Should NCAA "Student Athletes" get paid?

[SteelCurtain]

It's the reason too many underprivileged kids even get an opportunity to go to college, and since only 2% of the athletes ever go pro, that's a lot of college diplomas that wouldn't exist without college athletics.

What makes you think they actually graduate?


http://www.theatlantic.com/education/arc...rs/282258/

At least half of black football players on the top-10 teams won’t graduate within six years of enrolling.

Not all of them graduate, but there's still a whole lot of Division I and II athletes who may not have ever gone to college that wind up with careers in something other than sports simply because of their athletic ability and the opportunity it gave them.

There are some flaws with that study when applied to this context, as well. The top ten teams have a disproportionate amount of players that go professional at one level or another. They also have a disproportionate amount of student athletes that are there solely for their athletic talent and nothing else. To base the academic success of the entire system on black men in the NCAA Football Top 10 is a little ludicrous. I am talking about men and women that come from troubled areas who wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity for higher education outside of their athletic talent. I saw many cases of this at Navy.

Also, that study is just for football players. We are talking about all sports, here. We are talking about crew, tennis, soccer, wrestling, track and field, etc. The overwhelming majority of the scholarships that are awarded to NCAA athletes are not football scholarships.