My group and I decided to do a research topic on how colleges use the revenue created from sports for. Our research question is: How should D1 colleges distribute the revenue generated from sports? Should they use that money to provide monetary compensation for student-athletes? This wasn’t our first topic we wanted to do. We wanted to research on the pros and cons of paying athletes but then after careful consideration we decided that it wouldn’t be a very successful project. We determined this would wouldn’t be a strong topic due to the fact that there are already thousands of articles on that topic.
College sports are a very huge part of our society, especially as the years pass more and more, sports have become more profound in the world, especially in the US. College sports are on the rise in the US, with more people moving from wanting to watch professionals play to watch college players play. With this amount of publicity, college players are “forced” to put on a show for the crowds and all the fans. What I mean by forced is that they are put in these huge and giant stadiums to entertain people all over the world for 2+ hours. This aspect is very important to distinguish because since these college students bring in all this publicity and money, shouldn’t they get a share of it in some way? These college athletes are putting in more than 40 hours a week just for their respective sport, those aren’t hours for academics. With that amount of hours a week, they will “work” for almost 6 hours a day if it is all 7 days of the week. If it is in fact just the 5 days of the week (no weekends) then it is 8 hours a day! This means that college athletes are working a full time job while trying to conquer their classes to gain a degree.
Somehow the college athletes need to be compensated in some way. The stress that accumulates with all these things occurring on ones back is just too much. With the money that they bring in, they should be reimbursed in some way.
-Joshua Bradley