple Points

We’ve reviewed how to write an intro and thesis statement addressing the issue of paying college athletes, so let’s talk next about the meat and potatoes of your argumentative essay: the body paragraphs. 

The body paragraphs that are sandwiched between your intro paragraph and concluding paragraph are where you build and explain your argument. Generally speaking, each body paragraph should do the following: 

• Start with a topic sentence that presents a point that supports your stance and that can be debated, 
• Present summaries, paraphrases, or quotes from credible sources--evidence, in other words--that supports the point stated in the topic sentence, and
• Explain and interpret the evidence presented with your own, original commentary. 

In an argumentative essay on why college athletes should be paid, for example, a body paragraph might look like this: 

Thesis Statement : College athletes should not be paid because it would be a logistical nightmare for colleges and universities and ultimately cause negative consequences for college sports. 

Body Paragraph #1: While the notion of paying college athletes is nice in theory, a major consequence of doing so would be the financial burden this decision would place on individual college sports programs. A recent study cited by the NCAA showed that only about 20 college athletic programs consistently operate in the black at the present time. If the NCAA allows student-athletes at all colleges and universities to be paid, the majority of athletic programs would not even have the funds to afford salaries for their players anyway. This would mean that the select few athletic programs that can afford to pay their athletes’ salaries would easily recruit the most talented players and, thus, have the tools to put together teams that destroy their competition. Though individual athletes would benefit from the NCAA allowing compensation for student-athletes, most athletic programs would suffer, and so would the spirit of healthy competition that college sports are known for. 

If you read the example body paragraph above closely, you’ll notice that there’s a topic sentence that supports the claim made in the thesis statement. There’s also evidence given to support the claim made in the topic sentence--a recent study by the NCAA. Following the evidence, the writer interprets the evidence for the reader to show how it supports their opinion. 

Following this topic sentence/evidence/explanation structure will help you construct a well-supported and developed argument that shows your readers that you’ve done your research and given your stance a lot of thought. And that's a key step in making sure you get an excellent grade on your essay! 

Tip 5: Keep the Reader Thinking

The best argumentative essay conclusions reinterpret your thesis statement based on the evidence and explanations you provided throughout your essay. You would also make it clear why the argument about paying college athletes even matters in the first place. 

There are several different approaches you can take to recap your argument and get your reader thinking in your conclusion paragraph. In addition to restating your topic and why it’s important, other effective ways to approach an argumentative essay conclusion could include one or more of the following: 

While you don’t want to get too wordy in your conclusion or present new claims that you didn’t bring up in the body of your essay, you can write an effective conclusion and make all of the moves suggested in the bulleted list above. 

Here’s an example conclusion for an argumentative essay on paying college athletes using approaches we just talked about:

Though it’s true that scholarships and financial aid are a form of compensation for college athletes, it’s also true that the current system of college sports places a lot of pressure on college athletes to behave like professional athletes in every way except getting paid. Future research should turn its attention to the various inequities within college sports and look at the long-term economic outcomes of these athletes. While college athletes aren't paid right now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a paycheck is the best solution to the problem. To avoid the possibility of making the college athletics system even worse, people must consider the ramifications of paying college students and ensure that paying athletes doesn't create more harm than good.

This conclusion restates the argument of the essay (that college athletes shouldn't be paid and why), then uses the "Future Research" tactic to make the reader think more deeply about the topic. 

If your conclusion sums up your thesis and keeps the reader thinking, you’ll make sure that your essay sticks in your readers' minds.

Should College Athletes Be Paid: Next Steps 

Writing an argumentative essay can seem tough, but with a little expert guidance, you'll be well on your way to turning in a great paper . Our complete, expert guide to argumentative essays can give you the extra boost you need to ace your assignment!

Perhaps college athletics isn't your cup of tea. That's okay: there are tons of topics you can write about in an argumentative paper. We've compiled 113 amazing argumentative essay topics so that you're practically guaranteed to find an idea that resonates with you.

If you're not a super confident essay writer, it can be helpful to look at examples of what others have written. Our experts have broken down three real-life argumentative essays to show you what you should and shouldn't do in your own writing.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

• For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”

Page One Economics ®

What should college athletes be paid market structure and the ncaa.

"From the start, American colleges and universities have had a complicated relationship with sports and money."   —Justice Neil Gorsuch,  NCAA v. Alston  (2021)

Introduction  

College athletic programs are an integral part of many college campuses. Colleges earn revenue from ticket sales, merchandise, and licensing agreements. But should the athletes themselves be given a portion of these earnings? There is a long tradition of unpaid amateur athletics in the United States, and many argue that the scholarships offered to student athletes are fair compensation for their time and talent. But recent court cases and subsequent rule changes by bodies governing college athletics have highlighted the underlying market structure of college athletics in the United States—and have begun to change it.

Monopoly vs. Monopsony: What Is the Difference?  

Many of us are familiar with the concept of a monopoly , where a market is controlled by a single firm or producer. Monopolies mean that consumers have no choice when shopping for a product or service, because there is only one supplier. Without competition for buyers, a monopolist can essentially control the market price. Monopolies are generally created when there is some barrier to entry that prevents other producers from joining the market. 

But what if, instead of there being only one producer in a market, there was only one consumer? What if you produced a good or service but had only one option when it came time to try and sell your product or service? This is a monopsony (Figure 1).

NCAA As a Monopsony

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was originally founded to set standards and safety practices for college athletics. Today the NCAA has more than 1,000 member colleges and universities organized into three divisions. Many of the standards and regulations the NCAA established have to do with how member schools can recruit and compensate athletes for participating in college athletics. Colleges and universities are primarily educational institutions, not athletic franchises or companies, so how did the NCAA (and its member schools) end up being defendants in an antitrust claim before the US Supreme Court? 

As college athletics increased in popularity, they created more and more revenue for both the NCAA and the colleges and universities. In 2022, the NCAA reportedly earned $1 billion in revenue from March Madness alone. 1 The increased revenue the NCAA and member schools received, driven by the increased popularity of college sports, left many questioning if the athletes were still being fairly compensated for their labor. 

In 2021, a group of both current and former student athletes filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA ( NCAA v. Alston ). The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the students against the NCAA's rules that restricted education-related benefits, such as scholarships for graduate or vocational school or payments for academic tutoring. These types of caps on education-­related benefits had kept costs down for member schools who would have otherwise bid up these types of payments to attract potential star athletes.

The US government has several antitrust laws in place that are designed to prevent monopolies from forming and that require competition be maintained in the market. It has been long held in the US that monopolies hurt the consumer by reducing output, raising prices, and limiting innovation. (When producers do not compete, there is less incentive to innovate or lower costs.) The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) prohibits "contract[s], combination[s], or conspiracy[ies] in restraint of trade or commerce." 2

When a person or group files an antitrust claim, the court must determine if the parties involved are limiting competition in a way that is detrimental to consumers. But would the same reasoning be applied to a monopsony? According to the Supreme Court in the NCAA case, yes. 3  

College athletes are in essence "selling" their labor to colleges/universities in exchange for scholarships, tuition, and other education-related expenses. If you are an amateur athlete, there is no other viable "buyer" in this labor market beyond colleges and universities. In short, the NCAA has established a monopsony labor market for amateur athletes (Figure 2).

Because there is no other labor market for these amateur athletes to sell their talent and skills, the NCAA guidelines determine how student athletes are compensated. The Supreme Court found that because member schools compete against each other to recruit student athletes, the NCAA, through rules like limiting education-related benefits, used its monopsony power to "cap artificially the compensation offered to recruits." 4

The Court ruled that these caps violate antitrust law, which has opened the door to further debate and rule changes related to student athlete compensation. We are already seeing policy changes that have begun to reduce the monopsony power of the NCAA.

Opening the Door for Name, Image, Likeness  

Following the ruling in NCAA v. Alston , the NCAA made a major policy change that has reshaped the way student athletes are compensated for their talent. Starting in July 2021, the NCAA allows all Division I-III student athletes to be compensated for use of their Name, Image, Likeness (NIL). Examples of using NIL include a university selling jerseys with an athlete's name on them or licensing an avatar in an athlete's likeness for a video game. 

This change reversed previous policy that strictly forbade college athletes from earning "benefits linked to their participation in a sport." 5 That is, colleges and universities could earn income by selling merchandise and licensing featuring an athlete, but the individual would not receive any compensation based on sales of these items. Nor could college athletes participate in any individual endorsement or advertising contracts. 

With the new NIL policy, college athletes are now able to accept endorsement deals with both large national brands and smaller local businesses. Big-ticket endorsements can earn players upward of $1 million per year, while smaller sums of money or free products from smaller local businesses are often available for college players.

Long-Term Consequences

Monopsonies are less common and certainly less visible than monopolies; but monopsony labor markets still have a large impact on the income and wages of laborers within those markets. While colleges and universities are not your typical profit-making businesses, and so unique circumstances must be considered, we can see in the college athletics example how monopsony power can depress earnings and compensation for athletes within these markets.

With changes in policies around NIL and education-­related compensation for student athletes, the landscape of college sports is changing. NIL has created opportunities for athletes to profit from endorsements and advertising contracts and is already impacting the way colleges recruit, as schools are offering programs and partnerships internally to help student athletes make the most of their NIL opportunities. Less than 2% of NCAA athletes move on to play professional sports; so, the opportunity for NIL compensation during their college years is important for the vast majority of these athletes who may not have similar opportunities in the future. 6

While the debate over college athlete compensation goes on, reducing the monopsony power of the NCAA and expanding earnings competition among college athletes will definitely change the way these institutions recruit, manage, promote, and retain athletes. The complex relationship between higher education, sports, and money won't become any less complex anytime soon.

1 Blinder, Alan and Draper, Kevin. "Topping $1 Billion a Year, Big Ten Signs Record TV Deal for College Conference." New York Times , August 18, 2022; https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/sports/ncaafootball/big-ten-deal-tv.html .

2 The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, July 2, 1890; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

3 No. 20-512 National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston , 2021.

4 NCAA v. Alston , 2021. (See footnote 3.)

5 Blinder and Draper, 2022. (See footnote 1.)

6 National Collegiate Athletic Association. "NCAA Recruiting Fact Sheet." August 2021; https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/compliance/recruiting/NCAA_RecruitingFactSheet.pdf .

© 2023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.

Antitrust law: Legislation that prohibits practices that restrain trade, such as price fixing and business arrangements designed to achieve monopoly power. 

Barriers to entry: Obstacles that make it difficult for a producer to enter a market. Examples might include control of a scarce resource or high fixed or start-up costs. 

Competition: Competition takes place in markets. Sellers compete with other sellers for sales to consumers. Sellers compete on the basis of price, product quality, customer service, product design and variety, and advertising. Buyers compete with other consumers for goods and services. This often results in higher prices.

Incentives: Perceived benefits that encourage certain behaviors.

Market: Buyers and sellers coming together to exchange goods, services, and/or resources.

Monopoly: A market for a good or service where there is only one supplier, or that is dominated by one supplier. Barriers prevent entry to the market and there are no close substitutes for the product.

Monopsony: A market for a good or service where there is only one buyer, or that is dominated by one buyer.

Cite this article

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Stay current with brief essays, scholarly articles, data news, and other information about the economy from the Research Division of the St. Louis Fed.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE RESEARCH DIVISION NEWSLETTER

Research division.

• Legal and Privacy

One Federal Reserve Bank Plaza St. Louis, MO 63102

Information for Visitors

• Bachelor’s Degrees
• Master’s Degrees
• Doctorate Degrees
• Certificate Programs
• Nursing Degrees
• Cybersecurity
• Human Services
• Science & Mathematics
• Communication
• Liberal Arts
• Social Sciences
• Computer Science
• Admissions Overview
• Tuition and Financial Aid
• Incoming Freshman and Graduate Students
• Transfer Students
• Military Students
• International Students
• Early Access Program
• About Maryville
• Our Faculty
• Our Approach
• Our History
• Accreditation
• Tales of the Brave
• Student Support Overview
• Online Learning Tools
• Infographics

Home / Blog

Should College Athletes Be Paid? Reasons Why or Why Not

January 3, 2022 

Tables of Contents

Why are college athletes not getting paid by their schools?

How do student athlete scholarships work, what are the pros and cons of compensation for college athletes, keeping education at the center of college sports.

Since its inception in 1906, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has governed intercollegiate sports and enforced a rule prohibiting college athletes to be paid. Football, basketball, and a handful of other college sports began to generate tremendous revenue for many schools in the mid-20th century, yet the NCAA continued to prohibit payments to athletes. The NCAA justified the restriction by claiming it was necessary to  protect amateurism  and distinguish “student athletes” from professionals.

The question of whether college athletes should be paid was answered in part by the Supreme Court’s June 21, 2021, ruling in  National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, et. al.  The decision affirmed a lower court’s ruling that blocked the NCAA from enforcing its rules restricting the compensation that college athletes may receive.

• As a result of the NCAA v. Alston ruling, college athletes now have the right to profit from their  name, image, and likeness  (NIL) while retaining the right to participate in their sport at the college level. (The prohibition against schools paying athletes directly remains in effect.)
• Several states have passed laws  that allow such compensation. Colleges and universities in those states must abide by these new laws when devising and implementing their own policies toward NIL compensation for college athletes.

Participating in sports benefits students in many ways: It helps them focus, provides motivation, builds resilience, and develops other skills that serve students in their careers and in their lives. The vast majority of college athletes will never become professional athletes and are happy to receive a full or partial scholarship that covers tuition and education expenses as their only compensation for playing sports.

Athletes playing Division I football, basketball, baseball, and other sports generate revenue for their schools and for third parties such as video game manufacturers and media companies. Many of these athletes believe it’s unfair for schools and businesses to profit from their hard work and talent without sharing the profits with them. They also point out that playing sports entails physical risk in addition to a considerable investment in time and effort.

This guide considers the reasons for and against paying college athletes, and the implications of recent court rulings and legislation on college athletes, their schools, their sports, and the role of the NCAA in the modern sports environment.

Back To Top

The reasons why college athletes aren’t paid go back to the first organized sports competitions between colleges and universities in the late 19th century. Amateurism in college sports reflects the “ aristocratic amateurism ” of sports played in Europe at the time, even though most of the athletes at U.S. colleges had working-class backgrounds.

By the early 20th century, college football had gained a reputation for rowdiness and violence, much of which was attributed to the teams’ use of professional athletes. This led to the creation of the NCAA, which prohibited professionalism in college sports and enforced rules restricting compensation for college athletes. The rules are intended to preserve the amateurism of student participants. The NCAA justified the rules on two grounds:

• Fans would lose interest in the games if the players were professional athletes.
• Limiting compensation to capped scholarships ensures that college athletes remain part of the college community.

NCAA rules also prohibited college athletes from receiving payment to “ advertise, recommend, or promote ” any commercial product or service. Athletes were barred from participating in sports if they signed a contract to be represented by an agent as well. As a result of the NIL court decision, the NCAA will no longer enforce its rule relating to compensation for NIL activities and will allow athletes to sign contracts with agents.

Major college sports now generate billions in revenue for their schools each year

For decades, colleges and universities have operated under the assumption that  scholarships are sufficient compensation  for college athletes. Nearly all college sports cost more for the schools to operate than they generate in revenue for the institution, and scholarships are all that participants expect.

But while most sports don’t generate revenue, a handful, notably football and men’s and women’s basketball, stand out as significant exceptions to the rule:

• Many schools that field teams in the NCAA’s Division I football tier  regularly earn tens of millions of dollars  each year from the sport.
• The NCAA tournaments for men’s and women’s Division I basketball championships  generated more than $1 billion in 2019 .

Many major colleges and universities generate a considerable amount of money from their athletic teams:

• The Power Five college sports conferences — the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, and Southeastern Conference (SEC) —  generated more than $2.9 billion  in revenue from sports in fiscal 2020, according to federal tax records reported by  USA Today .
• This figure represents an increase of $11 million from 2019, a total that was reduced because of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In the six years prior to 2020, the conferences recorded collective annual revenue increases averaging about $252 million.

