Should College Athletes be Paid? National Championship Tonight

With the College Football National Championship coming up tonight between Alabama and Clemson, some interesting points are made in an article in the Washington Post about paying college athletes.

The article is written by Donald H. Yee, a lawyer who represents professional athletes and coaches including New England’s Tom Brady. The article basically says the NCAA and school’s make a ton of money, so why not pay the athletes.

Each conference the school is from, win or lose, will receive $6 million. The conference schools those team beat to get to the finals will receive the same amount. An organization that runs the playoffs, not the NCAA, will receive $470 million.

Some of the players in the game will be future NFL stars and make a lot of money, but many will be playing their last game ever and will have to get a real job. The NCAA makes $1 billion dollars a year on unpaid labor.

The two sports pointed out in the article are football and basketball and the fact that 54% of football players and 64% of basketball players are black. Athletics administrators and coaches, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white.

The NCAA refuses to pay student athletes because they are exactly that, ‘student athletes’ and play for the love of the game and for their alma maters. Whatever the argument is the ‘game’ tonight should be good one.

You can read the whole article here: washingtonpost.com