By: Bennett Ricker

One of the more controversial topics of sports is if these athletes should be paid for what they do. But with this being said there is absolutely no doubt that these athletes should be rewarded for their success.

California is the first state to pass the Fair Pay to Play Act which is a breakthrough for compensating collegiate athletes. Now in the upcoming years, many more states will be proposing this law, for example, Colorado, Florida, And Minnesota are just a few of them.

Students at schools very much support these claims to pay the athletes as 53% of them agree to pay them. Now with these players making money, the superior athletes are the only ones that should be played because they are the ones that are generating all the revenue.

“Starting players should be paid due to the amount that they contribute to the team,” said Heritage junior and starting right tackle Vicente Hughes.

Furthermore paying the elite athletes should be the only it is for example last year during the march madness tournament Duke’s Phenom Zion Williamson had an entire camera crew for him and it was called the “Zion Cam” and he had all this exposure and didn’t profit a cent.

Although many may argue that getting a free education is good enough for the student-athletes although it’s truly not like that. For example, collegiate athletes spend around 42+ hours on their sport a week and then have to manage their grades. So compensating these world-class athletes is the least the NCAA could do.

Adding a salary is another reason for these student-athletes to keep playing because it would be looked at as an incentive. For instance, only a slim 2% of college athletes go pro so if they get paid it would be beneficial for them so they could pay for things that their scholarship doesn’t cover.

In another way supplying athletes would help stop college scandals. Now many people aren’t aware that many colleges get in trouble for paying athletes to commit to their schools and sometimes it doesn’t always work. Unfortunately, Ole Miss received a 2 year Bowl Ban for going against NCAA rule and paying athletes.

Update: On Tuesday, October 29th the NCAA unanimously voted to allow athletes to benefit from their image and likeness. This is a major change for the NCAA as it breaks away from its rule to not pay athletes. Now the organization has made a statement that rules will still need to be made for each division but as of now, athletes will be compensated starting 2023.