Why college athletics?
For our group, college athletics was an easy topic to choose. As a student-athlete, many implications come with the responsibilities of playing for a team. Many athletes feel that for the hard work and dedication that they sacrifice, there should be compensation, especially for bigger athletic programs. Even though revenue within athletics has constantly been an issue in sports, often we see that student-athletes continue to take money under the table. Within deeper analysis and research, it is evident that the real issue for many is the very structure and framework of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves. With so many people paying for tickets and watching games on television, college sports has become a very big business. Big-revenue football schools easily earn millions in profits a year, even after paying coaches multimillion-dollar salaries. The question is how to allocate the money that the university receives in ticket sales and television dollars. The big-time sports programs that bring in more than they cost (usually football and men’s basketball) use the surplus money to fund sports that don’t (swimming, track, etc.) Even after considering other questions dealing with college athletics like "Which athletes deserve to get paid?" or "Why not just phase in a cap on coaches’ pay?", it is important to remember that the vast majority of college athletes are in college because they want a college degree. Even among the tiny minority of athletes who have a shot at playing sports professionally, most understand the value of a college degree as a fallback or to help them after a hoped-for sports career. College athletes are not immune to the general societal understanding that a college education has a lot of value. We took that into heavy consideration when completing this project and creating our approaches.