College Student Athletes and Paying in College

As a regular college student, we already face the stress of classes and organizations and trying to manage our social lives. That alone causes us anxiety and sometimes depression. Now imagine having to face long days of excruciating training, a strict diet , managing classes and still having to stay up to finish essays due at 5am or 12am. That sounds horrific to me seeing as i can barely handle being a normal college student but this is the struggle our fellow athletic classmates face everyday before a game day.

Many will say “well they are paying for you to go to school isn’t that enough” Look at it like this, from 5am to 10pm they are practicing and going to classes. Say they have a test or anything the next day so now they have to stay up for another 4 hours or so trying to study along with getting homework done. This is a process that repeats everyday for 7 days weekends included, excluding class. So let me ask you this, when in this schedule do they have time to actually work a real job to have their own spending money for things they may need? How do they provide for themselves the things that their scholarship doesn’t provide for them. Many students, athletes or not, already struggle with trying to pass classes i understand that. However as a regular college student we have the opportunity to have a job no matter how stressful it may be.

I’ve took you through the struggle now let me take you through the consequences. Mamy students that i know that are apart of any sports organization have never missed a class. I’ve always wondered why that was because even as a regular college student class and its work can become a bit stressful for me so I may take a day or two to just regroup myself but whenever I get missed work it was always from an athlete. Many colleges have a contract with their athletes. With that being said athletes have really little to no freedom. They are always being monitored by their coaches and scouts from the NFL looking to recruit them so, if they mess up then what? If one of their teammates are late for practices the whole teams runs or “conditions” until they are blue in the face. There are many other consequences but the one far worse that many students athletes dread is if they mess up to severely they can get kicked off the team and their scholarship can be revoked. So now what? How are they gonna pay for those pre med classes when financial aid has already been distributed? Are they suppose to use the money they had saved up from the job they didn’t work? This is why student athletes work themselves to the bone to avoid from ending up in this situation.

“Why should they be paid if this is something that they wanted to do.” This may be true however, why should you be paid by the state to go to college when this is something you wanted to do? Just because they wanted to do this doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be paid. WE are getting school paid for us to go to college to do a job that we want to do that will pay us. Same goes for student athlete but they don’t have the same “leisure time” As a regular academic student has. Their leisure time is spent either on the field or in their dorm studying and doing homework while we spend our leisure time either at work or out somewhere having fun. Not to mention that coaches and the NCAA are getting profited on the players behalf and are also being paid to work them to near death. Considering how much college football games and the program generates from these athletes it would make sense for them to see some profit coming out of it. Since without the football players the football program wouldn’t even be running they should at least get some type of cut from it. Say from now until the end of football season the football players decided they wanted to on strike. Honestly, the football program most likely wouldn’t be able to handle it since most of their incomes including the coaches and anyone else involved in working from would be seriously hurt since there would be no money coming in from anything.

These students risk their well being going out onto the field. There is a chance that may be injured and their whole life could be over and they didn’t receive any profit from what they wanted to do since they couldn’t be paid in college. They also risk their sanity with lack of sleep and the stress of being good on and off the field and in class. I feel any athlete whether it be football or swim team should be paid. Not only is it them thats paying for the coach’s lives it is them that is keeping the athletics program alive and they should receive more than just a scholarship to a school that wants them to perform for them to keep the school’s reputation up.

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