For many years the great tradition of college sports has graced our great country. Over those 100 plus years, college athletes had to maintain high academic honors just to play sports. Seemingly, the times have changed. Now, academics have become second to athletics and most athletes never graduate from college. Recently, college athletes are even pushing for a bill to pass that would grant them money just to play college sports. Would this not take away from our time-honored traditions?.
Do college athletes not receive enough extra-funding already? While it is an accomplishment to earn an athletic scholarship, they should not be worth more money than an academic scholarship. Auburn University paid over $100,000 in scholarship money to softball star Holly Currie, and it only paid $60,000 to academic scholar Scott Moore who made a 30 on his ACT and had a 4.0 GPA. .
Athletic scholarship recipients not only receive free schooling, a place to stay, and are also offered on campus jobs. Usually, these jobs have minimum labor and very good pay. So why would these students need to be paid for playing their sports? Most college students who have a part-time job usually work to pay living expenses. Athletic scholars already have their expenses paid for.
By paying a college athlete, we are taking the emphases off academics and placing them on athletics. We should be doing the exact opposite. 99.9 percent of college athletes never play pro sports (Bianchi, 2001, p.2). So, why should we stress college sports so heavily, when only 99.9 percent make a profession out of them? Not only that, the national graduation rate for college scholarship athletes is 50% (Stewart, 2001, p.2). I see no point in pumping more money to the athletics, if it's already wasting 50% of the money on scholarships never finished. .
If this bill was to pass it would have tremendous effects of the Universities. For instance, where would smaller universities get the money to compete with the larger, well-off universities? Because the more money you have, the more you can afford better players.