What are name, image, likeness agreements for student athletes?

In recent years some college athletes at schools that field teams in the NCAA’s highest divisions have protested the restrictions placed on their ability to be compensated for third parties’ use of their name, image, and likeness. During the 2021 NCAA Division I basketball tournament known familiarly as March Madness, several players wore shirts bearing the hashtag “ #NotNCAAProperty ” to call attention to their objections.

Following the decision in NCAA v. Alston, the NCAA  enacted a temporary policy  allowing college athletes to enter into NIL agreements and other endorsements. The interim policy will be in place until federal legislation is enacted or new NCAA rules are created governing NIL contracts for college athletes.

• Student athletes are now able to sign endorsement deals, profit from their use of social media, and receive compensation for personal appearances and signing autographs.
• If they attend a school located in a state that has enacted NIL legislation, they are subject to any restrictions present in those state laws. As of mid-August 2021,  40 states had enacted laws  governing NIL contracts for college athletes.
• If their school is in a state without such a law, the college or university will determine its own NIL policies, although the NCAA prohibits pay-for-play and improper recruiting inducements.
• Student athletes are allowed to sign with sports agents and enter into agreements with school boosters so long as the deals abide by state laws and school policies.

Within weeks of the NCAA policy change, premier college athletes began signing NIL agreements with the potential to  earn them hundreds of thousands of dollars .

• Bryce Young, a sophomore quarterback for the University of Alabama, has nearly $1 million in endorsement deals.
• Quarterback Quinn Ewers decided to skip his last year of high school and enroll early at Ohio State University so he could make money from endorsements.
• A booster for the University of Miami pledged to pay each member of the school’s football team $500 for endorsing his business.

How will the change affect college athletes and their schools?

The  repercussions of court decisions and state laws  that allow college athletes to sign NIL agreements continue to be felt at campuses across the country, even though schools and athletes have received little guidance on how to manage the process.

• The top high school athletes in football, basketball, and other revenue-generating college sports will consider their potential for endorsement earnings while being recruited by various schools.
• The first NIL agreements highlight the disparity between what elite college athletes can expect to earn and what other athletes may realize. On one NIL platform, the average amount earned by Division I athletes was $471, yet one athlete made $210,000 in July alone.
• Most NIL deals at present are for small amounts, typically about $100 in free apparel, in exchange for endorsing a product on social media.

The presidents and other leaders of colleges and universities that field Division I sports have not yet responded to the changes in college athlete compensation other than to reiterate that they do not operate for-profit sports franchises. However, the NCAA requires that  Division I sports programs  be self-supporting, in contrast to sports programs at Division II and III institutions, which receive funding directly from their schools.

Many members of the Power 5 sports conferences have reported shortfalls in their operations, leading analysts to anticipate  major structural reforms  in the governing of college sports in the near future. The recent changes have also caused some people to believe the  NCAA is no longer relevant  or necessary.

How do highly competitive athletic scholarships work? According to the NCAA and Next College Student Athlete: $3.6 billion+ in athletic scholarships are awarded annually, and 180,000+ student athletes receive scholarships every year. Additionally, about 2% of athletes win a sports scholarship; college coaches award scholarships based on athletic ability; full scholarships are given for the top six college sports categories; and athletic scholarships are renewable each year.

The primary financial compensation student athletes receive is a scholarship that pays all or part of their tuition and other college-related expenses. Other forms of financial assistance available to student athletes include  grants, loans, and merit aid .

• Grants  are also called “gift aid,” because students are not expected to pay them back (with some exceptions, such as failing to complete the course of study for which the grant was awarded). Grants are awarded based on a student’s financial need. The  four types of grants  awarded by the U.S. Department of Education are  Federal Pell Grants ,  Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants ,  Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grants , and  Teacher Education Assistance for College or Higher Education (TEACH) Grants .
• Loans  are available to cover education expenses from government agencies and private banks. Students must pay the loans back over a specified period after graduating from or leaving school, including interest charges. EducationData.org estimates that as of 2020, the  average amount of school-related debt  owed by college graduates was $37,693.
• Merit aid  is awarded based on the student’s academic, athletic, artistic, and other achievements.  Athletic scholarships  are a form of merit aid that typically cover one academic year at a time and are renewable each year, although some are awarded for up to four years.

Full athletic scholarships vs. partial scholarships

When most people think of a student athlete scholarship, they have in mind a  full-ride scholarship  that covers nearly all college-related expenses. However, most student athletes receive partial scholarships that may pay tuition but not college fees and living expenses, for example.

A student athlete scholarship is a nonguaranteed financial agreement between the school and the student. The NCAA refers to full-ride scholarships awarded to student athletes entering certain Division I sports programs as  head count scholarships  because they are awarded per athlete. Conversely, equivalency sports divide scholarships among multiple athletes, some of whom may receive a full scholarship and some a partial scholarship. Equivalency awards are divided among a team’s athletes at the discretion of the coaches, as long as they do not exceed the allowed scholarships for their sport.

These Division I sports distribute scholarships per head count:

• Men’s football
• Men’s basketball
• Women’s basketball
• Women’s volleyball
• Women’s gymnastics
• Women’s tennis

These are among the Division I equivalency sports for men:

• Track and field
• Cross-country

These are the Division I equivalency sports for women:

• Field hockey

All Division II and National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) sports programs distribute scholarships on an equivalency basis. Division III sports programs do not award sports scholarships, although other forms of financial aid are available to student athletes at these schools.

How college athletic scholarships are awarded

In most cases, the coaching staff of a team determines which students will receive scholarships after spending time scouting and recruiting. The NCAA imposes  strict rules for recruiting student athletes  and provides a guide to help students  determine their eligibility  to play college sports.

Once a student has received a scholarship offer from a college or university, the person may sign a national letter of intent (NLI), which is a voluntary, legally binding contract between an athlete and the school committing the student to enroll and play the designated sport for that school only. The school agrees to provide financial aid for one academic year as long as the student is admitted and eligible to receive the aid.

After the student signs an NLI, other schools are prohibited from recruiting them. Students who have signed an NLI may ask the school to release them from the commitment; if a student attends a school other than the one with which they have an NLI agreement, they lose one full year of eligibility and must complete a full academic year at the new school before they can compete in their sport.

Very few student athletes are awarded a full scholarship, and even a “full” scholarship may not pay for all of a student’s college and living expenses. The  average Division I sports scholarship  in the 2019-20 fiscal year was about $18,000, according to figures compiled by ScholarshipStats.com, although some private universities had average scholarship awards that were more than twice that amount. However, EducationData.org estimates that the  average cost of one year of college  in the U.S. is $35,720. They estimate the following costs by type of school.

• The average annual cost for an in-state student attending a public four-year college or university is $25,615.
• Average in-state tuition for one year is $9,580, and out-of-state tuition costs an average of $27,437.
• The average cost at a private university is $53,949 per academic year, about $37,200 of which is tuition and fees.

Student athlete scholarship resources

• College Finance, “Full-Ride vs. Partial-Ride Athletic Scholarships”  — The college expenses covered by full athletic scholarships, how to qualify for partial athletic scholarships, and alternatives to scholarships for paying college expenses
• Student First Educational Consulting, “Athletic Scholarship Issues for 2021-2022 and Beyond”  — A discussion of the decline in the number of college athletic scholarships as schools drop athletic programs, and changes to the rules for college athletes transferring to new schools

According to College Strategic, Fansided, and Future of Working, reasons why paying college athletes is fair include: 1. Playing sports resembles a full-time job. 2. Sports take time away from studies. 3. Sports generate corporate profits. 4. Pay minimizes athlete corruption. 5. Pay provides spending money. 6. Playing sports creates injury risk. 7. Sports elevate school brands. 8. Pay motivates performance. 9. Scholarships reduce poverty.

There are many reasons why student athletes should be paid, but there are also valid reasons why student athletes should not be paid in certain circumstances. The lifting of NCAA restrictions on NIL agreements for college athletes has altered the landscape of major college sports but will likely have little or no impact on the majority of student athletes, who will continue to compete as true amateurs.

Reasons why student athletes should be paid

The argument raised most often in favor of allowing college athletes to receive compensation is that  colleges and universities profit  from the sports they play but do not share the proceeds with the athletes who are the ultimate source of that profit.

• In 2017 (the most recent year for which figures are available), the NCAA recorded $1.07 billion in revenue. The organization’s president earned $2.7 million in 2018, and nine other NCAA executives had salaries greater than $500,000 that year.
• Elite college coaches earn millions of dollars a year in salary, topped by University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban’s $9.3 million annual salary.
• Many of the athletes at leading football and basketball programs are from low-income families, and the majority will not become professional athletes.
• College athletes take great physical risks to play their sports and put their future earning potential at risk. In school they may be directed toward nonchallenging courses, which denies them the education their fellow students receive.

Reasons why student athletes should not be paid

Opponents to paying college athletes rebut these arguments by pointing to the primary role of colleges and universities: to provide students with a rewarding educational experience that prepares them for their professional careers. These are among the reasons they give for not paying student athletes.

• Scholarships are the fairest form of compensation for student athletes considering the financial strain that college athletic departments are under. Most schools in Division I, II, and III spend more money on athletics than they receive in revenue from the sports.
• College athletes who receive scholarships are presented with an opportunity to earn a valuable education that will increase their earning power throughout their career outside of sports. A Gallup survey of NCAA athletes found that  70% graduate in four years or fewer , compared to 65% of all undergraduate students.
• Paying college athletes will “ diminish the spirit of amateurism ” that distinguishes college sports from their professional counterparts. Limiting compensation for playing a sport to the cost of attending school avoids creating a separate class of students who are profiting from their time in school.

According to Best Colleges, Salarship, and CollegeVine, reasons why paying college athletes is less than ideal include: 1. Money may harm students. 2. Pay diminishes love of the game. 3. Pay deemphasizes academic purpose. 4. Secondary sports struggle. 5. Rich schools monopolize talent. 6. The financial benefit is marginal. 7. Setting salaries can be messy. 8. Academic requirements are substandard. 9. Other program budgets are reduced.

How do college athlete endorsements work?

Soon after the Supreme Court released its decision in NCAA v. Alston, the NCAA issued  guidelines for schools  that allow college athletes to make money from product endorsements, social media accounts, autographs, and other uses of their name, image, or likeness. This counters the NCAA’s longstanding opposition to student athletes profiting from endorsements. At present, implementation of the guidelines varies from school to school and state to state, which means athletes at some institutions may benefit more from NIL agreements than those attending other schools.

Several  NIL consultancy firms  are actively soliciting endorsements from college athletes in the aftermath of the rule change.

• Highly touted 19-year-old basketball recruit Hercy Miller, who joined the Tennessee State University basketball team in 2021, signed a $2 million endorsement deal with Web Apps America.
• University of Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara has entered into an endorsement deal with cryptocurrency company More Management that will  pay him in cryptocurrency .
• Twin sisters Haley and Hanna Cavinder of the Fresno State University basketball team have  marketing agreements  to promote Boost Mobile and Six Star Pro Nutrition to the 3.3 million followers of their TikTok account.
• Gable Steveson, a wrestler for the University of Minnesota, entered into an endorsement deal with the delivery service Gopuff; Steveson has 245,000 followers on Instagram and 30,000 on Twitter.

Despite the rush of high-profile college athletes signing endorsement deals, some educators and analysts express concern about the  impact of the endorsements  on schools, athletes, and college sports.

• Schools with more favorable endorsement rules may entice student athletes away from the schools they are currently attending.
• Likewise, states that have enacted endorsement laws that provide more earning potential for college athletes may see more top recruits choosing to attend schools in those states.
• The time college athletes spend meeting the requirements of their endorsement contracts could detract from study and practice time. This can have an adverse effect on their education and athletic careers — if they are unable to maintain grade requirements, for example, they may be disqualified from playing.
• If a college athlete’s performance in the sport declines, they may be less likely to attract and retain endorsement deals. While the NCAA has banned NIL agreements based on the athlete meeting specific performance criteria, the group acknowledges that a student’s athletic performance  may enhance their NIL value .
• Because of complicated contracts and tax laws, student athletes will have to rely on agents, advisers, and managers, which may leave them vulnerable to exploitation.

From the onset of intercollegiate sports, students have benefited from their participation by learning dedication to their sport, building relationships, and being part of a team. Sports allow students to acquire many important values, such as fair competition and physical and mental health. Education should remain at the forefront of all aspects of college, including sports, whether or not collegiate athletes are paid.

Infographic Source

Best Colleges, “Should College Athletes Be Paid?”

College Strategic, “Why College Athletes Should Be Paid”

CollegeVine, “Should College Athletes Be Paid? Pros and Cons”

Fansided, “64 Reasons College Athletes Need to Be Paid”

Future of Working, “17 Advantages and Disadvantages of Paying College Athletes”

NCAA, “Scholarships”

Next College Student Athlete, “What Are the Different Types of Offers I Could Get?”

Salarship, “Should College Athletes Be Paid: Pros and Cons”

Bring us your ambition and we’ll guide you along a personalized path to a quality education that’s designed to change your life.

Take Your Next Brave Step

Receive information about the benefits of our programs, the courses you'll take, and what you need to apply.

Should College Athletes be Paid?

March 31, 2024

Okay, I won’t hide the ball: my answer to the question, “Should college athletes be paid?” is a resounding, “Yes.” But before I go through the reasons why (and some countervailing streams of thought as well), I think it’s important to place the question in the larger context of money in college sports. Why? Because there just so happens to be a ton of money in college sports. On Saturdays during football season, hundreds of thousands of fans across the nation flock to iconic stadiums —the Big House, Death Valley, the Swamp—and pay premium ticket prices to watch their favorite teams go at it.

Millions more tune in to the games from home, and the NCAA conferences take advantage of the sport’s popularity to the tune of billions of dollars. In 2022, the Big Ten, for example, inked a seven-year media rights agreement with Fox, CBS, and NBC worth upwards of $7 billion.

The coaches are very much in on the action, too. College football coaches, especially those who strategize from the sidelines of premiere football schools, boast yearly salaries that are truly jaw-dropping. In the last year before his retirement, Alabama’s Nick Saban made $11.41 million. The same year, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney pocketed $10.88 million, and Georgia’s Kirby Smart took home $10.71 million. Sure, those are some of the best football programs in the country. But still: more than a hundred Division I coaches earn over $1 million. The top 25 college football coaches earn an average of $5.2 million per year. The top 25 college basketba l l coaches earn an average of $3.2 million per year.

Should College Athletes be Paid (Continued)

Every year, the NCAA rakes in about a billion dollars from March Madness alone. In 2019, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy released a report titled “Madness, Inc.”, which took aim at what the report termed the “college sports industrial complex.” The report cites Department of Education data which showed that college sports programs brought in a whopping $14 billion in revenue in 2018 alone. In terms of revenue, college sports beat out every professional sports league in the world, except the NFL.

And here’s the kicker: college athletes—the product that millions of Americans pay to watch compete—aren’t compensated for their on-the-field performance. That’s because the NCAA’s long-enshrined policy of amateurism states that student-athletes are students first—thus “amateurs”—and are therefore not eligible for compensation. The good news? In 2021, the NCAA implemented an interim policy. This allows student-athletes to make money from their name, image, and likeness. The so-called NIL rule permits students to engage in money-making “NIL activities,” like selling autographs and memorabilia, making paid appearances, and going into business with brands. The new NIL policy is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t address the root of the problem. In 2022, only 17% of student-athletes at Division I schools participated in NIL activities. The median compensation (note: not the average, which can be distorted by particularly high-earners) was $65 per NIL activity.

America seems to have come to a consensus on the question of should college athletes be paid. According to a recent poll , 67% of Americans believe that college athletes should be compensated for their performance. Not just for their name, image, and likeness.

Should college athletes be paid?

  Now let’s confront the question head on: should college athletes be paid? I’ve already gone on record with an unequivocal, “yes.” But to preserve a sense of fairness, I’ll go through some of the arguments on the opposite side of the issue, and in so doing hopefully provide a sound justification for my answer.

