Every year nearly 330,000 college students don uniforms and become student-athletes for their respective schools (NCAA). These students participate in a wide variety of interests, from football to crew, cross country to golf. The sports surely vary in public interest and the amount of revenue that each attains each competitive season. Sports seem to have played a role in shaping post-secondary education from the time of the earliest universities. They provide a means for the students of that university to connect in support of their teams. College athletics add excitement to life that is surely not replicated in the classroom. Sports competitions give everyone connected to that university a sense of pride and unity that can only come from these activities. Yet this sense of school spirit comes at a cost to those directly involved. The student-athlete that has to practice up to 20 hours per week--the National Collegiate Athletics Association's (NCAA) maximum allotted hours- along with the approximately eighteen hours of class time and numerous hours of studying, this results in a week that is easily over forty hours of work. Clearly, he is s

It is not debated that a scholarship is in a sense a form of payment. Few in the NCAA would dispute that. Athletes are being paid to play athletics for their school. And their pay is a scholarship. But it's not enough. When university athletic departments are benefiting from these players, to the tune of millions of dollars annually, and student-athletes are receiving only an education - that they may or may not want - it just isn't enough. A scholarship is nice, but it doesn't pay the bills for many of those players.

"Pay for Play: Should College Athletes be Paid For Playing Sports?" http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/hyperwriting/webarguments/fuerst/

urely not receiving a reward equivalent to what he provides. Student-athletes should be compensated for the crucial services -the ones that give the university a good image-- that they provide, entertainment. With the current costs of college, the student-athlete is facing a battle every day in finding a way to pay for college while his time is taken up with his job of providing the university with a good athletic image. Something must be done to help compensate the student-athletes of American colleges and universities, that is to provide a stipend to the entertainers who are working extremely hard every day to make their university look good.

Opponents of the pay-for-play idea say that student-athletes should not be paid because through scholarship, they are already being paid. They also say that one can't put a price tag on a university education - that a university education is priceless.

Many people say that the athletes receive scholarship as compensation. Scholarships are not enough compensation for all that athletes do for a university. Academic scholarships are awarded for the same amount of money to students with no "catches." All that students on academic scholarships have to do is keep a certain number of credit hours and a certain GPA. Even if an athlete is on a full-ride scholarship (tuition, room, board, and books) this stipend does not include money to go home on weekends or holidays, going on a date, or just generally having a good time with friends. These activities are a big part of the college experience but the NCAA prohibits them indirectly. Freshmen on a full-ride are not usually allowed to hold a job. Other athletes are allowed to work only at c

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Approximate Word count = 1588
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)