College athletes should not, as has been proposed, be permitted to receive payment for their sports performance beyond scholarships and other forms of state or school financial aid. College athletes are, in nearly all cases, going to college for free on sports-related scholarships and in addition to this aid to pay for college, are also still eligible to receive other college loans. In effect, there payment is in the classroom, both in terms of the education received and the free money to get it.
While they cannot accept money from professional recruiters and are barred from receiving other benefits from the college’s sports organizations, the fact remains that they are being compensated already for their performance on college sports teams. College is very expensive and most students are not able to have a full-ride scholarship, even for academics. In fact, full academic scholarships from success by students in the classroom are very difficult to come by in themselves while nearly all members of a sports team are allowed to go to college for free. In exchange for this free ride through college, the members of a sports team are expected to perform well in both the classroom and in their sport, and this is a fair deal as it is.
College athletes have the opportunity to play well and if they are good enough, receive national attention that can later lead to a bid to play highly-paying professional sports. Even if they do not go on to play professionally, they likely do not face some of the high numbers of loans regular students face just to pay their tuition. Again, it should be recognized that it would not be easy to play college sports, especially with the balance between a demanding practice and game schedule as well as the rigors of college-level course loads, but by managing to balance these things well between the classroom and the team, college sports players have an advantage when they go to look for a job after college because they can prove that they were committed individuals who balanced a tough schedule and still managed to be very good at their sports.
If we began giving college athletes a potion of the revenues generated by the university from sporting events, we would be heading down a dangerous path by creating wealthy college students who were not just there for the education-they would be there for the money instead. Not paying them directly keeps the emphasis on education, which should be the main reason the player decides on any school in particular.
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