The NCAA does not understand what it is like being a student athlete in today’s world where it can be very expensive and costly to do work without pay. Not to mention that many student athletes are African American and families with low income with poor backgrounds and not having economic resources. Coming from the bottom of the economic ladder in the United States of America is the worst especially with the United States special history with African Americans. The history of slavery whose effects of oppression and low income can still be felt today. To have those students and other students many of whom also come from lower economic standing, it is hard to have them in college where it is already expensive to go and then have them working and bringing in all this money to the universities and colleges they pay for, for free. A Sporting News report stated that 86% of student-athletes live in poverty. Student-athletes are not asking to get rich. They are asking not to have to worry about helping their poor family out or worrying about where their next meal will come from. The NCAA and schools have the money in a lot of cases to simply make things better.
There have been many people who have advocated for student athletes getting paid including current athletes and celebrities. The NCAA sees that student athletes are struggling while in school and continue to watch as they make millions off the back of free labor. According to author Steve Cameron “In the 2016-2017 school year, NCAA revenue reached $1 billion. Many people have argued that the players who drive this revenue don’t receive the true value that they bring to their schools. Regardless of how much money the NCAA makes, it refuses to pay college athletes. NCAA athletes are also prohibited from profiting off of their name, image, or likeness. The NCAA uses “amateurism” to justify these terms in courtrooms, but former athletes are pushing for a share of the revenue.”
The NCAA is making big bucks off the back of our free labor and we need some the share of the money we bring in especially when less than 1 percent of us actually make to be successful professionally in our sport. That is the least they can do for us is give us couple thousand dollars they making billions without giving us a cent. I am not just advocating for basketball players. I’m referring to all student athletes.
Also, for the naysayers who think we can just get on campus job to compensate us when we basically give these sports teams our lives we do not have time to do any other work and barely enough time to have personal lives. According to author Jake Novak, A 2014 study by the National Labor Relations Board showed that players at major college football programs “spend 50 to 60 hours per week on their football duties during a one-month training camp prior to the start of the academic year and an additional 40 to 50 hours per week on those duties during the three- or four-month football season.”
We do not have time do any other form of work as a student athletes this our job and we need to get paid for it.
Student Athletes getting Paid 