Self Generated (Entry 6)

Should college athletes be paid? As basketball season nears, The Final Four of both the Women's and Men's NCAA basketball tournaments will garner the collective attention of sports fans across the country. Brackets will be busted, nets will be cut down, and two champions will ultimately be crowned.But while those teams are celebrating a national title, the real winners of the tournaments may be their corporate sponsors, broadcasters and ultimately, the NCAA itself.The NCAA basketball tournaments, or "March Madness," have become a huge business and my personal favorite.  As Forbes' Chris Smith wrote, CBS and Turner Broadcasting make more than $1 billion off the games, Athletic conferences receive millions of dollars in payouts from the NCAA when their teams advance deep into the tournament. Ditto for the coaches of the final squads standing. The NCAA, as a whole, makes about 6 billion anually. every time that they step onto the court, field, or whatever they are playing they are at risk. just a few months ago, Louisville's Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome broken leg The huge amount of money being made off college sports has led some to question whether student-athletes can be considered amateurs any longer, and whether they should, instead, be paid for their efforts. The New York Times' Joe Nocera has been pursuing this act to reform the NCAA, and he is certainly not alone. A group of former players has filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging that student athletes are entitled to some of the money the NCAA makes off of using their names and likenesses on merchandise such as jerseys and video games.But on the flip side, the argument can be made that the opportunity to both receive an education and get the exposure to win a major professional contract more than compensates NCAA athletes for their efforts. Maybe we just need to push athletes closer to academics and reinstate the purpose of them being at the university.