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Pros, cons on pay for play
Why pay for play is good
• Players are entitled to some compensation because of the revenue they bring in and the risk of injury they face.

• Athletes from poor backgrounds cannot rely on their families for money, and because of the demand of the sport, they have no time for jobs.

• The money that football and men's basketball programs make should go back to those athletes rather than pay for the other sports at school.

• Paying athletes might help stem the tide of those going pro early.

• Paying athletes could curb abuses such as players taking money from boosters or agents.

What they say ...

• "They are unpaid workers, and in big-time college athletics, not just football, there are no amateurs. Whenever you get something of value for performing athletically, you're a professional. They call it a scholarship, fees, books, tuition and so forth. What I want is the athletes to have some spendable money."

— Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers, a longtime supporter of providing stipends to college athletes, who submitted a bill in 2003 that would allow football players at Nebraska to be paid a stipend

• "Sometimes, it just doesn't seem fair. I'm at the No. 1 football school in the country right now, and I'm struggling to get groceries every month."

— Oklahoma center Vince Carter before his football team played LSU in the BCS national championship game

•"I think (a stipend) could work. A lot of kids don't have enough money. It doesn't go very far. I can't see how it would damage college sports if the university controlled the money. At some point the NCAA needs to revisit and re-evaluate this."

—Fan Rita Stanley,Columbia, S.C.

Why pay for play won't work

• Paying only men's basketball and football players would be challenged in court. Title IX suits would be filed because female athletes wouldn't get similar funds.

• Where would the money come from? Most athletic departments do not make a profit.

• Non-revenue sports would have to be cut because there wouldn't be sufficient funds.

What they say ...

• "The NCAA historically has been against pay for play. I couldn't agree more with that position. If you start paying student-athletes (other than assisting them through financial aid), you essentially ruin the integrity of the college game."

— NCAA PresidentMyles Brand

• "Even if born of the best of intentions, pay for play is the worst of ideas, ranking right up there with the Edsel, Enron accounting and the notorious Vietnam rationale, 'We must destroy the village to save it.' ... If we begin to equate a student-athlete's play with the recompense pocketed every month, we have skidded to the bottom of a very slippery slope."

— NCAA Division I board of directors chairman Robert Hemenway, chancellor at the University of Kansas, last year to NCAA News

"The best thing about college sports is the passion. You're playing for the love of the game, not because you're getting paid. If money started getting involved, I worry that college sports could be corrupted. I like things the way they are now."

— Fan James Fitzpatrick, 16,Round Rock, Texas




I AGREE .... IT IS A NO WIN SITUATION!