Should college athletes be paid? No, they’re already paid in the form of scholarships

Should college athletes be paid? No, some say, because college athletes already receive full scholarships, which is tantamount to payment. Unfortunately, this argument doesn’t pass the sniff test. Every year, Division I and II colleges dole out about $2.9 billion in scholarships to some 150,000 student-athletes. That sounds great until you realize that the average yearly scholarship is just about $18,000; that’s far from sufficient to cover tuition at most private schools or out-of-state tuition at state schools. Overall, only 1% of student-athletes receive a “full ride” scholarship. Under a little scrutiny, then, the argument that college athletes receive compensation in the form of scholarships falls apart.

So college athletes aren’t paid via scholarships. Sure, that’s a fact, but not an argument as to why college athletes should be paid. Well, here’s the argument: given the money and exposure that athletes generate for their schools, any just system would require they be compensated for the value they add. A phenomenon known as the Flutie Effect describes how a college football team’s success leads to an increase in applications. When college football teams go from “mediocre to great,” applications increase by as much as 18%. And better performance on the gridiron results in more donations to the school. Donations go up significantly when football squads post better records.

To put it concisely: athletes bring significant value to their schools in the form of exposure and monetary donations, and scholarships do not amount to an adequate form of compensation. Therefore, college athletes deserve to be paid.

But it would be too complicated to figure out salaries!

The “it’s just too difficult!” argument is a common retort to the question of should college athletes be paid. It’s also a fixture in American political discourse. Should the U.S., say, move towards single-payer healthcare? Of course not—it’d be too difficult to implement!

Here, the “it’s-too-difficult” argument suggests that determining which college athletes would get compensated, and how much they’d get compensated, would be a complicated and messy undertaking. Therefore, it’d be better simply not to pay college athletes.

But appealing to the apparent intractability of a problem is no reason not to address it. The fact that it might be difficult to correct an iniquity is no justification for not trying to correct it at all.

Professional sports leagues are far from shining models of equity and fairness. UFC fighters—who aren’t unionized, by the way— are only paid about 20% of overall revenue , whereas unionized leagues like the NBA, MLB, and NFL share roughly 50% of their revenue with players. There are issues of gender equity across leagues, too. The average WNBA base salary is $120,600 ; the average NBA base salary is $5.4 million. However, there are plenty of professional sports leagues that have managed to figure out how to fairly compensate their athletes, from superstars to bench players. When one considers this fact, the “it’s too complicated” argument falls apart, too.

Where would the money come from?

Another oft-heard argument that answers, “no,” to the question of should college athletes be paid goes like this: because so few college athletics programs are cash-flow positive, schools would have to make cuts to minor sports programs to come up with the money to pay athletes who compete in premiere sports, like football and basketball. This line of reasoning assumes that paying marquee college athletes would preclude the possibility of paying athletes who compete in more minor or niche sports. But that assumption is not warranted.

As I noted previously, professional sports leagues—from the NFL to independent league baseball to professional jai alai —have figured out how to compensate players with different levels of skill and star power. There’s no reason to think the NCAA couldn’t do it as well.

The way resources are allocated reflects an institution’s values. At least one highly-paid college football coach has gone on record as saying he’d happily take less money if it meant his players would be paid .

Paying athletes would take away from the love of the game

In doing research for this article, I confronted this argument or one of its variations quite a lot. It goes like this: college athletics should compete not for financial gain but for a nebulous “love of the game.” Paying college athletes would tarnish the otherwise pure and idealistic realm of college sports.

But we’ve already established that college sports are a big business. The NCAA, conferences, schools, and coaches all benefit from that business. Why should the athletes be the only ones who have to work with no pay, just to fulfill some romanticized and unrealistic idea of college sports?

Plus, participating in college sports amounts to a full-time job. Although NCAA policy states that athletes may only dedicate 20 hours per week to sports-related activity, studies have shown that Division I athletes spend an average of 35 hours per week on sports activities. A lawsuit filed by two UNC football players alleged that the NCAA skirted around its own policies and deprived players of a meaningful education.

Those who answer “no” to the question of should college athletes be paid are therefore confronted with a dilemma. If student-athletes should only be competing for the “love of the game,” why does their participation in college sports look a lot like a full-time job? And if their participation in college sports looks like a full-time job, why are they not compensated accordingly?

Should college athletes be paid? – a few more thoughts

Participation in college sports takes up a large chunk of a student-athlete’s time, study time included. Right now, student-athletes are getting the worst of both worlds. They’re not compensated for their positions as athletes (nor are the vast majority of them getting those coveted “free ride” educations), and their participation in sports precludes them from fully dedicating themselves to their studies. Student-athletes make a major sacrifice to participate in sports. Further, this sacrifice that brings immense value to their schools and the NCAA. Student athletes ought to be compensated for that sacrifice.

Speaking of sacrifices, college athletes are at constant risk of injury. A serious on-the-field injury could result in an athlete losing his or her scholarship and the opportunity to play professionally. But let’s put aside the potential financial ramifications of an injury. A 2017 study examined the deceased bodies of former American football players. The findings were shocking: 91% of college football players had the degenerative brain disease CTE. If schools want their athletes to risk their mental and physical well-being, they should pay them according to that risk.

Let’s end with some straight up common sense—athletes need money just like everyone else. Participating in a college sport and keeping up with academic demands makes it virtually impossible for a student-athlete to earn extra money working a part-time job. Paying student-athletes would act as a corrective to this untenable situation.

Should College Athletes be Paid – Additional Resources 

We hope you have found our article on whether college athletes should be paid to be insightful. We also want to recommend checking out the following resources:

• D1 vs. D2 vs D3 College Athletics – What is the Difference?
• Best and Loudest College Football Stadiums
• Who Has the Most College Football Championships
• All-Time Women’s College Basketball Scoring
• D1 Colleges in Texas

Dane Gebauer

Dane Gebauer is a writer and teacher living in Miami, FL. He received his MFA in fiction from Columbia University, and his writing has appeared in Complex Magazine and Sinking City Review .

• 2-Year Colleges
• Application Strategies
• Best Colleges by Major
• Big Picture
• Career & Personality Assessment
• College Essay
• College Search/Knowledge
• College Success
• Costs & Financial Aid
• Dental School Admissions
• Extracurricular Activities
• Graduate School Admissions
• High School Success
• High Schools
• Law School Admissions
• Medical School Admissions
• Navigating the Admissions Process
• Online Learning
• Private High School Spotlight
• Summer Program Spotlight
• Summer Programs
• Test Prep Provider Spotlight

“Innovative and invaluable…use this book as your college lifeline.”

— Lynn O'Shaughnessy

Nationally Recognized College Expert

College Planning in Your Inbox

Join our information-packed monthly newsletter.

Sign Up Now

• Sign in to save searches and organize your favorite content.
• Not registered? Sign up

Recently viewed (0)

• Save Search
• Previous Article
• Next Article

Should College Athletes Be Allowed to Be Paid? A Public Opinion Analysis

Click name to view affiliation

• Get Citation Alerts
• Download PDF

Traditionally, public opinions have largely opposed further compensation for U.S. college athletes, beyond the costs of going to school. This study uses new data from the National Sports and Society Survey ( N  = 3,993) to assess recent public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid more than it costs them to go to school. The authors found that a majority of U.S. adults now support, rather than oppose, allowing college athletes to be paid. Also, the authors found that White adults are especially unlikely, and Black adults are especially likely, to support allowing payment. Furthermore, recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination is positively, and indicators of traditionalism are negatively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

The compensation of U.S. college athletes, beyond educationally tethered compensation such as scholarships, has been the subject of significant concern and empirical inquiry for decades ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998 ). Many college sports programs generate massive amounts of revenue, specifically in the highest competitive division (i.e., Division I) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The sports of football and men’s basketball hold special distinction and generate billions of dollars of annual revenue—much more than other college sports combined ( Branch, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ).

Notably, these two sports are disproportionately played by Black males. Although Black males make up <5% of the undergraduate population in U.S. colleges and universities, they comprise 56% of the participants in NCAA Division I men’s basketball and 55% of the participants in football. Conversely, athletic administrators and coaches are overwhelmingly White ( Harper & Simmons, 2019 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). For example, 80% of men’s basketball coaches and 86% of head football coaches are White, very much out of proportion to the percentage of racial/ethnic minority athletes that they coach. Furthermore, White males are disproportionately NCAA administrators, and over 90% of conference commissioners are White ( Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Consequently, the leadership and policymakers in charge of college sports are overwhelmingly White, while the athletic revenue generators are disproportionately Black.

Also, the commercially popular college sport industry is replete with highly paid coaches, well-compensated administrators, multimillion-dollar facilities, and significant perquisites for college athletes beyond academic scholarships—but no payment in excess of the full cost of attendance has been allowed for the athletes ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Ridpath, Rudd & Stokowski, 2019 ). Still, revenues in intercollegiate athletics have dramatically increased in the past 20 years. There is now a 14-year $10.8 billion television contract with Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and Turner Sports for the rights to televise the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Also, a $7.3 billion television contract exists for the College Football Playoff and six associated football Bowl games ( Berkowitz, Upton & Brady, 2013 ; Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ). Nevertheless, revenue increases have not resulted in much of an increase in compensation to the group that generates the money, the players ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ).

Even with increased revenue streams and the ability to provide more compensation to athletes, the long-held concept of amateurism and the new public-relations-driven moniker of the “collegiate model” are presented by defenders as nondebatable ideals for the industry of intercollegiate athletics. It is argued that college athletes should not be paid a salary or direct remuneration for performance; otherwise, the popularity of the industry will suffer economic damage ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Tatos, 2017 ). Consequently, college athletes are denied access to billions of the dollars that they generate, and adults in leadership positions defend the status quo, while disproportionately claiming the rewards. Yet, resistance to this arrangement has been clearly building ( Branch, 2011 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

The purpose of this study is to analyze public opinions about college athletes being allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Information from public opinion research is commonly used to help inform interested parties about the public’s concern over key issues that can directly or indirectly affect them. It can also provide insight into the factors that predict public opinions, if variance in public opinion is analyzed comprehensively with appropriate theory and research methods ( Price & Neijens, 1997 ; Winter, 2008 ). Specifically, we used information from a large, new, national sample of U.S. adults ( N  = 3,993) to gauge public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Then, using regression analyses, we tested hypotheses about the significance of race/ethnicity, sports involvement, and traditionalism in shaping public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. We built upon and extended previous research by (a) analyzing new public opinions about college athletes’ basic economic rights; (b) contextualizing our research more fully within understandings of power, control, and exploitation processes—especially as informed by critical race theory (CRT); and (c) leveraging these unique data to more comprehensively analyze predictors of public opinion attitudes about compensation. Our main predictors include measures of sports fandom, racial/ethnic identities, recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination, conservatism, and two sets of demographic characteristics associated with race/ethnicity and traditionalism: age and urbanicity. Previous work on public opinions about college athlete compensation has focused on descriptive reports of opinions about paying college athletes, the implications of different anti-Black framings of the issue, and Black–White differences in public opinions about paying college athletes ( Druckman, Howat, & Rodheim, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten, Nteta, McCarthy, & Tarsi, 2017 ).

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework for this study draws upon CRT to help situate the history of amateurism in college sports, the increased commercialization of it, and an apparently emerging willingness to approve of higher levels of compensation for athletes to anticipate public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Critical analyses of race in society are central to the advent of sociology (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois) and the sociology of sport (e.g., Harry Edwards), but the emergence of CRT in the 1970s from the work of legal scholars such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Alan Freeman has become particularly influential in not only attempting to address racial/ethnic inequalities through the judicial system, but also in helping to better understand, and theorize about, race in society. Now integrated within the theory and practice of many different academic disciplines and applied to the study of countless fields of inquiry, CRT has become a prominent and instructive approach to understanding the history and the continuity of embedded racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination—including within sports, education, and other parts of society ( Cooper, 2012; 2019 ; Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). Central to CRT is its recognition of the origin and maintenance of White property rights, control, and hegemony in society; these conditions are evident in the history and current application of amateurism in college sports as well ( Cooper, 2012; 2019 ; Comeaux, 2010 ; Rankin-Wright, Hylton, & Norman, 2016 ; Shaw, Moiseichik, Blunt-Vinti, & Stokowski, 2019 ). CRT encourages us to understand that the logics, structures, practices, and opinions of compensation for college athletes are eminently, and even originally, racialized and social justice issues ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Wallsten, et al., 2017 ).

Theorizing that has stemmed from CRT has included common principles that help to direct a rigorous awareness and redress of racial/ethnic inequalities; still, different authors and studies often adapt these principles in nuanced ways. Our study is informed by the following CRT tenets: (a) race is socially constructed ( Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); (b) racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination are endemic to society ( Bell, 1992 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); (c) Whiteness as property norm ( Cooper, 2019 ; Harris, 1993 ); (d) counter narratives, counter storytelling, and experiential knowledge, especially from voices of color, are neglected ( Delgado & Stafancic, 2001 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ); (e) interest convergences enable changes in racial/ethnic inequalities ( Bell, 1980, 1992 ; Shaw et al., 2019 ); and (f) challenges to dominant ideologies are necessary for social justice ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ).

In turn, these tenets note that race has been socially constructed in ways that are connected to and based upon false premises of racial/ethnic inequalities, such that notions of White supremacy and justifications of racial/ethnic inequalities are perpetuated. Thus, corresponding racial/ethnic prejudices and discrimination are endemic to individuals’ thoughts and experiences, as well as societal structures, cultures, and policies ( Bell, 1992 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Comeaux, 2010 ). The Whiteness as property tenet recognizes that Whiteness carries with it identities, status, and a set of rights (e.g., rights of disposition, use and enjoyment, reputation and status, exclusion of others) that were originally connected to owning property, the ability of which has been facilitated by racially unjust means, but came to embody the characteristics of White privilege (i.e., Whiteness). Consequently, the statuses, privileges, and rights of Whiteness are normalized ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Harris, 1993 ). The voices-of-color tenet references the neglect, discounting, and need of counter narratives and perspectives based on experiential knowledge from people of color; oftentimes, CRT methodologies utilize storytelling and narrative approaches—although we did not employ these in the present study ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). The interest convergences tenet observes that there has been little motivation or action among White individuals to reduce racial/ethnic inequalities in society; gains that have occurred have largely been facilitated by a convergence of antiracist interests with the self-interests of Whites ( Bell, 1980, 1992 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ). Finally, CRT advocates for social justice outcomes, and this process is connected to the need to dismantle dominant ideologies that perpetuate racial/ethnic inequalities ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001 ).

In analyzing variance in public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid, besides being informed by these CRT tenets, we also recognize the usefulness of considering aracial (i.e., purported disregard of race/ethnicity) racism and an understanding of traditionalism as a propensity to be resistant to change ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Hochschild, 2016 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ; Winter, 2008 ). Overall, due to racialized origins and practices of college sports that idealized amateurism but became particularly exploitative of commercialized college athletes, we expected that racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic prejudices and discrimination were likely to shape public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid—despite the common understanding of one’s own opinions, particularly in sports, as being based on an aracial approach to thinking about lofty ideals that involve assumptions about morality, responsibility, hard work, and integrity ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Furthermore, indicators of traditionalism—such as those that can be tapped by age, urbanicity, and self-identified conservatism—are likely to lead to greater levels of resistance to changing rules about compensation to college athletes ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

• CRT, College Sports, and Amateurism

The application of CRT tenets to better understand the issue of college athlete compensation leads to a number of observations. First, the social construction and endemic nature of race tenets direct us to observe that the creation and implementation of U.S. college sports has been done in a country with a sordid history of socially constructing race to justify and reify racial/ethnic inequalities and perpetuating, as well as institutionalizing, racial/ethnic inequalities; college sports, and public opinions about it, have been similarly shaped and influenced by constructions of race and perpetual and corresponding racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination processes within structures, cultures, and policies—anti-Black racial/ethnic prejudice and discrimination have been especially prominent ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ). Second, it is instructive to recognize that college sports, and the ideals and priorities of amateurism, were originally created by White individuals for White participants. Non-White voices were not seriously considered, and non-White experiences were not a priority; this dynamic has largely continued such that voices of color are not well represented and valued ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ). Third, White control, and emerging profiteering, over college sports has ties to the origin of property rights, and Whiteness as property has been naturalized and viewed as normative. This is not unique to college sports ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Fourth, interest convergences have occasionally led to increased opportunities for non-Whites, and especially Blacks, in college sports. Interest convergences have also led to shifting and flexible definitions of amateurism in attempts to regulate and control college sports and pursue commercial interests ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). These modifications in college sports appear to mostly follow American practices of White Racism Capitalism rather than exemplify magnanimity and concern for (non-White) athletes. That is, increased opportunities for non-Whites in college sports and adjustments in the definition and application of amateurism have amplified the exploitation of non-White, and primarily Black, labor in efforts to pursue commercial interests and profits—which have been largely maintained by Whites ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ). Finally, challenges to the dominant ideologies and practices of college sports are necessary for social justice ( Cooper, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Southall, Eckard, Nagel, & Randall, 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). Below, we have integrated these observations into a brief history of amateurism in college sports before focusing on public opinions about compensation for college athletes.

