The main question plaguing college athletics today is where the boundary between receiving earned money and being given free money is. It’s a very grey topic to discuss, and many conflicting arguments are involved in the discussion.

It would be hard to miss the presence of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in today’s athletics, as their reign spans from video games to their multi-billion dollar Men’s Basketball “March Madness” Tournament. According to Forbes, corporations like CBS and Turner Broadcasting make more than $1 billion dollars off the games; large portions of that money coming from 30 second ad spots during the tournament that cost around $700,000.

Not to mention to millions of dollars the NCAA makes off partnerships with corporations like EA Sports for rights to players and teams. Annually, the NCAA makes over 6 billion dollars off their athletes, while none of that money goes to the players who produce this unimaginable revenue. Granted, athletes are given scholarships, but regardless of what oppositions states the true fact is that a majority of these scholarships are not full rides, but partials.

Due to the passing of Title IX in 1972, the regulation of scholarships for each sport resulted in the decrease in the amount of money that could be given to any individual athlete.The outcome resulted in sports like swimming, baseball, softball, golf and others only having partial money to offer athletes.

Normal college students typically have jobs to help pay for various expenses such as clothes, food, and other small payments that are necessary to function, but what about athletes? There certainly isn’t enough time for athletes to get a job as they typically have no time for anything beyond their education and sport. Besides, it’s against NCAA rules to even have a job.

So once again the question comes up, where do athletes get any sort of income from?

If the NCAA keeps up its poor treatment of athletes, there will be eventual consequences. In the past few months Northwestern’s football team has become the first group of college athletes to unionize; something that will be seen more in the future.