College Athletes Deserve To Be Paid Essay examples -- Essays Papers

College Athletes Deserve To Be Paid College athletics are some of the biggest and most popular events in the country today. There are many people that make significant amounts of money from college athletics. However, the athletes themselves do not make any money from playing. If college athletes were paid it would solve a lot of the problems that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) faces every year as well as improve play and make college athletics stronger. Throughout the past few years, the NCAA, which was previously viewed as the top basketball organization other than the NBA, has taken a backseat to the professional leagues of Europe. In the 2001 NBA draft of the first eight people selected only two of them had ever played a day of college basketball. The main difference between the players of the European leagues and NCAA athletes is that professional European players are paid. These European leagues, that have produced some of the top young players in the world the past few years, have players as young as 14 years old playing in them. Paying their athletes would bring the NCAA to a level even with European leagues and close the gap with the NBA. Today major college athletes are required to work all year for their sport. The season does not start with preseason practice and end when their last game is played, athletes train 365 days a year for their sport. Their main purpose upon coming to college is to play basketball. What normal college student would devote more than 20 hours per week all year outside of school at something that they did not get paid for? The NCAA has a strict policy that no athletes are to receive any kind of payment or... ...was the most widely followed sports in the world. The NCAA and especially it’s basketball has seen a sharp decline in the number of athletes that go to the professional level, as well as the number of people that follow the sport. Paying its athletes would not immediately fix the problem but it is the first step in the right direction. Times have changed since giving an athlete a scholarship for four years would be all that they wanted or the best offer that they could get at that time. Now some college athletes are world famous and they know that there are offers that are better for them and their families out there besides staying in college for four years. The NCAA is a great organization, but all the great organizations over time have adapted with the times to keep them on top and at the forefront of the competition. The NCAA needs to do a little bit of updating.