American intercollegiate athletics are structured as an amateur sport enterprise. Amateurism was developed as part of a White, Eurocentric, middle/upper class vision of sport for developmental and enjoyment purposes—for White males. By strict definition, an amateur athlete should not receive any remuneration for athletic performance; thus, amateurism ideals have also functioned as barriers for widespread sport participation for those with lesser means. Non-White individuals were not prominent in creating intercollegiate athletics, participating in them during much of their history, or creating or romanticizing amateurism. Although interest convergences have enabled many non-Whites to participate in collegiate athletics, and commercialized college sports are now largely associated with Black athletes and some Black adults in leadership positions, the ideologies and practices of amateurism have continued to disproportionately reflect the ideologies and experiences of White adults ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ). Furthermore, the increasing commercialization of college sports has exemplified what Cooper ( 2019 ) described as the American tradition of White Racism Capitalism. Centrally, White Racism Capitalism is the historical and continual exploitation of non-White and, especially, Black labor. In the process, non-Whites are frequently problematized, scapegoated, blamed for any relative lack of achievement, and dismissed as being unworthy of concern ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ; Singer, 2019 ). Consequently, the issues that surround compensation for collegiate athletes are racialized in many ways. Thus, we expect that racial/ethnic identities, views about racial/ethnic discrimination, and even traditionalism reflect this racialization of the notions and practices of amateurism—and U.S. adults’ public opinions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid.

Relatedly, remarkable changes have occurred in who participates in college sports and how amateurism has been defined. Interest convergences led NCAA schools to increasingly integrate Black athletes into their athletic programs and modify their practices of amateurism during the middle of the 20th century. The NCAA moved away from a strict definition of amateurism in 1956 by offering a scholarship to pay for college expenses based on athletic ability. Thus, challenges to racial/ethnic inequalities and increased demands for athletic talent enabled more opportunities for Black men, especially, to attend predominantly White institutions, as athletes. Increasingly, also, Black and other non-White individuals were afforded athletic scholarships. Consequently, interest convergences have allowed for more racial/ethnic diversity among college athletes. Yet, disproportionate White control of predominantly White institutions and athletic programs has persisted ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Also, the presumptive overriding concerns for a student’s personal development and educational enrichment while participating in college sports appear to have been taken over by concerns about winning, financial gains, and maintaining control over an increasingly lucrative and valuable college sports system ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2019 ; Singer, 2019 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

Indeed, the NCAA has leaned into its definition and mythologizing of amateurism over the past 75 years, especially ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). According to the NCAA Division I Manual, intercollegiate athletes “shall be amateurs in intercollegiate sport and their participation should be motivated primarily by education and the physical, mental and social benefits to be derived. Student participation in intercollegiate athletics is an avocation, and college athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises” ( National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2019 , p. 4). Still, rule violations that have often included payments to players have remained common throughout the entire history of college sports. Also, the definition of amateurism has been fluid and flexibly applied ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ).

At least through 2015, any payment amount above the standard full-ride scholarship (tuition, room, board, course-related books, and course-related fees) could cause an athlete to lose their amateur status and result in further individual or team sanctions or penalties. This applied to any extra benefit from boosters; companies seeking endorsements; or licensors of an athlete’s name, image, and likeness (NIL; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2019 ). This even extended beyond payments to actions, such as signing a professional contract, entering a professional draft, or hiring an agent. All of these occurrences have been considered violations of amateurism and a form of payment that renders an athlete a professional and terminates eligibility for intercollegiate athletics ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Ridpath, Kiger, Mak, Eagle, & Letter, 2007 ; Ridpath et al., 2019 ; Rudd & Ridpath, 2019 ).

However, in an attempt to provide greater flexibility in interpretation, the NCAA now consistently uses the term “collegiate model ” instead of amateurism to describe the relationship between the organization of intercollegiate athletics and the participating athletes ( Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). The Collegiate Model of Athletics is essentially “a term of art” that was created by former NCAA President Myles Brand ( Branch, 2011 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). It is used to refer to enrolled students who are not directly compensated by salary for competition, but can receive whatever the NCAA allows. After significant pressure and landmark rulings in the courts, and continued record-breaking salaries and revenues from the commercialization of college sports, the NCAA passed legislation to allow a cost-of-attendance stipend starting in 2015, which allows for compensation commensurate with the average estimate of a student’s educational expenses for the period of one full academic year ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ).

More recently, California passed SB 206, the Fair Play to Play Act, into law in 2019. This will allow college athletes in the state to hire agents and earn endorsement money relating to their own NIL. Since SB 206, over 30 states have passed similar legislation regarding NIL rights, with the state of Florida notably passing legislation that speeds up the timeline for NIL opportunities to emerge in 2021. The NCAA continues to strategize about how to respond, but has indicated they will likely capitulate to the pressures to uphold key aspects of the California law and similar efforts by other states’ legislatures ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Although the NCAA and its members have continually resisted allowing college athletes to hire agents and earn endorsement money, they seem to be now signaling that interest convergences may once again shape changes in amateurism and their willingness to partially address racial/ethnic inequalities. That is, pressures to maintain control and financial rewards in an exploitative system may urge them to change the definition of amateurism yet again and allow for some basic economic rights for college athletes. Consequently, the disproportionate numbers of Black athletes in commercialized college sports appear likely to become the most common beneficiaries of new compensation from the use of their name, images, and likenesses—which is widely seen as some measure of social justice, by many ( Branch, 2011 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ). Still, an actual pay-for-play salary has not been permissible, and it is still considered to be contrary to the promotion of the collegiate model ( Rudd & Ridpath, 2019 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

• Public Opinions About Allowing Athlete Compensation

Public opinion is expected to be mixed but increasingly supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid. There is increased recognition of the disparities in compensation between the adults in charge of organizing college sports and the players who are working hard and risking their health, in many cases, to compete in sports—in a hypercommercialized setting for men’s basketball and football, at least. Furthermore, basic human economic rights, to many, suggest that one should own, and be able to profit from, one’s own name recognition, images, and likenesses. Relatedly, court decisions and collective actions by athletes, activists, scholars, legislators, and attorneys are increasingly promoting and affecting changes in public opinions and policies ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Still, the celebration and mythologizing of amateurism, concerns about disrupting the status quo of college sports, and opposition to modifying amateurism by institutionalized stakeholders continue to hold great sway ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Historically, in response to questions about paying college athletes and supporting college-athlete unionization movements, overall public opinion sentiment has been opposed to paying college athletes and treating them as workers ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). However, public opinion appears to be shifting such that there is now initial evidence that it is supportive of college athletes being allowed to at least profit from the use of their NIL—still, a seemingly marked change over previous public opinion polls that consistently registered opposition to forms of compensation, beyond a college scholarship ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). In fact, in an October 2019 poll of 714 U.S. adults, 60% responded that they believe that college athletes should be able to benefit from their NIL ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). In previous research, there is some evidence that sports fans are less supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid, but we suspect that this is also changing, as fans have become more comfortable with the Olympic model (i.e., sponsorship and endorsement opportunities), knowledgeable about athletic revenues, and mindful of addressing social justice concerns ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

• Race/Ethnicity and Public Opinions About Payment to College Athletes

We now turn to consider the explicit salience of racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination. A CRT focus, as well as previous research and theorizing about amateurism, suggests that there are inextricable influences of racial/ethnic identities, prejudices, and knowledge of discrimination in shaping public opinions—including opinions about paying college athletes ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Especially given that disproportionate percentages of athletes in the two main revenue-generating sports of football and men’s basketball are Black and disproportionate percentages of leaders in college sports organizations are White, one might expect that racial/ethnic identities and prejudices are likely to influence perceptions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid ( Branch, 2011 ; Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). For example, racial/ethnic in-group solidarities may shape perceptions. Blacks, Whites, Latinx individuals, and members of other racial/ethnic groups may simply want members of their own racial/ethnic group to succeed and to obtain a larger proportion of the revenue from college sports. In-group boundaries may also surround Whites and non-Whites, given the historical power imbalances in society and sports ( Hylton, 2010 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Racial/ethnic identities may also be indicative of lived experiences that normalize, or attune one toward, the racialized power dynamics in sports and society ( Kendi, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ). Indeed, the origin and history of college sports and the prioritization of amateurism are rooted in White experiences and hegemonic ideals. Also, due to the overrepresentation of White males in positions of power in sports and society, Whites may be less mindful or concerned about the racialized power imbalances in sports, compared with non-Whites—even when athletes in particular sports (e.g., basketball, football, pro baseball) are disproportionately non-White ( Lapchick, 2019 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Furthermore, there is reason to believe that racial/ethnic prejudices, especially anti-Black sentiments, and beliefs about the existence and influence of racial/ethnic discrimination may shape public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Racial/ethnic prejudices, resentments, and discriminatory processes persist in society. Also, racial resentments, beliefs about the presence and influence of discrimination, and other forms of racial/ethnic prejudice often sway public policy attitudes ( Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ; Winter, 2008 ). Anti-Black sentiment, actions, and structures continue to be especially common and influential ( Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Yet, many adults believe that racial/ethnic discrimination of non-Whites is not very prevalent or impactful ( Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Public Religious Research Institute [PRRI], 2017 ).

As commercialized college athletes are commonly recognized as being disproportionately Black and likely beneficiaries of any additional compensation that may be given to college athletes, prejudices about the character, intellectual, and athletic capacities of Black college athletes, in particular, may influence perceptions on whether college athletes should be compensated with payment beyond the cost of going to school ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). There continue to be widespread beliefs that racial/ethnic minority, especially Black, athletes would not be in such a premier position in college sports with access to a university education, but for their athletic ability. Thus, they should be thankful for what they already receive for playing a game and should not expect or agitate for more ( Branch, 2011 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Edwards, 1969 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

In addition, recognizing institutionalized patterns of racial/ethnic inequalities in society may urge one to perceive the NCAA system of commercialized college sports as exploitative of Black males, especially—and advocate for changes in the status quo ( Branch, 2011 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). Indeed, sociological perspectives and CRT tenets encourage the recognition of these patterns and pushes for social justice ( Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Edwards, 1969 ). In contrast, blaming non-Whites for not having the same levels of status attainment in society as Whites is thought to reflect symbolic racism, notions of White superiority, and a lack of a sociological imagination; thus, expressing such beliefs may reveal that one is less cognizant of racial/ethnic inequalities and maybe less motivated to advocate for eliminating them ( Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Empirical evidence suggests that racial/ethnic identities influence public opinions about payment to college athletes. Mondello et al. ( 2013 ) analyzed 2009 national survey data from 400 households, sampled through random digit dialing, and found that Black respondents were more than three times as likely to support financial compensation for college athletes as Whites. In addition, even with age, education, gender, and employment status included as predictors, only race was found to be a statistically significant factor in shaping public opinion about paying college athletes. Similarly, Druckman et al. ( 2016 ) used national data from survey volunteers ( N  = 1,500) to assess both public opinion support for paying college athletes and allowing college athlete unionization. They also found that Blacks were especially likely to support more resources and rights for college athletes. Finally, Wallsten et al. ( 2017 ) focused on 674 White respondents to a 2014 online survey conducted by YouGov. Consistent with previous research, they found that nearly 60% of White respondents opposed paying college athletes a salary, beyond any scholarship money that they may receive. In sum, previous research suggests that Whites are especially opposed to paying college athletes and giving them more rights, while Blacks are generally supportive of paying college athletes.

Also, there is evidence that beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, and particularly anti-Black resentments, shape attitudes about college athlete compensation. Druckman et al. ( 2016 ) found that support for affirmative action policies, designed to account for Black–White differences in educational and job opportunities, was positively associated with support for paying college athletes and allowing them to unionize. Also, racial/ethnic prejudices that reflected anti-Black racial resentments were negatively associated with support for paying college athletes and allowing them to unionize. Similarly, Wallsten et al. ( 2017 ) found that higher levels of racial resentment were positively associated with opposing salaries for college athletes. Furthermore, in innovative experimental procedures, they found that the presentations of pictures and names of Black athletes hardened responses in opposition to supporting greater compensation for college athletes among racially resentful Whites.

Still, many individuals who do not express racial/ethnic resentments or prejudices, and are mindful of racial/ethnic discrimination patterns, appear to support college sports as a way to improve diversity and social mobility for racial/ethnic minorities—ostensibly under the belief that many could not attend college otherwise—but that support does not extend to advocating for more compensation for college athletic participation ( Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). A college education is extremely valuable, but CRT theorists and many other scholars note that even the primary college athletic scholarship benefit of greater access to a quality higher education is not being adequately delivered for Black athletes, especially, particularly in football and basketball ( Benson, 2000 ; Beamon, 2008 ; Hawkins, 2010 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ).

Alongside CRT, the concept of aracial racism is often used to inform understandings of racialized issues ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ). Aracial racism refers to the use of purportedly noble principles, and “aracial” structures and criteria for decision making, that nonetheless often have unequal racial/ethnic effects ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ). White individuals, especially, are prone to deny the influence of race/ethnicity on their behaviors, beliefs, and advocacies—and become appalled and often resentful when they believe that they are being accused of being racist ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ). Yet, the origins of amateurism, the dismissal of the voice and interests of commercialized sport athletes—who are disproportionately Black—notions about racial/ethnic abilities and who is deserving of rewards, and the perpetuation of the control and disproportionate profiteering from college sports by Whites, make the issue of compensation for college athletes an eminently and inescapably racialized issue ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Hruby, 2016 ). Still, opinions about the ideals of “amateurism,” “student-athletes,” and even the capabilities of White and Black athletes are often viewed as aracial understandings and are connected to major issues in college sports ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Indeed, sports-related interactions and understandings are rife with aracial racism ( Leonard, 2017 ; Love & Hughey, 2015 ; Rankin-Wright et al., 2016 ).

• Traditionalism and Payment to College Athletes

Thus, we also drew upon understandings of traditionalism in anticipating public opinions about whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid. In this sense, traditionalism is tied up with a resistance to change and nostalgia for the past. Traditionalism is also frequently reactive to perceived threats to established ways of doing things ( Johnson & Tamney, 2001 ; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ; Winter, 2008 ). Indeed, changes to amateurism can be seen as destroying the student-athlete ideal and threatening the uniqueness of college sports. Furthermore, traditionalism is also associated with discomfort with changes that are designed to address racial/ethnic inequalities, as well ( Jost et al., 2003 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). For example, among conservatives, affirmative action is often viewed as “reverse racism” and eliminating racially insensitive terms and images is derided as “political correctness.” Consequently, traditionalism is commonly indicative of at least aracial racism, too ( Hochschild, 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Traditionalism, often supported by older, White, more rural, and more conservative individuals, has led to an array of defenses of the NCAA’s definition of amateurism and resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid ( Branch, 2011 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Foremost among these is a concern that allowing college athletes to be paid could irrevocably damage the sanctity of traditional principles that are connected to intercollegiate athletics, such as amateurism and students only playing sports for the love of the game and their institutions ( Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Tatos, 2017 ). There is also a fear that allowing college athletes to be paid would result in the uniqueness of college sports being destroyed, with the marketing and allure of them then becoming diminished ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Thus, backed by previous research findings about, particularly, age differences and political identities in supporting payment for college athletes, we anticipated that traditionalism would be associated with a resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

In fact, one of the main public relations strategies of the NCAA is to portray intercollegiate athletics as an extracurricular activity played by students and then to argue that its product would not be as popular with the public, and procompetitive with other options for consumers, if its athletes were paid a salary for performance. Then, the NCAA cites and uses public opinion as a reason to maintain a tradition of not allowing college athletes to be paid ( Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ; Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ). Yet, the NCAA defined and continues to employ the “student-athlete” moniker in order to minimize the appearance of college sports operating as a business, with employers (i.e., adults in charge) and employees (i.e., college athletes). This public relations strategy has helped to uphold the myth of amateurism and the support for its ideals, especially among traditionalists ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ).

