By Austin Herrington
The debate about whether student-athletes should get paid to play in college has been going on for years now. I believe student athletes are one of the hardest working students you will find a college. According to NCAA.org, graduation rates among student athletes jumped from 74% in 2002 to 88% in 2018. Student athletes are also required by their team and NCAA and NAIA rules to keep their GPA at a certain requirement or they will be dropped form the team. The NCAA rule to stay in sports require you to have a GPA of 2.0 and be enrolled in at least 16 credits of class courses. Thought the GPA requirement may sound real low, but with what little time athletes have from having school all day, to have a late practice, to getting home at a late time can be very draining and most of the time you will be too tired to get homework time in. Athletes in general do not like to lose, so their will to stay in school and do good in their classes may come easier than most think. According to Forbes, the typical Division I college football player devotes 43.3 hours per week to his sport, that is 3.3 more hours than the typical American work week. Most of the college funds usually come from the sporting events. The NCAA currently produces $11 billion in annual revenue from colleges sports; that is more than he estimated total league revenues of both the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League, according to Forbes. It is no surprise that college brings in a lot of fan interaction on the television. Sportscenter is constantly talking about these future basketball, football, and baseball stars but they are not getting the actual compensation they deserve. I believe that college athletes should get paid because their sport is more grinding on a single person than the average person thinks.