English Essay
1/12/15
Paying Collegiate Athletes
The Intercollegiate Athletic Association National Collegiate Athletic Association was founded in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt. In 1910 it took the name of National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA is a nonprofit association that regulates collegiate athletes. The NCAA has always allowed colleges to offer scholarships to athletes. However, a new discussion has come up recently. More and more of the athletes believe that they should get payed to play in college.
Bleacher Report, a digital media company based out of San Francisco, gave a report back on March 27, 2014 titled, “If College Football Players Are Going to Get Paid, Here’s How
It Should Be Done”. In the article, it mentions that athletes playing for a Division 1 school get a
$2,000 stipend on top of their scholarship. That stipend is theoretically supposed to pay the difference between what is covered by the scholarship and the actual cost of college. If collegiate athletes were to be paid, Bleacher Report reports that it should be on an individual level, not based on the sport. They report that athletes should be allowed to advertise for companies and get paid for that also. To prevent companies from overpaying athletes, they would put in place a salary cap. There could be different kinds of caps though. There could be caps based on local, regional, and national businesses; or just create one cap that limits what an athlete could earn in any given year. If the NCAA agrees to paying athletes, athletes would be considered employees. In this case, scholarships and any other money that were received would be taxable. The Bleacher Report believes that even though some people may not want college athletes to get paid, it is in the near future.
The Cable News Network, CNN, reported back on August 30, 2014 titled, “The collegeathlete pay case that almost didn’t happen”. Sara Ganim from CNN took more of a legal course on college athletes getting paid. CNN reported about a lawsuit filed by former
UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon. Ed was playing a NCAA basketball game at his house one day when he realized that his name was being used on a video game and he was receiving no benefits from it. His case was one of the starting cases of NCAA players wanting to get paid. According to CNN, the NCAA was on the defense saying that college athletes shouldn’t be paid. For this reason, EA Sports, a video game maker, stopped making its line up of college games. The lawsuits continued and athletes started questioning how the NCAA was making millions off of their names. CNN reported more on how athletes should be allowed to