• Other Factors

Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, family structures, and regional contexts may confound our understandings of the associations between race/ethnicity, traditionalism, and public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Gender may matter in that men may be more supportive of male athletes benefitting from the revenue that is produced through their labor; similarly, women may be especially concerned about the Title IX and gender equity implications of allowing college athletes to be paid ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Sanderson & Siegfried, 2015 ; Staurowsky, 2018 ). Socioeconomic status may also shape one’s resistance to changing the status quo, with more privileged individuals likely being less amenable to change ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Van Rheenen, 2012 ). Family structures may influence perceptions as well, as intimate partners and kin may shape one’s opinions. Finally, geographic region may correlate with public opinions, especially since the landmark passage of the California law that allows for endorsement opportunities, with persons from the West potentially being more supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid, compared with others ( Gore-Mann & Grace, 2020 ; Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ).

Overall, the conceptual framework for this study and previous research leads to four main hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: There will be substantial, but mixed, support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Yet, adults’ sports involvement will be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 2: Racial/ethnic identities will be predictive of support for allowing college athletes to be paid. White identities will be negatively, and Black identities will be positively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 3: Recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination will be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

Hypothesis 4: Traditionalism will be negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. That is, older, less urban, and more conservative individuals will be less supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid.

We used data from the National Sports and Society Survey (NSASS), a landmark new survey that offers a wealth of information about sports and society issues from a large sample of U.S. adults ( N  = 3,993). The NSASS was explicitly created to enable comprehensive and wide-ranging social science research projects on sports and society issues. Thus, it is well suited for our focus on public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. The sample for the NSASS was drawn from participants in the American Population Panel, a panel of over 20,000 volunteers who have signed up to be invited to participate in social science research surveys. The American Population Panel was created by the Center for Human Resource Research, a longstanding and respected survey research organization, which also collaborated in the design and data collection of the NSASS.

The NSASS was designed as a quota sample of N  = 4,000 to maximize its sample size within a fixed budget that demanded timely and economically efficient data collection. Between the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019, American Population Panel members who reported years of birth that were 21–65 years ago were sent invitations to take the NSASS. The survey was offered online, and respondents were given $35 for their participation. The respondents represented all 50 states and Washington, DC, but were disproportionately female, White, and Midwestern  ( Knoester & Cooksey, 2020 ). Still, the large sample of the NSASS offers unique information across many different subgroups. Furthermore, the data were being weighted to offer more representative descriptive statistics about U.S. adults.

In the present study, we initially utilized a sample that consists of the 3,868 NSASS respondents who answered ( N  = 125 of the total 3,993 NSASS respondents refused to answer) a survey question about allowing college athletes to be paid, in order to report estimates of U.S. adult public opinions about the issue of college athlete compensation. That is, we first considered the responses from the participants who indicated some level of (dis)agreement about allowing college athletes to be paid—or that they “Don’t Know.” Then, for our regression analyses, we employed a primary sample ( N  = 3,519) that further removed the 349 respondents who replied with “Don’t Know.” The decision to eliminate “Don’t Know” responses from our main analysis follows previous research ( Mondello et al., 2013 ). Missing data for our predictor variables were addressed with the use of multiple imputations with chained equations, a preferred approach for dealing with missing data. Nonetheless, our results are robust to the use of listwise deletion of missing data, as well. Sensitivity analyses that considered Don’t Know responses as a middle response category and others that coded support for allowing college athletes to be paid as a binary variable produced results that are consistent with what is reported in the present study.

• Dependent and Independent Variables

The dependent variable for this study indicates support for allowing college athletes to be paid. It is an ordinal variable that represents responses (1 =  strongly disagree , 2 =  somewhat disagree , 3 =  somewhat agree , and 4 =  strongly agree ) to the statement “College athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school.”

The primary independent variables include measures of adults’ racial/ethnic identities, beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, traditionalism, and sports involvement. Racial/ethnic identities were coded with mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicate whether one self-identified as only White (used as the reference category), (any) Black, (non-Black) Latinx, or another racial/ethnic identity. Recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination is a variable that was formed from responses (1 =  strongly disagree , 2 =  somewhat disagree , 3 =  somewhat agree , and 4 =  strongly agree ) to the following statement: “On average, non-whites have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people. Do you think these differences are … mainly due to discrimination?”

Indicators of traditionalism include measures of adults’ age, urbanicity, and self-reported conservatism. Age was coded with dummy variables for being (a) ≤30 years old (used as the reference category), (b) 31–40, (c) 41–50, or (d) 51 or above. Similarly, urbanicity was coded with mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicate self-reports of living in a (a) large city, (b) suburb near a large city, (c) small city or town, or (d) rural area. Conservatism was created based on responses to the question “In terms of politics, do you consider yourself … ?” The response options range from 1 =  Very liberal to 5 =  Very conservative .

Adults’ sports involvement includes reports of sports fandom, sports participation, and whether one was ever an athlete on a college team. Sports fandom was formed from responses (0 =  Not at all ; 4 =  Very much so ) to the question: “Are you a sports fan?” Sports participation indicates whether the adults reported (1 =  yes ) playing a sport(s) regularly (i.e., more than occasionally), over the past year. Finally, college athlete status indicates whether the adults reported (1 =  yes ) playing on a college team in their responses to either of two questions. Specifically, the respondents were asked a series of questions about the sport that they played the most while growing up (i.e., through age 18). One question asked them to identify all of the levels (e.g., youth recreational, high school varsity, college team, etc.) at which they played this sport while growing up. Later, the respondents were asked to identify all of the levels at which they played this sport since the age of 19 years.

• Control Variables

Finally, background characteristics such as gender, socioeconomic status, family structure, and geographic region served as control variables for our analyses. Gender was based on reports of identifying as female (1 =  yes ). Educational attainment variables, which were drawn from reports of the respondents’ highest level of education, consisted of mutually exclusive dummy variables that indicated whether the respondents attained a (a) college (used as the reference category), (b) some college, or (c) high school or less education. Household income (in $10,000s, up to 15+) and working in paid labor (1 =  yes ) were reported by the respondents and were also used as socioeconomic status indicators. Family structure measures were created from reports of marital status (i.e., married, cohabiting, or single [used as the reference category]) and the number of one’s own minor children or one’s partner’s minor children who were living in the household. Finally, census regions were coded as proxies for geographical contexts (i.e., West [used as the reference category], Midwest, Northeast, and South).

To analyze public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid, we first examined the distribution of responses about allowing college athletes to be paid. Then, we proceeded to predicting public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid in a series of nested, ordinal logistic regression models.

Consistent with our first hypothesis, there is mixed but substantial support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Specifically, 25% of the NSASS respondents strongly disagreed, 19% somewhat disagreed, 25% somewhat agreed, and 23% strongly agreed with allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school; 9% of the NSASS respondents indicated that they didn’t know. Thus, overall, a plurality of the NSASS respondents endorses allowing college athletes to be paid. As shown in Table  1 , among the adults who provided a response that indicated support or opposition (i.e., after removing the “Don’t Know” responses for our main regression analyses), over half of the NSASS respondents reported agreement with allowing college athletes to be paid.

Descriptive Statistics for All Variables Used in the Regression Analyses

Note . N  = 3,519.

a The response options that are used for descriptive analyses of public opinions include the following: (a) strongly disagree, (b) somewhat disagree, (c) somewhat agree, (d) strongly agree, and (e) don’t know.

Next, to better estimate public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid among all U.S. adults, we used poststratification weighting based on the 2018 American Community Survey demographic characteristics. This procedure generates more accurate estimates of U.S. adults’ public opinions, because the American Community Survey is a preeminent compilation of yearly population estimates, based on millions of households that are surveyed by the U.S. Census Bureau, whereas, the NSASS respondents are disproportionately female, White, and Midwestern, for example. These weighted NSASS estimates are displayed in Figure  1 and indicate greater support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as compared with the unweighted estimates. As shown in Figure  1 , the weighted estimates of support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school suggest that 51% of U.S. adults ages 20–64 support allowing college athletes to be paid, 41% of adults do not support allowing college athletes to be paid, and 8% of adults do not know.

—Weighted comparison estimates of public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid, among U.S. Adults. Note . These NSASS estimates are weighted according to 2018 American Community Survey demographics for U.S. adults aged 20–64, based on age, gender, race, education, work status, marital status, income, and region. NSASS = National Sports and Society Survey.

Citation: Sociology of Sport Journal 38, 4; 10.1123/ssj.2020-0015

• Download Figure
• Download figure as PowerPoint slide

We now turn to predicting public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid in ordinal logistic regression models. These results are shown in Table  2 . We first focused on racial/ethnic identities and other common demographic characteristics; to do so, we initially emphasized White/non-White differences and then used White as a reference category. As displayed in Model 1, and anticipated by our second hypothesis, the individuals who identified as White (only) were 36% less likely than non-Whites to strongly agree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as opposed to another response option ( b  = −0.44, p  < .001, odds ratio [OR] = 0.64). Also, as predicted in our fourth hypothesis, there is evidence that older generations of adults are less likely to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Compared with adults ages 30 years or younger, adults ages 41–50 ( b  = −0.37, p  < .001, OR = 0.69) and ages 51+ ( b  = −0.64, p  < .001, OR = 0.53) are markedly less likely to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Although gender is not a focus of this study, it is also striking that women ( b  = −0.51, p  < .001, OR = 0.60) are much less likely than men to support allowing college athletes to be paid. One interpretation of this finding is that women may be disproportionately concerned about the implications that allowing college athletes to be paid may have on gender equity in college sports.

Results From Ordinal Logistic Regressions Predicting Public Opinion Support for Allowing College Athletes to Be Paid

Note. N  = 3,519. OR = odds ratio.

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

As shown in Model 2 of Table  2 , and anticipated by our second hypothesis, Black adults ( b  = 0.91, p  < .001, OR = 2.50) were especially supportive of allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, they were 2.5 times as likely as Whites to strongly agree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Latinx adults ( b  = 0.23, p  < .05, OR = 1.26) were also more likely than Whites to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Thus, moving forward, based on our conceptual framework, these empirical results, and our indicator of recognizing White/non-White discrimination, we only include a White/non-White racial/ethnic indicator in our models.

Model 3 includes the addition of adult sports involvement indicators. Consistent with our first hypothesis, we found that sports fandom is positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( b  = 0.16, p  < .001, OR = 1.17). Little else changes in Model 3 when compared with previous models, as expected.

Finally, in Model 4, we showed the results after including additional indicators of traditionalism and discrimination into the previous model. As anticipated by our third hypothesis, a greater recognition of the influence of racial/ethnic discrimination was positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( b  = 0.25, p  < .001, OR = 1.28). Also, consistent with our fourth hypothesis, urbanicity and conservatism were associated with support for paying college athletes, in expected directions. That is, conservatism was negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Also, compared with living in a large city, living in a suburb ( b  = −0.20, p  < .05, OR = 0.82), a town or small city ( b  = −0.35, p  < .001, OR = 0.70), or in a rural area ( b  = −32, p  < .001, OR = 0.72) was negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid.

The present study sought to advance research by analyzing the patterns and predictors of public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. This research is particularly important because there are vast and longstanding racial/ethnic inequalities in the production and receipt of revenue that is tied to college sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 , Smith, 2009 ). Furthermore, the recent passage of The Fair Pay to Play Act, and related legislation efforts, has challenged the status quo of defining amateurism ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ). As the NCAA and member schools continue to negotiate a strategic response to this new challenge, they have argued and cited that college sports are unique, and celebrated, because the athletes are not allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ).

The present study offers valuable new insights into the extent to which public opinions are aligned with these traditional NCAA defenses of their view of amateurism. We went beyond previous research by assessing responses to a recent survey question from new landmark data that gets to the heart of the current debate about amateurism. In asking about support for allowing college athletes to be paid, rather than asking about whether or not they should be paid or opinions about the precise mechanisms and amounts of payment, the question focuses on support for college athletes’ basic economic rights. We uniquely utilized a series of multiple regressions to assess the extent to which various factors, including indicators of racial/ethnic identities, beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, and traditionalism, predict public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. Finally, we advanced a conceptual framework for understanding public opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid that emphasized CRT tenets and the roles of both race/ethnicity and traditionalism in shaping public opinions. Below, we review the support that emerged for these hypotheses and further contextualize our findings.

Our first hypothesis anticipated that there would be substantial, but mixed, public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid. It also anticipated that adults’ sports involvement would be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, we did find support for these expectations. Both weighted and unweighted data indicate that U.S. adults are now prone to support allowing college athletes to be paid. Nonetheless, over 40% of U.S. and NSASS adults seem to still disagree that college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. This finding is consistent with recent research from a Seton Hall Sports Poll ( N  = 714) that found that 60% of U.S. adults endorsed college athletes being able to profit from the use of their name, image, or likeness ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). We also found evidence that sports fandom is positively associated with support for college athletes being allowed to be paid, in our regression models. Thus, in contrast with the fears of the NCAA and its member schools, it appears that sports fans are now especially likely to endorse allowing college athletes to be paid. Overall, it seems that most U.S. adults support changes in the notions of amateurism in college sports, notions that were born from White privilege and that have served as flexible, lucrative, and exploitative ideals ( Branch, 2011 ; Hruby, 2016 ; Smith, 2009 ; Southall & Staurowsky, 2013 ). Indeed, CRT suggests that Black male athletes are particularly exploited and that changes in the ideologies and practices of amateurism in college sports are necessary for social justice ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Singer, 2019 ; Southall et al., 2015 ; Southall & Southall, 2018 ).

Our second and third hypotheses looked at the salience of race/ethnicity, through racial/ethnic identities and beliefs about racial/ethnic discrimination, in predicting support for allowing college athletes to be paid. First, we anticipated that identifying as White would be especially likely to be negatively, and identifying as Black positively, associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Indeed, our regression results indicated that White adults were consistently less likely than non-White adults, and especially Black adults, to endorse allowing college athletes to be paid. This finding is consistent with previous research that notes Black–White differences in adults’ views about paying college athletes, but also extends the analyses and findings to other non-White racial/ethnic groups ( Branch, 2011 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). As part of this pattern, and informed by CRT, it seems probable that in-group loyalties, unique lived experiences, and patterned perspectives about the promises and deliveries of amateur ideals are at work, especially in the case of Black adults wanting to see the labor of young Black athletes being appropriately rewarded—in a society that has perpetually exploited non-White and particularly Black labor ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Smith, 2009 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ).

Second, we expected to find that recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination would be positively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. Indeed, this is what we found. Consistent with previous theorizing and research, this result suggests that CRT and sociological perspectives, which emphasize and criticize the prevalence and effects of racial/ethnic inequalities, encourage one to make connections between general patterns of racial/ethnic discrimination and the exploitative nature of commercialized college sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ). Furthermore, our finding corresponds with previous research on how racial/ethnic prejudices and resentments, sometimes indicated by a lack of awareness of systematic racial/ethnic discrimination, shape attitudes about college athletes being paid ( Cooper, 2012 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Mondello et al., 2013 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Specifically, as Afro-Pessimist scholars emphasize, anti-Black sentiments and practices are particularly prevalent and influential ( Cooper, 2019 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Olaloku-Teriba, 2018 ; Sexton, 2016 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ), although, in the present study, we focused on racial/ethnic prejudices and beliefs about discrimination that affect non-Whites. Beliefs and practices that adversely affect non-Whites, as opposed to just Blacks, are also common and have been largely neglected in public opinion research ( Delgado Bernal, 2002 ; Krysan, 2000 ; Krysan & Moberg, 2016 ; Public Religious Research Institute [PRRI], 2017 ).

