I had a very busy and exciting day on Wednesday, February 7th, as I had just signed to play football for Texas A&M Commerce. The very next period after the signing I had my economics class. With all the buzz of national signing day two friends and I began looking up all the other recruits in the Class of 2018 and searched to see where they had signed. While we were exploring, our teacher advised us to try and relate the topic to the course and things we had been discussing in class. So we happened to jump on the thought express and ended up at the destination of should the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, pay their players? (Just to clarify I am speaking across players of all sports but for the purpose of this essay and my love for the sport, I will be focusing on football)
After diving deep into the subject, I found a few articles and facts to help provide reasons why the NCAA should and shouldn’t pay their athletes. I will start with the idea that the NCAA should pay their athletes. When searching the first fact I decided to look up was how much revenue the NCAA makes off of college athletics. The results I found were astounding! The NCAA currently makes nearly $11 Billion in yearly revenue from college sports. If you didn’t know, that’s more than the estimated total league revenues of both the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League! 
In 2014, the University of Alabama reported $143 million in athletic revenues and that itself racked up more than all 30 NHL teams and 25 of the 30 NBA teams. If these numbers aren’t convincing that universities and the NCAA are more than capable of paying their athletes then I don’t know what is.
21st Century Citizenship 