According to the NCAA, they're "a membership-driven organization dedicated to safeguarding the well-being of student-athletes and equipping them with the skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom and throughout life". Yet they profit off college athletes' success, disregard their personal needs, and consider sports more important than their education. The NCAA makes millions off of college athletes and millions more in sponsorship and broadcasting rights for March Madness, but barely any of the profits go to the athletes who bring in the money. In 2018 alone, the NCAA made “over $1 billion in revenue and profits of about $27 million” (Kelly). For the broadcast of March Madness, the “NCAA takes in roughly $700 million annually from CBS, Turner, and ESPN...a sum that reportedly will jump to nearly $900 million per year from 2019 to 2024” (Hruby). How would you feel if you worked hours and hours every week to improve your skills and win major championships but receive nothing in return for your labor? Luckily, Governor Gavin Newsom’s newly signed Senate Bill No. 206, which was signed into law on September 30, 2019, addresses the issues of the NCAA not allowing college athletes to be paid or profit off their likeness. Affective January 2023, Bill No. 206 called the Fair Pay to Play Act will circumvent the current NCAA policy that prevents “student athletes from accepting endorsement deals or accepting payment for the use of their images” in the state of California. (Kelly). However, the NCAA finds the new act as a “challenge [to] the system of amateurism that has governed college sports for decades” and in their minds, they lose more money (Bokat-Lindell). The NCAA doesn’t care about their players, they care about how much money is in their pockets. With a majority of the NCAA's profits coming from the athletes themselves, athletes should be the ones to be paid. 

We believe college athletes aren’t pawns to a billion-dollar game and should be compensated for their hard work and views they accumulate in popularity from fans. To us, the financial aid and stipends given to athletes as compensation are just not enough.