Finally, our final hypothesis anticipated that indicators of traditionalism would be negatively associated with support for allowing college athletes to be paid. We viewed traditionalism as emblematic of a resistance to change the status quo; in this case, the status quo refers to the tradition of NCAA-defined amateurism in college sports. Yet, our indicators of traditionalism—age, urbanicity, and conservatism—are also commonly associated with racial/ethnic prejudice ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Crowder & Krysan, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Furthermore, as our conceptual framework and CRT observations highlight, the history of amateurism in college sports in America is born out of, and continually infused with, racial/ethnic prejudices, inequalities, and exploitation. Thus, it was not surprising to find that older generations, adults who did not live in large cities, and self-identified conservatives were less likely to advocate for allowing college athletes to be paid. In fact, the processes that encourage a resistance to change the status quo in collegiate athletics may be akin to the processes of encouraging resistance to modifying other policies (e.g., affirmative action, criminal justice reform, welfare policies) in ways that are expected to alleviate racial/ethnic inequalities, injustices, and sufferings for social justice ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Cramer, 2016 ; Druckman et al., 2016 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ).

Overall, the results of the present study bring to light evidence of majority support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. In fact, this support appears to be highest among passionate sports fans. Yet, we find that Whiteness and a lack of recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination are significant predictors of believing that college athletes should not be allowed to be paid. Although expected, this is concerning, due to the historic and continual racial/ethnic discrimination that has led to, defended, and prioritized White voices, experiences, statuses, and control in society, including in the realm of sports ( Branch, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ). Notions of White supremacy in abilities and character and a comfort with exploiting non-White and especially Black labor are endemic to this history ( Bonilla-Silva, 2003 ; Branch, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ). Indeed, the results of our study and previous work suggest that norms of White power and control, notions of White supremacy, and, especially, anti-Blackness are linked to attitudes about allowing college athletes to be paid, although this issue is commonly seen as “aracial.” In society, traditionalism frequently acts to resist and obstruct attempts at addressing racial/ethnic inequalities, including in sports ( Kendi, 2016 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Nocera & Strauss, 2016 ; Winter, 2008 ). Consequently, it is notable that, in this study, traditionalism seemed to generate opposition to allowing college athletes to be paid, too. A sociological perspective, CRT tenets, and an antiracist approach, defined as working to enact racial/ethnic equalities, suggest that changes in the ideologies, practices, and policies of college sports are needed ( Branch, 2011 ; Cooper, 2012, 2019 ; Huma & Staurowsky, 2011 ; Kendi, 2016 ; Singer, 2019 ).

There are limitations to note this study. For example, the NSASS respondents were survey volunteers and not randomly selected. Thus, their responses may not accurately reflect the characteristics and beliefs of the general U.S. adult population—even after introducing statistical controls. In addition, we relied on closed-ended survey question responses in analyzing the factors that lead adults to formulate their opinions about allowing college athletes to be paid. Future work may complement this focus by further investigating how people view this issue, in their own words and in greater detail. Finally, comprehensive analyses in future research are needed to consider how intersectionality considerations, particularly between race/ethnicity and gender, may better inform our understandings of college athlete experiences and U.S. adults’ public opinions about the structures and practices of college sports.

Nonetheless, this study improves our understanding of the extent to which U.S. adults support allowing college athletes the right to be paid as athletes. It offers new information that suggests that most adults now support this right. In fact, our findings fit nicely into the recognition of an upward trend over recent years in support for allowing college athletes to be paid ( Seton Hall Sports Poll, 2019 ). Currently, sports fans appear mostly in favor of allowing college athletes the right to be paid. Yet, beliefs about payment to college athletes are integrally intertwined with race/ethnicity and traditionalism. White adults are especially likely to oppose payment to college athletes, Black adults are particularly likely to endorse payment, and the recognition of racial/ethnic discrimination appears to encourage support for allowing college athletes to be paid, as athletes, more than it costs them to go to school. Finally, indicators of traditionalism, such as old age, residence outside of large cities, and conservatism, seem to galvanize levels of resistance to allowing college athletes to be paid. Yet, although previous research and a CRT interpretation of these findings point to continued challenges, and defenses, of the status quo in college sports, they also suggest another likely set of interest convergences is ahead ( Druckman et al., 2016 ; Hylton, 2010 ; Lapchick, 2019 ; Leonard, 2017 ; Wallsten et al., 2017 ). Apparently, increasing public opinion support for allowing college athletes to be paid and market pressures from The Fair Pay to Play Act and other related legislation seem to be pushing the NCAA and its member schools to enact more socially just policies and practices ( Meyer & Zimbalist, 2020 ; National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], 2020 ). Future research should seek to extend this work and continue to explore public opinions about the structure and historic ideals of college sports—and their links to race/ethnicity and traditionalism.

• Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. The NSASS was generously funded and supported by the College of Arts & Sciences, the Sports and Society Initiative, and CHRR at The Ohio State University.

Beamon , K. ( 2008 ). Used goods: Former African American college student-athletes’ perception of exploitation by Division I universities . Journal of Negro Education, 77, 352 – 364 .

• Search Google Scholar
• Export Citation

Bell , D. ( 1992 ). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism . New York, NY : Basic Books .

Bell , D.A. ( 1980 ). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest-convergence dilemma . Harvard Law Review, 93 ( 3 ), 518 – 533 . doi:10.2307/1340546

Benson , K. ( 2000 ). Constructing academic inadequacy: African American athletes’ stories of schooling . The Journal of Higher Education, 71 ( 2 ), 223 – 246 .

Berkowitz , S. , Upton , J. , & Brady , E. ( 2013 ). Most NCAA Division I athletic departments take subsidies . USA Today . Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/05/07/ncaa-financessubsidies/2142443

Bonilla-Silva , E. ( 2003 ). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. New York : Rowman & Littlefield .

Branch , T. ( 2011 ). The shame of college sports . The Atlantic . Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643

Comeaux , E. ( 2010 ). Racial differences in faculty perceptions of collegiate student-athletes’ academic and post-undergraduate achievements . Sociology of Sport Journal, 27 ( 4 ), 390 – 412 . doi:10.1123/ssj.27.4.390

Cooper , J.N. ( 2012 ). Personal troubles and public issues: A sociological imagination of Black athletes’ experiences at predominantly white institutions in the United States . Sociology Mind, 2 ( 3 ), 261 – 271 . doi:10.4236/sm.2012.23035

Cooper , J.N. ( 2019 ). From exploitation back to empowerment: Black male holistic (under)development through sport and (mis)education . New York : Peter Lang .

Cramer , K.J. ( 2016 ). The politics of resentment: Rural consciousness in Wisconsin and the rise of Scott Walker . Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press .

Crowder , K. , & Krysan , M. ( 2016 ). Moving beyond the big three: A call for new approaches to studying racial residential segregation . City & Community, 15 ( 1 ), 18 – 22 . doi:10.1111/cico.12148

Delgado Bernal , D. ( 2002 ). Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge . Qualitative Inquiry, 8 ( 1 ), 105 – 126 . doi:10.1177/107780040200800107

Delgado , R. , & Stefancic , J. ( 2001 ). Critical race theory: An introduction . New York : New York University Press .

Druckman , J. , Howat , A. , & Rodheim , A. ( 2016 ) The influence of race on attitudes about college athletics . Sport in Society, 19 ( 7 ), 1020 – 1039 . doi:10.1080/17430437.2015.1096250

Edwards , H. ( 1969 ). Revolt of the black athlete . New York : Free Press .

Gore-Mann , D. , & Grace , D. ( 2020 , January 9 ). Pay for student-athletes is a racial justice issue . SFchronicle.com . Retrieved from https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Pay-for-student-athletes-is-a-racial-justice-issue-14960591.php

Harper , S.R. , & Simmons , I. ( 2019 ). Black students at public colleges and universities: A 50-state report card. Los Angeles : University of Southern California, Race and Equity Center .

Harris , C.I. ( 1993 ). Whiteness as property . Harvard Law Review, 106 ( 8 ), 1707 – 1791 . doi:10.2307/1341787

Hawkins , B. ( 2010 ). The new plantation. New York : Palgrave Macmillan .

Hochschild , A.R. ( 2016 ). Strangers in their own land: Anger and mourning on the American right . New York : New Press .

Hruby , P. ( 2016 ). Four years a student-athlete: The racial injustice of big-time college sports . Vice Sports . Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ezexjp/four-years-a-student-athlete-the-racial-injustice-of-big-time-college-sports

Huma , R. , & Staurowsky , E. ( 2011 ). The price of poverty in big time college sport . National College Players Association. Retrieved from http://www.ncpanow.org/research/body/The-Price-of-Poverty-in-Big-Time-College-Sport.pdf

Hylton , K. ( 2010 ). How a turn to critical race theory can contribute to our understanding of “race”, racism and anti-racism in sport . International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 45 ( 3 ), 335 – 354 . doi:10.1177/1012690210371045

Johnson , S.D. , & Tamney , J.B. ( 2001 ). Social traditionalism and economic conservatism: Two conservative political ideologies in the United States . The Journal of Social Psychology, 141 ( 2 ), 233 – 243 . PubMed ID: 11372568 doi:10.1080/00224540109600549

Jost , J.T. , Glaser , J. , Kruglanski , A.W. , & Sulloway , F.J. ( 2003 ). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition . Psychological Bulletin, 129 ( 3 ), 339 – 375 . PubMed ID: 12784934 doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339

Kendi , I.X. ( 2016 ). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America . New York : Nation Books .

Knoester , C. , & Cooksey , E.C. ( 2020 ). The National Sports and Society Survey methodological summary . doi:10.31235/osf.io/mv76p

Krysan , M. ( 2000 ). Prejudice, politics, and public opinion: Understanding the sources of racial policy attitudes . Annual Review of Sociology, 26 ( 1 ), 135 – 168 . doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.135

Krysan , M. , & Moberg , S. ( 2016 ). Trends in racial attitudes . University of Illinois Institute of Governement and Public Affairs. Retrieved from http://igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racial-attitudes

Lapchick , R. ( 2019 ). The 2018 racial and gender report card . The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. Retrieved from https://43530132-36e9-4f52-811a-182c7a91933b.filesusr.com/ugd/7d86e5_b9332a76bbf342c2b44d40cb47e09f79.pdf

Leonard , D. ( 2017 ). Playing while White: Privilege and power on and off the field . Seattle : University of Washington Press .

Love , A. , & Hughey , M. ( 2015 ). Out of bounds? Racial discourse on college basketball message boards . Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38 ( 6) , 877 – 893 , doi:10.1080/01419870.2014.967257

Meyer , J. , & Zimbalist , A. ( 2020 ). A win win: College athletes get paid for their names, images, and likenesses and colleges maintain the primacy of academics . Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law, 11, 247 – 303 . Retrieved from: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3590190

Mondello , M. , Piquero , A. , Leeper Piquero , N. , Gertz , M. , & Bratton , J. ( 2013 ) Public perceptions on paying student athletes , Sport in Society, 16 ( 1) , 106 – 119 . doi:10.1080/17430437.2012.690408.

National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] . ( 2019 ). 2019-20 NCAA Division I Manual . Retrieved from https://www.ncaapublications.com/p-4577-2019-2020-ncaa-division-i-manual-august-version-available-for-presell-now.aspx

National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] . ( 2020 ). NCAA Board of Governors: Federal and state legislation working group . Final report and recommendations. Retrieved from https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/committees/ncaa/wrkgrps/fslwg/Apr2020FSLWG_Report.pdf

Nocera , J. , & Strauss , B. ( 2016 ). Indentured: The inside story of the rebellion against the NCAA . New York : Portfolio

Olaloku-Teriba , A. ( 2018 ). Afro-pessimism and the (un)logic of anti-blackness . Historical Materialism, 26 ( 2 ), 96 – 122 . doi:10.1163/1569206X-00001650

Price , V. , & Neijens , P. ( 1997 ). Opinion quality in public opinion research . International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 9 ( 4 ), 336 – 360 . doi:10.1093/ijpor/9.4.336

Public Religious Research Institute [PRRI] . ( 2017 ). Majority of Americans oppose transgender bathroom restrictions . Retrieved from http://www.prri.org/research/lgbt-transgender-bathroom-discrimination-religious-liberty/

Rankin-Wright , A.J. , Hylton , K. , & Norman , L. ( 2016 ). Off-colour landscape: Framing race equality in sport coaching . Sociology of Sport Journal, 33 ( 4 ), 357 – 368 . doi:10.1123/ssj.2015-0174

Ridpath , B.D. , Kiger , J. , Mak , J. , Eagle , T. , & Letter , G. ( 2007 ). Factors that influence the academic performance of NCAA Division I athletes . The SMART Journal, 4 ( 1 ), 59 – 83 .

Ridpath , B.D. , Rudd , A. , & Stokowski , S. ( 2019 ). Perceptions of European athletes that attend American colleges and universities for elite athletic development and higher education access . Journal of Global Sport Management, 5 ( 1 ), 34 – 61 . doi:10.1080/24704067.2019.1636402

Rudd , A. , & Ridpath , B.D. ( 2019 ). Education versus athletics: What will Division I football and basketball players choose? Journal of Amateur Sport, 5 ( 1 ), 76 – 95 . doi:10.17161/jas.v5i1.7731

Sack , A.L. , & Staurowsky , E.J. ( 1998 ). College athletes for hire . Westport, CT : Praeger .

Sanderson , A. , & Siegfried , J. ( 2015 ). “The case for paying college athletes .” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29 ( 1 ), 115 – 138 . doi:10.1257/jep.29.1.115

Seton Hall Sports Poll . ( 2019 ). American public supports college athletes receiving endorsement money, As approved in California this week . Retrieved from https://www.shu.edu/sports-poll/upload/Oct-3-2019-Endorsement-money.pdf

Sexton , J. ( 2016 ). Afro-pessimism: The unclear ord . Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 29 . doi:10.20415/rhiz/029.e02

Shaw , A.A. , Moiseichik , M. , Blunt-Vinti , H. , & Stokowski , S. ( 2019 ). Measuring racial competence in athletic academic support staff members . Sociology of Sport Journal, 36 ( 2 ), 162 – 170 . doi:10.1123/ssj.2018-0062

Singer , J. ( 2019 ). Race, sports and education: Improving opportunities and outcomes for Black male college athletes. Cambridge : Harvard Education Press .

Smith , E. ( 2009 ). Race, sport, and the American dream . Durham, NC : Carolina Academic Press .

Solorzano , D.G. , & Yosso , T.J. ( 2001 ) Critical race and LatCrit theory and method: Counter-storytelling . International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14 ( 4 ): 471 – 495 . doi:10.1080/09518390110063365

Southall , R.M. , Eckard , W. , Nagel , M. , & Randall , M. ( 2015 ) Athletic success and NCAA profit-athletes’ adjusted graduation gaps . Sociology of Sport Journal, 32 ( 4 ), 395 – 414 . doi:10.1123/ssj.2014-0156

Southall , R.M. , & Southall , C.R. ( 2018 ). The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s “Nothing short of remarkable” Rebranding of academic success . In R. King-White (Ed.), Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy (pp.  131 – 152 ). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press .

Southall , R.M. , & Staurowsky , E.J. ( 2013 ). Cheering on the collegiate model: Creating, disseminating, and imbedding the NCAA’s redefinition of amateurism . Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 37 ( 4 ), 403 – 429 . doi:10.1177/0193723513498606

Staurowsky , E.J. ( 2018 ). College athletes as employees and the politics of Title IX . In R. King-White (Ed.), Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, politics, and pedagogy (pp.  97 – 128 ). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press .

