No.

But let me finish, Kanye.

This issue comes up quite a bit, and with a new football season underway I thought I would give my take on it.

The main reason for my response that they shouldn't be paid is that college athletics, in their purest form, should be:

• A way for college students to have a recreational activity to take their mind off studies and develop camaraderie with fellow students
• A way for the school to raise money for school-related needs from ticket sales

Unfortunately, what college athletics have become is:

• A massive moneymaking enterprise (for everyone except the actual players)
• A free "minor league" for certain professional sports

And herein lies the problem: we have taken the "college" out of college athletics. The biggest offenders are college football and basketball, since these are two of the most popular American spectator sports, and neither have a minor league system like baseball, another popular American spectator sport.

To make matters worse in football, players aren't allowed to "go pro" straight out of high school, making college something of a necessity to gain the necessary exposure in order to be drafted into the NFL.

On one hand, this is a good thing, right? We are effectively forcing kids to go to college and get an "education", which they can then use in the event that their pro career doesn't pan out like they expect.

If you notice, I put "education" in quotes. This is because we are creating an illusion of education when we justify college athletes not getting paid by saying "the ones on scholarship are going to college for free, college is expensive, so therefore they ARE getting 'paid'. "

To get a scholarship to a top tier college program, you need to develop enough skill in your sport to the point that it effectively is your job. If you look at the day in the life of a college football player, you can see that most of it revolves around football. Sure, they have "study halls" and "academic counselors" in college to make sure the players stay eligible, but for most, college is not the main focus.

When I was in college, it was my full time job (with frequent overtime). Most of my day was spent sitting in class, and most of my night was spent doing homework and studying for tests in those classes. There would be no way I could fit in the practices, weightlifting sessions, and film studying required of college football players and still maintain a decent GPA.

While having a full-time academic counselor would have probably helped my case, they can only go so far. What separates college from all previous forms of education is that college places a greater emphasis on comprehending ideas rather than just learning facts. The main focus of college is not to just learn things, but rather learn how to learn. And this takes time, time that can't simply be made up with the help of an academic counselor.

What's the solution? Well, most college athletes simply take easier classes, take fewer classes, and maintain a GPA just good enough to stay eligible. Sure, there are exceptions. There are kids that go the extra mile and do get a good education while balancing their sport. But often these are not the best players, and on the flip side, there are also some sketchy practices done by coaches to keep their players eligible.

What's more, for most schools the minimum academic requirements aren't exactly "scholarly". Even at a prestigious institution like UNC, the minimum GPA needed by all students is a solid 2.0, right in that "meaty part of the curve". Even if a student-athlete does choose a challenging major and does graduate, if they have a 2.0 it will still be hard to find a job in today's market. Sure, they can possibly use their personality or name recognition to make up for it, but they will be fighting an uphill battle against a bunch of perfectionist non-athletes with higher GPAs and possibly relevant internship experience.

I hate to say it, but we no longer live in a country where the "C's get degrees" mentality holds. Yes, a C average will get you a degree from most colleges, but it won't get you a job. Having a college degree by itself no longer cuts it. Hell, even graduating with a 4.0 and lots of extracurriculars might not cut it in some cases. A lot of things have to go right for you to get a job straight out of college, don't count on your degree alone.

So, to sum all this up, college athletes have developed enough skill that their sport is effectively their job. They have devoted countless hours to becoming the best that they can be, all for the risk of one day developing into well-paid professional athletes.

And it is a risk, a big one.

The chance of a college athlete going pro is less than 2% for most sports. That's not exactly a great number on which to build your entire future. Even if you are a gifted athlete and have a good chance of going pro, there is always the threat of injury.

The Massive Corporate Sports Machine

Even though college athletes can't be paid, pretty much everyone else can be. College football and basketball coaches for top programs make rather obscene amounts of money, not to mention all the money the schools rake in from ticket sales, television contracts, and donations.

It seems rather odd to me that the school could afford to compensate their coaches so well and/or make massive renovations to their stadiums, but can't afford to pay their athletes, the ones actually on the field.

On top of that, I really hate it when rich alumni for a given school donate millions of dollars to the school specifically for a given athletic program. It's a college. Its purpose is to mold new minds for the next generation so that they are able to tackle new problems. It is not a sports institution where the only thing the kids need to learn is how to tackle...people.

Like I said earlier, money raised supporting college athletics should be put towards the betterment of the school itself, not just pumped back into the athletics.

Now I realize that for a given college only one or two athletic programs might actually earn money, the rest will probably lose money (and thus be funded by the more successful programs). If you are donating money to a less popular athletic program for fear that it will die out due to low funding, then go ahead. Often times, this doesn't seem to be the case, though.

So What's My Solution?

Frankly, I'm torn on this issue. On one hand, I hate to see all these young (now younger than me, unfortunately) athletes subjected to more or less slave labor for the economic gain of certain individuals and the entertainment of everyone else. They've put most of their short life's work into being a top athlete worthy of a college scholarship, and if they get injured and/or don't make it into the pros, then they will have a tough time in life (or maybe not, it depends on the individual, really).

On the other hand, college football is one of my favorite sports to watch, and the reason I think it is so fun to watch is because it features the nation's top players before they go pro.

Look at sport like baseball, where players can be drafted out of high school into an elaborate minor league (or even the big leagues if they are really good). Major League Baseball is considered "The Great American Pastime," and is one of the most popular American spectator sports. But college baseball? It's not even close to college football or basketball in terms of being as popular a spectator sport as its professional counterpart. This could be due to many reasons, but the main one is probably because college baseball does not get top talent, because all the top players have already been drafted.

It seems to me that there would be no way to really solve this problem and still keep the college sports we know and love. If college athletes could be paid, then how does that really separate them from professional athletes? Scholarships do actually cover a lot of things, and what exactly they do cover is probably dependent on a per-college per-player basis. I don't know, I didn't look it up, I'll leave it as an exercise to you (something I learned from math teachers). Perhaps by not allowing players to get paid we are saving them from all the pressures induced by agents, lawyers, and other sorts of things that come with money.

What I think is despicable, though, is if a team cuts a player's scholarship because he/she gets injured. I get it, your team is like a business and you want that business to run efficiently, you can't be throwing away money on people that aren't going to help you win. But a college athletic team is NOT and should NOT be a "business". It should be a team, a team of college academics who have a common hobby.

So my advice here is really to the college athletes themselves: focus on your studies as much as you can. Even though you are under pressure to perform on the field, try to graduate with more than just a degree in athletics. Assume that you will be one of the 98% that doesn't go pro. If you are a two-percenter, great, live it up. But have that backup plan.

Just remember that your body will one day cease to function like you probably want it to, but your mind will last a whole lot longer. Just look at Stephen Hawking, who was, by the way, a college athlete.