When in season college athletes spend 35 plus hours a week at practice and 30 or more hours on academics. The University of Michigan football’s team spends an average of 44.8 at practice and 40 hours working on academics. And every Saturday in the fall the play games generating just south of a 100 million dollars for the university and their athletic department. Do you know how much money the players receive? None. To be considered a full time employee in the US you need to work a minimum of 30 hours a week. Football players spend 10 more hours than some full time employees do per week on academics alone. College athletes work more than 2.5 times of a full time employee and receive no money from it at all and make millions of dollars for the university. College football players deserve to be compensated by universities in some way.

The average American full time employee works about 40 hours a week. The average football player while in season has to do about 84.8 hours a week between school and practice. They are expected to work 2 full time jobs every day and then eat and sleep and do it the next day. So they have about 6.5 hours to sleep everyday. An adult needs a minimum of 7 hours of sleep every night. Not to mention the fact that they are athletes who work 2 full time jobs, so they need at least 8 hours. So it’s not only that they are aren’t getting paid to have two jobs, they’re destroying their bodies for 3 to 5 years of their life for the university and not receiving anything. They work for the university for many years for free. Some say that they are getting fairly compensated because they get a free education. But to this I say that they football team makes it possible for other varsity sports to have scholarships and go across the country. To play other teams and in other tournaments. The football team makes it possible for all the university sports teams to play and go places and players deserve to get compensated.

I believe that college athletes also deserve to make money off the school’s apparel deal. With this I think individuals deserve to get paid. You should get paid for the amount of their jerseys gets sold. So in my theory players would get compensated for their own jersey number sold. An example would be Devin Gardner would get paid for all the number 98 Michigan jersey sold. I think this is fair because in a way the players are being sold and not benefiting from it at all. This would also encourage the apparel companies such as Nike and Adidas to start making non-football and basketball jerseys. So in my opinion players deserve to be paid by the apparel companies.

I think that college athletes need to be allowed to sell their game-used uniforms, team awards and be allowed to charge for autograph sessions. I think this because not all college athletes go on to become professional athletes. 1.7% of all college football players go pro which equates to 255 every year. That means 67,632 college football player every year is going professional in something else. The NCAA needs to let the athletes capitalize on the money they can make. Because most of these kids have a 4 to 5 year window of opportunity to make money off of their natural talent. They need to be allowed to sell awards they receive because they got the award, which means that it is their possession and you are allowed to do what you want with your possessions. The players should be allowed to sell their game worn uniforms because they get new uniforms every week and it is a waste to not let the players sell the uniforms.

College athletes, specifically football players, deserve to get paid. They deserve to get paid because they are essentially working 2 full time jobs, they deserve to get paid for their specific jersey sales because essentially apart of them is being sold and they should be allowed to sell personal game used memorabilia because it is their personal items. If you were making millions of dollars for an institution and you weren’t paid how would you feel?