Tatos , T. ( 2017 ). Deconstructing the NCAA’s procompetitive justifications to demonstrate antitrust injury and calculate lost compensation: The evidence against NCAA amateurism . The Antitrust Bulletin, 62 ( 1 ), 184 – 236 . doi:10.1177/0003603X16688968

Van Rheenen , D. ( 2012 ). Exploitation in college sports: Race, revenue, and educational reward . International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48 ( 5 ), 550 – 571 . doi:10.1177/1012690212450218

Wallsten , K. , Nteta , T.M. , McCarthy , L.A. , & Tarsi , M.R. ( 2017 ). Prejudice or principled conservatism? Racial resentment and white opinion toward paying college athletes . Political Research Quarterly, 70 ( 1 ), 209 – 222 . doi:10.1177/1065912916685186

Winter , N.J.G. ( 2008 ). Dangerous frames: How ideas about race & gender shape public opinion . Chicago : University of Chicago Press .

* Knoester is with The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Ridpath is with the Department of Sports Administration, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA.

Sociology of Sport Journal

Related Articles

Article sections.

• View raw image
• Download Powerpoint Slide

Article Metrics

• Chris Knoester
• B. David Ridpath

Google Scholar

© 2024 Human Kinetics

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|195.158.225.230]
• 195.158.225.230

Character limit 500 /500

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

The Case for Paying College Athletes

The case against paying college athletes, the era of name, image, and likeness (nil) profiting, why should college athletes be paid, is it illegal for college athletes to get paid, what percentage of americans support paying college athletes, the bottom line, should college athletes be paid.

The Case For and Against

Should college athletes be able to make money from their sport? When the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded in 1906, the organization’s answer was a firm “no,” as it sought to “ensure amateurism in college sports.”

Despite the NCAA’s official stance, the question has long been debated among college athletes, coaches, sports fans, and the American public. The case for financial compensation saw major developments in June 2021, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA cannot limit colleges from offering student-athletes “education-related benefits.”

In response, the NCAA issued an interim policy stating that its student-athletes were permitted to profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL) , but not to earn a salary. This policy will remain in place until a more “permanent solution” can be found in conjunction with Congress.

Meanwhile, the landscape continues to shift, with new cases, decisions, and state legislation being brought forward. College athletes are currently permitted to receive “cost of attendance” stipends (up to approximately $6,000), unlimited education-related benefits, and awards. A 2023 survey found that 67% of U.S. adults favor paying college athletes with direct compensation.

Key Takeaways

• Despite the NCAA reporting nearly $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023, student-athletes are restricted to limited means of compensation.
• Although college sports regularly generate valuable publicity and billions of dollars in revenue for schools, even the highest-grossing college athletes tend to see only a small fraction of this.
• One argument for paying college athletes is the significant time commitment that their sport requires, which can impact their ability to earn income and divert time and energy away from academic work.
• Student-athletes may face limited prospects after college for a variety of reasons, including a high risk of injury, fierce competition to enter professional leagues, and lower-than-average graduation rates.
• The developing conversation around paying college athletes must take into account the practical challenges of determining and administering compensation, as well as the potential impacts on players and schools.

There are numerous arguments in support of paying college athletes, many of which focus on ameliorating the athletes’ potential risks and negative impacts. Here are some of the typical arguments in favor of more compensation.

Financial Disparity

College sports generate billions of dollars in revenue for networks, sponsors, and institutions (namely schools and the NCAA). There is considerable money to be made from advertising and publicity, historically, most of which has not benefited those whose names, images, and likenesses are featured within it.

Of the 2019 NCAA Division I revenues ($15.8 billion in total), only 18.2% was returned to athletes through scholarships, medical treatment, and insurance. Additionally, any other money that goes back to college athletes is not distributed equally. An analysis of players by the National Bureau of Economic Research found major disparities between sports and players.

Nearly 50% of men’s football and basketball teams, the two highest revenue-generating college sports, are made up of Black players. However, these sports subsidize a range of other sports (such as men’s golf and baseball, and women’s basketball, soccer, and tennis) where only 11% of players are Black and which also tend to feature players from higher-income neighborhoods. In the end, financial redistribution between sports effectively funnels resources away from students who are more likely to be Black and come from lower-income neighborhoods toward those who are more likely to be White and come from higher-income neighborhoods.

Exposure and Marketing Value

Colleges’ finances can benefit both directly and indirectly from their athletic programs. The “Flutie Effect,” named after Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie, is an observed phenomenon whereby college applications and enrollments seem to increase after an unexpected upset victory or national football championship win by that college’s team. Researchers have also suggested that colleges that spend more on athletics may attract greater allocations of state funding and boost private donations to institutions.

Meanwhile, the marketing of college athletics is valued in the millions to billions of dollars. In 2023, the NCAA generated nearly $1.3 billion in revenue, $945.1 million of which came from media rights fees. In 2022, earnings from March Madness represented nearly 90% of the NCAA’s total revenue. Through this, athletes give schools major exposure and allow them to rack up huge revenues, which argues for making sure the players benefit, too.

Opportunity Cost, Financial Needs, and Risk of Injury

Because participation in college athletics represents a considerable commitment of time and energy, it necessarily takes away from academic and other pursuits, such as part-time employment. In addition to putting extra financial pressure on student-athletes, this can impact athletes’ studies and career outlook after graduation, particularly for those who can’t continue playing after college, whether due to injury or the immense competition to be accepted into a professional league.

Earning an income from sports and their significant time investment could be a way to diminish the opportunity cost of participating in them. This is particularly true in case of an injury that can have a long-term effect on an athlete’s future earning potential.

Arguments against paying college athletes tend to focus on the challenges and implications of a paid-athlete system. Here are some of the most common objections to paying college athletes.

Existing Scholarships

Opponents of a paid-athlete system tend to point to the fact that some college athletes already receive scholarships , some of which cover the cost of their tuition and other academic expenses in full. These are already intended to compensate athletes for their work and achievements.

Financial Implications for Schools

One of the main arguments against paying college athletes is the potential financial strain on colleges and universities. The majority of Division I college athletics departments’ expenditures actually surpass their revenues, with schools competing for players by hiring high-profile coaches, constructing state-of-the-art athletics facilities, and offering scholarships and awards.

With the degree of competition to attract talented athletes so high, some have pointed out that if college athletes were to be paid a salary on top of existing scholarships, it might unfairly burden those schools that recruit based on the offer of a scholarship.

‘Amateurism’ and the Challenges of a Paid-Athlete System

Historically, the NCAA has sought to promote and preserve a spirit of “amateurism” in college sports, on the basis that fans would be less interested in watching professional athletes compete in college sports, and that players would be less engaged in their academic studies and communities if they were compensated with anything other than scholarships.

The complexity of determining levels and administration of compensation across an already uneven playing field also poses a practical challenge. What would be the implications concerning Title IX legislation, for example, since there is already a disparity between male and female athletes and sports when it comes to funding, resources, opportunities, compensation, and viewership?

Another challenge is addressing the earnings potential of different sports (as many do not raise revenues comparable to high-profile sports like men’s football and basketball) or of individual athletes on a team. Salary disparities would almost certainly affect team morale and drive further competition between schools to bid for the best athletes.

In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA violated antitrust laws with its rules around compensation, holding that the NCAA’s current rules were “more restrictive than necessary” and that the NCAA could no longer “limit education-related compensation or benefits” for Division I football and basketball players.

In response, the NCAA released an interim policy allowing college athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) , essentially providing the opportunity for players to profit off their personal brand through social media and endorsement deals. States then introduced their own rules around NIL, as did individual schools, whose coaches or compliance departments maintain oversight of NIL deals and the right to object to them in case of conflict with existing agreements.

Other court cases against the NCAA have resulted in legislative changes that now allow students to receive “cost of attendance” stipends up to a maximum of around $6,000 as well as unlimited education-related benefits and awards.

The future of NIL rules and student-athlete compensation remains to be seen. According to the NCAA, the intention is to “develop a national law that will help colleges and universities, student-athletes, and their families better navigate the name, image, and likeness landscape.” However, no timeline has been specified as of yet.

Common arguments in support of paying college athletes tend to focus on players’ financial needs, their high risk of injury, and the opportunity cost they face (especially in terms of academic achievement, part-time work, and long-term financial and career outlook). Proponents of paying college athletes also point to the extreme disparity between the billion-dollar revenues of schools and the NCAA and current player compensation.

Although the NCAA once barred student-athletes from earning money from their sport, legislation around compensating college athletes is changing. In 2021, the NCAA released an interim policy permitting college athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL) through social media and endorsement and sponsorship deals. However, current regulations and laws vary by state.

In 2023, a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults found that 67% of respondents were in favor of paying college athletes with direct compensation. Sixty-four percent said they supported athletes’ rights to obtain employee status, and 59% supported their right to collectively bargain as a labor union .

Although the NCAA is under growing pressure to share its billion-dollar revenues with the athletes it profits from, debate remains around whether, how, and how much college athletes should be paid. Future policy and legislation will need to take into account the financial impact on schools and athletes , the value of exposure and marketing, pay equity and employment rights, pay administration, and the nature of the relationship between college athletes and the institutions they represent.

NCAA. “ History .”

Marquette Sports Law Review. “ Weakening Its Own Defense? The NCAA’s Version of Amateurism ,” Page 260 (Page 5 of PDF).

U.S. Supreme Court. “ National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston et al. ”

NCAA. “ NCAA Adopts Interim Name, Image and Likeness Policy .”

PBS NewsHour. “ Analysis: Who Is Winning in the High-Revenue World of College Sports? ”

Sportico. “ 67% of Americans Favor Paying College Athletes: Sportico/Harris Poll .”

Sportico. “ NCAA Took in Record Revenue in 2023 on Investment Jump .”

National Bureau of Economic Research. “ Revenue Redistribution in Big-Time College Sports .”

Appalachian State University, Walker College of Business. “ The Flutie Effect: The Influence of College Football Upsets and National Championships on the Quantity and Quality of Students at a University .”

Grand Canyon University. “ Should College Athletes Be Paid? ”

Flagler College Gargoyle. “ Facing Inequality On and Off the Court: The Disparities Between Male and Female Athletes .”

U.S. Department of Education. “ Title IX and Sex Discrimination .”

Congressional Research Service Reports. “ National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston and the Debate Over Student Athlete Compensation .”

NCSA College Recruiting. “ NCAA Name, Image, Likeness Rule .”

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

Should College Athletes Be Paid? Pros and Cons

Do you know how to improve your profile for college applications.

See how your profile ranks among thousands of other students using CollegeVine. Calculate your chances at your dream schools and learn what areas you need to improve right now — it only takes 3 minutes and it's 100% free.

Show me what areas I need to improve

What’s Covered:

History of the debate: should college athletes be paid, why college athletes should be paid.

• Why College Athletes Shouldn’t Be Paid
• Where To Get Your Essay Edited For Free

College athletics provide big benefits for many schools: they increase their profile, generate millions of dollars in revenue, and have led to one of the most contentious questions in sports— should college athletes be paid? Like other difficult questions, there are good arguments on both sides of the issue of paying college athletes. 

Historically, the debates over paying college athletes have only led to more questions, which is why it’s raged on for more than a century. Perhaps the earliest group to examine the quandary was Andrew Carnegie’s Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which produced a mammoth study in 1929 of amateur athletes and the profits they generate for their universities. You don’t have to get past the preface to find questions that feel at home in today’s world:

• “What relation has this astonishing athletic display to the work of an intelligence agency like a university?”
• “How do students, devoted to study, find either the time or the money to stage so costly a performance?” 

Many of the questions asked way back in 1929 continue to resurface today, and many of them have eventually ended up seeking answers in court. The first case of note came in the 1950s, when the widow of Fort Lewis football player Ray Dennison took the college all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court in an effort to collect a death benefit after he was killed playing football. She lost the case, but future generations would have more success and have slowly whittled away at arguments against paying athletes. 

The most noticeable victory for athletes occurred in 2019, when California Governor, Gavin Newsom, signed legislation effectively allowing college athletes in the state to earn compensation for the use of their likeness, sign endorsement deals, and hire agents to represent them.

The court fights between college athletes and the NCAA continue today—while not exactly about payment, a case regarding whether or not schools can offer athletes tens of thousands of dollars in education benefits such as computers, graduate scholarships, tutoring, study abroad, and internships was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2021. A decision is expected in June 2021. 

There are a number of great reasons to pay college athletes, many of which will not only improve the lives of student-athletes, but also improve the product on the field and in the arena. 

College Athletes Deserve to Get Paid

In 2019, the NCAA reported $18.9 billion in total athletics revenue. This money is used to finance a variety of paid positions that support athletics at colleges and universities, including administrators, directors, coaches, and staff, along with other employment less directly tied to sports, such as those in marketing and media. The only people not receiving a paycheck are the stars of the show: the athletes. 

A testament to the disparate allocation of funds generated by college sports, of the $18.9 billion in athletics revenue in 2019, $3.6 billion went toward financial aid for student-athletes, and $3.7 billion was used for coaches’ compensation. A February 2020 USA Today article found that the average total pay for Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football head coaches in 2020-21 was $2.7 million. The highest-paid college football coach—the University of Alabama’s Nick Saban—earns $9.3 million a year and is the highest-paid public employee in the country. He is not alone, college coaches dominate the list of public employees with the largest salaries. 

If there’s money to provide college coaches with lavish seven-figure salaries (especially at public institutions), why shouldn’t there be funds to pay college athletes? 

Vital Support for Athletes 

A 2011 study published by the National College Players Association (NCPA) found that an overwhelming number of students on full athletics scholarships live below the federal poverty line—85% of athletes who live on campus and 86% athletes who live off-campus. “Full scholarship” itself is a misnomer; the same study found that the average annual scholarship for FBS athletes on “full” scholarships was actually $3,222. Find out more information about athletic scholarships . 

Paying student-athletes would help eliminate the need for these student-athletes to take out loans, burden their families for monetary support, or add employment to their already busy schedules. The NCAA limits in-season practice time to 20 hours a week, but a 2008 NCAA report shows that in-season student-athletes commonly spent upward of 30 and 40 hours a week engaged in “athletic activities.” 

Encouraged to Stay in College Longer

A report produced by the NCPA and Drexel University estimated the average annual fair market value of big-time college football and men’s basketball players between 2011 and 2015 was $137,357 and $289,031, respectively, and concluded that football players only receive about 17% of their fair market value, while men’s basketball players receive approximately 8% of theirs.

If colleges paid athletes even close to their worth, they would provide an incentive for the athletes to stay in college and earn degrees, rather than leaving college for a paycheck. This would also help keep top talents playing for college teams, improve the level of competition, and potentially lead to even higher revenue. On a side note, this would incentivize athletes to complete their degree, making them more employable after the end of their athletic career. 

Limit Corruption 

Just because there are rules prohibiting the compensation of college athletes doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, and over the years there have been numerous scandals. For example, in 2009, six ex-University of Toledo players were indicted in a point-shaving scheme , and in 2010, Reggie Bush returned his Heisman Trophy after allegations that he was given hundreds of thousands of dollars from sports agents while he played for USC.  

Paying college athletes will likely not totally eliminate corruption from college sports, but putting athletes in a less-precarious financial position would be a good step toward avoiding external influence, especially when you consider some of the players involved in the University of Toledo point-shaving scandal were paid as little as $500. 

It’s a Job (and a Dangerous One) 

As mentioned before, college athletes can put in upward of 40 hours a week practicing, training, and competing—being a “student-athlete” is a challenge when you’re devoting full-time hours to athletics. A New York Times study found a 0.20-point difference in average GPA between recruited male athletes and non-athletes. The difference is less pronounced among females, with non-athletes averaging a 3.24 GPA and recruited women athletes at 3.18.

It’s not just the time commitment that playing college athletics puts on student-athletes, it’s the risk to their health. A 2009-2010 CDC report found that more than 210,000 injuries are sustained by NCAA student-athletes each year. Full athletic scholarships are only guaranteed a year at a time, meaning student-athletes are one catastrophic injury away from potentially losing their scholarship. That is to say nothing of the lasting effects of an injury, like head traumas , which made up 7.4% of all injuries in college football players between 2004 and 2009.

