Should colleges pay athletes

[beast1989]

At the end of the day to give others more you have to take from your own piece of the pie, even if they could give more they wouldnt unless they had to. It's a business and you have to watch the bottomline.

 

[jc5420]

College athletes already get paid... They get paid with a higher ejewmuhcaeshon

 

[Gebrown]

If they were paid there would have to be some sort of cap. Otherwise programs like OU, Alabama, LSU, etc would run away with everything.
I'm 50/50 on this one. I can see good and bad.

 

[loudshirt]

But how much $ do those other 25,000 student generate for the college?
What people need to remember, at a big University Football pays for everything. The football team doesn't get to keep all the money it generates. That money is split up among the rest of the school. Which means that nerdy kid that cant play a sport to save his life but got a full ride cause he is a Science or Math prodigy.... The $ money for his scholarship probably came from the Football team lol

At most colleges Football basically pays the athletic department bills. The elite programs such as OU, Alabama, Notre Dame do make a fair bit of $ from the programs. There are many need and merit based scholarship funds that are set up to pay for the other students.

 

[SoonerATC]

No, these are student athletes, not athlete students. They should be here to get an education, not draw a paycheck.

 

[JB Books]

Some of you seem to have never been involved or around college athletics. It's a full time job. Those players make the university millions of dollars. They ought to get a decent stipend.

 

[caojyn]

I foresee it being the death of less profitable sports.

 

[Sanford]

Some of you seem to have never been involved or around college athletics. It's a full time job. Those players make the university millions of dollars. They ought to get a decent stipend.

No argument about them deserving a stipend, just disagree with the source of the funding and believe it should come from the industry rather than the educational system.

While you're absolutely correct that some players of some sports make some universities millions of dollars, I can't see that's true across the board for all players of all sports at all universities.

More to the point, team sports is also a drain on educational resources at virtually all levels below college athletics, and IMHO those costs also should be absorbed somewhere other than in the education budget and paid for with other than tax dollars.

 

[n8thegr8]

Eh, I'm biased against school athletics. The school where I went to my undergrad eliminated a whole academic program to fund a soccer team. Brought in a bunch of Brazilian foreign exchange students to fill the team, then realized none of them could speak english, so they had to create an "english as a second language" program. Most of the athletes I knew were "Kinesiology" majors, which basically means you have a degree in playing games. The entire thing is a waste of time and money if you ask me.

Also, there was a football game at OU the day I took my comprehensive exam for my masters. Parking was hell and I had to listen to the fight song all throughout my exam. That was the last straw for me and school athletics, lol.

 

[AllOut]

I agree critical bass. Many people haven't seen what a football locker room looks like at the end of games with players beat up or having to watch your friends limping to class on crutches and barely able to walk. You can tell some of their bodies are so beat down that you feel sorry for them. Football at the collegiate level is no joke, one reason why I bowed out.

Those athletes do it on their own free will, no one forced them to play. They had many other options in life but they chose sports. I know this cause I was a college athlete and so was my brother. He is now a coach...
Everyone is aware of the risks!
We choose the option of that risk for the chance of the higher reward if we make it to the next level.
What's funny about that, is we take more risks in injury with what we do now without the option of reward other than self gratification...
I don't feel sorry for any athlete, those guys are getting to have the time if their life doing what they love. Sure injuries suck but it's the nature of the beast.