Since its foundation in 1906, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has controlled intercollegiate sports and enforced a regulation forbidding student athletes from being paid. However, in July 2021, the laws governing collegiate athletics which permit college athletes to generate money from corporate sponsorships and accept money from supporters will change. Now the argument is whether it is fair for individual players to gain money or whether they should share it with their colleagues. 

College athletes have not been paid since the initial structured athletic events between colleges and institutions in the late nineteenth century. College amateurism parallels the “aristocratic amateurism” of sports performed in Europe at that point. By the early twentieth century, college football had earned a reputation for rowdiness and aggression, much of which contributed to the formation of the NCAA, which prohibited professionalism in college athletics and enforced restrictions limiting compensation for student athletes. The guidelines are designed to protect student participants’ amateur status. The NCAA justified the laws on two grounds: professional players would lose interest in the games, and limiting payment to restricted scholarships ensures that collegiate athletes stay a part of the college community.

I believe that athletes should be permitted to generate income from boosters such as arrangements with corporations to use their names, photos, and likenesses; and to endorse items, but they must split it with their colleagues. As stated in the article, athletes are not eligible for any advantages related to their engagement in sports. Football and men’s basketball have earned billions of dollars for tv networks, corporate sponsors, and institutions throughout the years. Coaches are now frequently paid seven figures. The players, on the other hand, could only expect a free — and frequently cursory — education. According to the article, “maybe 519,000 of the approximately 520,000 students currently participate in college athletics make nothing at all.”