Informative Speech
Everyday there can be many struggles for an NCAA student athlete. The rules of the NCAA are what can make the daily life of these student athletes a struggle. The most controversial rule for the NCAA is over whether or not the players themselves should be paid. While the colleges may pay for the athletes education, there should still be more compensation towards the players as they are the only reason that the NCAA is raking in billions.¨Due to strict regulations and rules, many believe the NCAA has taken away the honest passion, integrity, and morals that college sports should entail¨ (Morris).
For an NCAA student athlete, their daily life can be extremely busy considering that they are college students. They have to balance academics with practice, film study, working out and all the other aspects that come with the athlete part. Since the NCAA has a tight schedule for college sports, the players may be forced to miss class regularly for practices, promotional events, and nationally televised games. For example, the life of a football player starting preseason practice would start at six am and finish at eight thirty pm. In that 15 hour time span, he would only have two hours of free time. That time would assumably be used studying, but maybe not. It isn't exactly the easiest daily itinerary either considering that the whole day is basically just football. Practice, film study, lifting weights, and position meetings are mainly the only things that they get to do all day long.
For an NCAA student athlete they have no source of income. The only way that they can make money is if they can somehow have enough free time to have a job, but that would be impossible considering that they are balancing sports with school. If they had a job they wouldn´t have enough time to study. Food might be paid for by the athletes scholarship, but them being paid by the NCAA is much more than just being able to pay for food. There is also the aspect that some of the players may need to send money back home to their family. ¨Many of these athletes come from urban, low-class families and often leave school early because of the unimaginable pressure to be the main provider for their family at a young age¨ (Lemmons). Life after sports is also what people are looking at when it comes to being paid by the NCAA. ¨If schools were to begin paying players, they could also help these students build a foundation of financial literacy¨ (Patterson). Most athletes coming out of college do not know how to manage their money and when they sign their multi million dollar professional contract they blow it all on things that they do not need. Sometimes when a player retires they will have already gone bankrupt because they did not know how to manage their money. If a college player gets paid by the NCAA then they will start to develop a firm grasp on learning how to manage their money.
For an NCAA student athlete, their grades might tend to struggle. Sometimes the players are doing nothing but sports with very little amounts of free time it can be understandable as to how they could be struggling in the actual school aspect of, well... school. Sometimes the players can be at risk of graduating because they are not on top of their academics. Sometimes the players do not even go to class and that is really oad considering that their sport can prevent them from going to class anyways.
My opinion is that student athletes should be paid by the NCAA. The athletes themselves are at a risk of getting injured every play and there would be no financial compensation for the injury. For example, ¨in the 2013 NCAA tournament Louisville player Kevin Ware suffered a horrific to his lower right leg while attempting to block an opposing player´s shot¨ (Patterson). He was out for six months but recovered. He was lucky considering that other players in his situation have been paralyzed for life and other injuries have happened in practice that ended a players career before it even started. They work so hard for the chance to make it to the professional level and their careers are sometimes cut short over things they can´t control. The topic is much too one sided in favor of the NCAA in my opinion and student athletes should not have to worry about their financial situation when they have other things to stress about.