The NCAA, a college sports group that millions of people around the world follow, is often overlooked as a corrupt organization that conducts illegal behavior.

There are so many arguments that could be made about college sports. One of them being that college athletes with scholarships should be paid. If a student has received a scholarship, they are already getting paid by the university. The payment is just indirect as opposed to direct. Most full ride scholarships cover housing, bedding, education and food. All things that a regular student would have to pay for. 

There are negative and positive attributes to having a scholarship. The scholarship money is one of the positive attributes and the anxiety and stress are the negative attributes. Some students admit they are too scared to stand out against the NCAA because they are afraid if their coach finds about the mini protest, they will take away their scholarship. They are also scared that their coaches will tell NFL scouts to not even bother looking at them. Another negative is the health effects that come with a scholarship. A large percentage of scholarships are given to kids that come from a lower income neighborhood/ area. This means that they do not have enough money to buy food for themselves. College athletes will start to run out of money because they are not allowed to get money from an outside source besides their parents. Athletes lack of food sometimes leads to anxiety or stress because they worry so much about if they will have enough food.

Full scholarship athletes should not be considered amateurs because they are playing for their colleges. They are risking their bodies to play the sport they do. The average scholarship is around $23,850, while the student ends up having to pay around another $3,500 per year for personal necessities. Hundreds of thousands of people pay to see these college athletes perform and the athletes aren't receiving any revenue. That is not amateurism, that is employment. These student athletes are employees. If there are no more student athletes, there is no more March Madness, Bowl games, college playoffs and conference tournaments. Most athletes go through tough labor to make money for their schools and they are getting paid absolutely nothing for it. Once they receive that scholarship money, they get paid.

In earlier college scandals, coaches would recruit kids and instruct them to take easy classes so they could focus more on their sports. These easy classes were called “paper classes”. The students would not even have attend. All they would have to do was write a single paper and submit it by the end of the semester. Some coaches would go as far as providing the professors who offered the classes with team merchandise, game tickets and cash. The student athletes that took these classes would end up graduating with a degree that is close to worthless. Instead of worrying 100% about sports, coaches should be more focused on making sure their athletes are getting a solid education.

College athletes should not be considered amateurs because they are getting paid indirectly and are working to make money for their college.