Discover your chances at hundreds of schools

Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admission—and how to improve them.

Why College Athletes Should Not Be Paid

There are a lot of great reasons why college athletes should be paid, but there are also some compelling reasons why college athletes should not be paid—and why not paying athletes is actually good for both the institutions and athletes. 

Compensation Conundrum 

One of the most common reasons cited against paying college players is compensation. Will all college athletes get compensated equally? For example, will the star quarterback receive the same amount as the backup catcher on the softball team? A 2014 CNBC article estimated that Andrew Wiggins, a University of Kansas forward (and soon-to-be first-overall draft pick), had a fair market value of around $1.6 million.

Similarly, will compensation take into account talent? Will the All-American point guard get the same amount as the captain of the swim team? In all likelihood, paying college athletes will benefit big-time, revenue-generating sports and hurt less popular sports. 

Eliminate Competitive Balance 

According to the NCAA , in 2019, the 65 Power Five schools exceeded revenue by $7 million, while all other Division I colleges had a $23 million deficit between expenses and revenue. If college athletes were to get paid, then large, well-funded schools such as those of the Power Five would be best positioned to acquire top talent and gain a competitive advantage. 

From a student’s point of view, paying college athletes will alter their college experience. No longer would fit, college, university reputation, and values factor into their college decisions—rather, choices would be made simply based on who was offering the most money. 

Professionalism vs. the Classroom

There’s a feeling that paying college athletes sends the wrong message and incentivizes them to focus on athletics instead of academics, when the reality is that very few college athletes will go on to play sports professionally. Just 1.6% of college football players will take an NFL field. NCAA men’s basketball players have even slimmer odds of playing in a major professional league ( 1.2% ), while the chances of a professional career are particularly grim for women basketball players, at a mere 0.8% . 

Although the odds of a college athlete turning pro are low, the probability of them earning a degree is high, thanks in part to the academic support athletes are given. According to data released by the NCAA, 90% of Division I athletes enrolled in 2013 earned a degree within six years. 

It Will End Less-Popular, Unprofitable Sports 

If colleges and universities pay their athletes, there is a fear that resources will only go to popular, revenue-generating sports. Programs like football and men’s basketball would likely benefit greatly, but smaller, unprofitable sports such as gymnastics, swimming and diving, tennis, track and field, volleyball, and wrestling could find themselves at best cash-strapped and, at the worst, cut altogether. 

It’s just not less-popular sports that paying athletes could threaten—women’s programs could also find themselves in the crosshairs of budget-conscious administrators. Keep in mind, it was just in March 2021 that the NCAA made national news for its unequal treatment of the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments. 

Financial Irresponsibility 

Former ESPN, and current FOX Sports, personality Colin Cowherd made news in 2014 when he voiced a popular argument against paying college athletes: financial irresponsibility. In Cowherd’s words:

“I don’t think paying all college athletes is great… Not every college is loaded, and most 19-year-olds [are] gonna spend it—and let’s be honest, they’re gonna spend it on weed and kicks! And spare me the ‘they’re being extorted’ thing. Listen, 90 percent of these college guys are gonna spend it on tats, weed, kicks, Xboxes, beer and swag. They are, get over it!”

A look at the professional ranks bolsters Cowherd’s argument about athletes’ frivolous spending. According to CNBC , 60% of NBA players go broke within five years of departing the league and 78% of former NFL players experience financial distress two years after retirement.

Writing an Essay on This? Where to Get Your Essay Edited for Free

Writing an essay on whether college athletes should or shouldn’t be paid? CollegeVine can help! Our peer review tool allows you to receive feedback and learn the strengths and weaknesses of your essay for free.  

Looking for more debate, speech, or essay topics? Check out these other CollegeVine articles for ideas: 

• 52 Argumentative Essays Ideas that are Actually Interesting
• 52 Persuasive Speech Topics That Are Actually Engaging
• 60 Debate Topics for High Schoolers

Should College Athletes Be Paid Essay

• Author StudySaurus
• Category Popular Essay Topics

Disclaimer: This paper has been submitted by a student. This is not a sample of the work written by professional academic writers.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of StudySaurus.

Persuasive Essay: Why Should college Athletes be Paid 

College athletes should get paid because they make money for their school, but get barely anything in return, they spend more time on the field than in classrooms, and lastly coaches earn millions a year and players who work hard are not rewarded.

One reason why college athletes should get paid is because they make revenue for their school but don’t get what they deserve in the end. In fact the NCAA makes around $10.8 billion dollars a year. We are talking about $11 billion dollars for three weekends on television per year! Even though they make money from their scholarship they don’t make any extra money for whatever needs they have, it is not fair to the athletes! Also the NCAA does not have a lot of TV time compared to others, but they make a ton of money for the time they have. Also I quote from Business Insider, “The fair market value for the average FBS football player is $137,357 per year, and the fair market value for the average men’s basketball player is $289,031 per year. Right now the average player earns just $23,204 in scholarship money.” This shows us that right now college athletes are not getting paid a sixth of what they should receive. Schools usually make around 2 million dollars a year and paying student athletes for the NCAA for a year depends on the size of the school or how many athletes they have.

Why College Athletes Should be Paid

Another reason why college athletes should get paid is because they spend more time on the field than in classrooms. This means that they put in so much time for their sport and they are so dedicated to it they barely have time for anything else. A quote from Gale SR says to us that athletes work hard and long and that they should get paid because being a college athletes is like having a full time job. “While the NCAA contends that college football players are not employees in a legal sense, a study found that the average college football player committed 43.3 hours per week to train, practice, and play. Considering the standard workweek is 40 hours, those who support the pay-for-play model argue that playing college football is similar to holding a full-time job, one that generates large revenues for the parent company yet offers virtually no pay.” This really shows us why college athletes should get paid. As you can see, college sports are no joke and that sense they take them as serious as can be, like a job they should get paid.

Lastly college athletes should get paid because coaches earn millions a year and players who work hard are not rewarded. College Express believes that student-athletes are the ones working hard out on the court and field. That coaches might have a big effect on a team, but it is up to the athletes to get it done. That coaches receive bonuses for breaking records, reaching the off-season, and winning the big games, but the athletes receive none of it even though they are the ones working. A quote from Gale says to us that they are making unjust double standards for the team. The quote is, “Forbes also reported that in 2013 that the average annual salary of a head coach in a top college football program was $2.05 million, with some head coaches commanding several times that amount. This is said to create an unjust double standard that acknowledges the value a head coach brings to a college football program while overlooking player contributions” This shows that even the paid amount is less than a scholarship that the players get when in reality the players are the ones working the hardest.

College athletes should get paid because they make money for their school but get barely anything in return, they spend more time on the field than in classrooms, and lastly coaches earn millions a year and players who work hard are not rewarded. There are many different views on this topic and I hope I helped you pick one. This concludes my argument about why college athletes should get paid.

Why? More Arguments

The argument of paying college athletes has been going on for quite a while. Some say that because they are putting in so much work, that we should pay them. However, almost all degrees require some time for experience and to grow. Also, they should not worry over money and more on their education. Today we will answer the question: should we or should we not pay college athletes.

College athletes shouldn’t be paid more than a scholarship.If we are already paying them to go to school, why should we pay them to do what they actually came to do? In comparison, that could be paying college photographers or college doctors to basically continue their education, and learn. Another reason is the fear that these college athletes might be is them only focusing on their sport and not caring about the rest of their education. Also, the money might make them careless or irresponsible later in life.

However, some may disagree and argue that the college athletes should be paid more. One reason is that they spend over 40 hours a week practicing, which is the same amount as a full-time job. So, if they are spending this much time, shouldn’t they be paid? Actually, they are being paid by a scholarship that covers books, food, rent on campus, etc. Another point that college athletes work the same or harder than professional athletes. Despite that, playing on the team is a privilege, and college is the way to become a professional and now they shouldn’t be focused on money.

Now that we have argued that a scholarship is more than enough, we can now better their education, by not paying them. If we continue to pay them, we risk the chance of ruining the economy or hurting their chance of any type of retirement. So, let’s end the pressure, and stop paying them to continue their education!

Was this material helpful?

Related essays, about studysaurus, community. knowledge. success..

StudySaurus is run by two uni-students that still get a kick out of learning new things. We hope to share these experiences with you.

Ideas ,  concepts ,  tutorials,   essay papers  – everything we would’ve liked to have known, seen or heard during our high-school & UNI years, we want to bring to YOU.

Privacy & Cookies Policy Terms and Conditions DMCA Request

• Share full article

Advertisement

$500 signed

Branded vodka

“Buzzer beater”

The Many Ways Men’s Sweet 16 Players Are Being Paid

By David A. Fahrenthold and Billy Witz

This year’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournament is being played amid a revolutionary change in college sports: The best players are now openly recruited, retained and rewarded with cash.

That change began in 2021, when the N.C.A.A. — under pressure from the Justice Department and state legislatures — allowed players to be paid for the use of their “name, image and likeness.” The idea was to let players endorse shoes or sports drinks.

The new system was overrun by groups called “collectives” — made up of wealthy boosters who donated money, and in some cases raised even more, to pay athletes based on their value to the team. Now, there are hundreds of these groups, and big-time players can make salaries that, for a select few, can surpass $1 million.

Those big bucks and the loosening of transfer restrictions have turned the off-season into something like pro sports free agency — for male players, at least. (The average men’s basketball player with a collective contract at a top school is paid $63,450, according to Opendorse, a company that processes payments to players from collectives. The average women’s player gets $10,610.)

The N.C.A.A. tried to police this new system, then stopped last month after a federal judge said that N.C.A.A. rules likely violated antitrust laws . Every team in the men’s Sweet Sixteen has been touched by this change, which has brought windfalls to players but instability to the college game.

Select a Sweet 16 team to learn more about its collective(s).

The collective that supports the University of Connecticut’s teams, Bleeding Blue for Good, is the rare one that pays out more to men’s and women’s basketball players than it does to football players, according to its president, John Malfettone, who declined to disclose figures. A commercial for Bleeding Blue for Good, featuring UConn basketball players and encouraging donations, aired before the men’s tournament opener. Another way the collective raises money is by selling basketballs autographed by last year’s national championship men’s team — for $500 a pop. The collective pays players to teach at youth basketball camps and work with state charities.

Above: A basketball signed by UConn players

San Diego State

Guard Lamont Butler hit a last-second shot to win the national semifinal game last year. This year, Butler is still in college — and making money off that shot. San Diego State’s collective sells framed photos for $555 — Butler wears No. 5 — and a San Diego restaurant pays Butler to endorse its new “Buzzer Beater” quesadilla.

Above: Lamont Butler next to the “Buzzer Beater” quesadilla

Illinois’ ICON Collective is a nonprofit, which says it gives 90 percent of donations to athletes for performing charity work. The I.R.S. has recently raised questions about that model, saying that collectives that pay most of their money to athletes may not be charitable enough. The I.R.S. has said it will audit some collectives to determine if they still merit tax exemption.

Trying to diversify its income stream beyond wealthy donors, Iowa State’s We Will Collective now raises money to pay athletes by selling branded beer, vodka and We Will Gluten-Free Meat Lovers pizza.

Above: Iowa State-branded beverages

North Carolina

The N.C.A.A. is now seeking to loosen its rules about schools working with N.I.L. collectives, and U.N.C. is already moving toward centralizing three now-independent collectives and taking a tighter grip on them.

The University of Alabama’s collective, which has both a for-profit and a nonprofit side, releases few details about its activity. Last year, Elliot Maisel, a board member of the nonprofit, told The New York Times that its spending was entirely dictated by the school’s athletic department — despite N.C.A.A. rules that barred schools from securing payments for players. Days later, Mr. Maisel reversed himself, saying he did not know how his group spent its money after all.

Above: Alabama guard Mark Sears

Clemson University used to have a large nonprofit collective, but it closed down after the I.R.S. said paying athletes should not count as charity — a warning many collectives have seemed to ignore. Now, Clemson’s main collective is a for-profit organization run by a former university employee.

Like most everything in college sports, N.I.L. collectives are dominated by football. At the University of Texas, about 70 percent of all N.I.L. payments have gone to football players, according to statistics provided by the school. Arizona, though, has sports-specific collectives. Arizona Assists gets money to men’s basketball players. Joining as a Corporate Cat requires yearly contributions of more than $10,000.

The University of Houston’s collective, LinkingCoogs, signed a $350,000 deal for the basketball team to endorse a Houston personal-injury lawyer, according to the news site on3.com . They could have used an advocate on Sunday, when four players fouled out in an overtime win over Texas A&M.

Houston players endorsed a personal injury lawyer on Instagram in March.

In 2022, Duke’s basketball team was among the first to hire a dedicated “general manager” to help players seek out N.I.L. income. Before this general manager gig, Rachel Baker worked at Nike, building the brands of professional athletes like Kevin Durant.

What kind of perks do donors to these collectives get? At N.C. State, the Savage Wolves collective sent an athlete to cheer on one of its donors’ sons during the son’s lacrosse tryout. “This kid was looking at him like he was Superman,” said Tom Livolsi, who runs the collective.

Marquette University coach Shaka Smart focuses on an unusual statistic: deflections, meaning times that one of his players tips or redirects an opponent’s shot or pass. Marquette’s Be the Difference collective has now asked fans to donate money for each deflection during the tournament. Smart tells players he wants 32 deflections per game, so those pledges could add up.

Above: Marquette University coach Shaka Smart

N.I.L. payments to international players are bound by strict limits on their ability to work in the United States. But Zach Edey, the team’s star Canadian center, has still benefited from what are considered “passive” endorsements, which are allowed. Mike Bobinski, the school’s athletic director, said in an interview last year that Edey made money off of his photo on soda cups sold in the team arena’s concession stands, as well as merchandise in stores on campus. Purdue’s collective, the Boilermaker Alliance, has also lined up agreements with three Canadian charities. Altogether, Edey’s N.I.L. compensation is believed to come close to or match what he could have made on a professional contract had he left the school after last season.

Gonzaga’s collective is run by the B.P.S. Foundation, a tax-exempt charity that puts donor money at the disposal of for-profit collectives, letting the for-profit entities determine how money is given out. (Arizona also has a collective run by the B.P.S. Foundation.) Tax experts have said nonprofits should operate independently. But the approach is working: The B.P.S. Foundation saw revenue climb to $14 million in 2023 from $3.4 million in 2022.

B.P.S. Foundation annual revenue

$14 million

$3.4 million

Creighton’s business school offers athletes an N.I.L. seminar, with topics like how to file their income taxes and how to build a personal brand. Players also get paid by The Bird Club, its men’s basketball collective, for events with kids. Last year, one of them included a dunk tank where kids got to dunk their favorite players.

The University of Tennessee’s collective, the Volunteer Club, was under investigation by the N.C.A.A. for flying a quarterback prospect who agreed to an $8 million N.I.L. deal to Knoxville on a private plane. But Tennessee’s attorney general sued to stop the investigation, and a federal judge ruled that the N.C.A.A. could not stop collectives from offering cash to attract recruits.

Produced by Charlie Smart . Noah Weiland contributed reporting. Photos by Denis Poroy/Associated Press, Young Kwak/Associated Press, Michael Conroy/Associated Press.

Inside the World of Sports

Dive deeper into the people, issues and trends shaping professional, collegiate and amateur athletics..

The Kim Mulkey Show: The L.S.U. women’s basketball coach has made her fashion choices a talking point , a reflection of her own larger-than-life personality and a tool to draw attention to the sport.

Pushing Back on Betting: People can now legally wager on the individual performances of student athletes. The N.C.A.A. isn’t happy .

Back to the Big Time: For those wanting to trace the evolution of money and college sports over the past half-century, Southern Methodist University offers a perfect example .

Hope in Little Tokyo: For a Los Angeles community contending with gentrification and an aging population, the Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s accession with the Dodgers has been galvanizing .

Ice Skating and the Brain: How do champion skaters accomplish their extraordinary jumps and spins? Brain science is uncovering clues .