Well college sports fans, it’s happening. The NCAA is working on making a plan that allows college athletes to profit off of their likenesses.

This means the potential return of the NCAA football and basketball games by EA Sports, which is something fans have been eagerly waiting for.

But this decision runs deeper than a video game. It’s deeper than the fans. It’s the athletes in general being affected.

Now, most college athletes already get a free and some even simplified education. They get all of the officially licensed gear exclusive to the program and all of the attention that comes with being a college athlete.

Then, there’s the hurdle of paying these athletes for using their names and likenesses. This is against the rules for now in the NCAA, which was a highly debated topic, until now.

All of this said, athletes deserve to be paid. Sure they get all of the benefits of being at a high-caliber school, but they should at least have the ability to profit off of their likenesses.

Likenesses are a fancy term for the names of the athletes. Anything that has the athlete’s name on it. Let’s say you meet an athlete at an airport. You want his or her autograph, but they’re in college. They cannot give you an autograph, according to current NCAA rules. 

The NCAA may mask it as just “names and likenesses”, but it’s more than that. That’s what the college sports organization wants you to think; that it’s something that can be hidden under the rug. The NCAA needs to allow athletes to be able to receive money, especially to help others.

Take Ohio State’s Chase Young. He’s a star defensive lineman for the Buckeyes football team who took out a loan to help get his girlfriend to watch him in the 2018 Rose Bowl. Young promptly paid off the loan, yet is facing consequences from the NCAA because it’s a violation of their rules.

This is unnecessary on many levels. Yes these are stars in their respective sports, but they’re also college kids. College students who don’t play sports can take out loans and receive gifts. Why can’t athletes like Young?

Probably the most absurd violation that the NCAA found out about was at the University of Oklahoma. 

According to an article on mentalfloss.com, three athletes enjoyed some pasta at a banquet for graduation in 2013. They apparently ate too much pasta and didn’t follow the NCAA’s guidelines for such actions. Each athlete had to pay $3.83 to make up for what they had done.

As impossible as that sounds, it’s true. Players were punished for going up to the food table for seconds. Other people do that on Thanksgiving and they don’t have to pay for it.

In other words, there’s no law that tells someone that citizens of the United States cannot receive money or enjoy the biggest bowl of pasta they want. 

Most college athletes are from the United States. Athletes are not above anybody in the hierarchy of citizens. They’re just like us. They’re normal people trying to make it to the big time.

Even though most athletes that play college sports receive scholarships, there are also students who play without a scholarship. Those student-athletes are called walk-ons. 

Now you might be thinking; wait… aren’t these scholarships monetary? Yes. But it’s more than that. College athletes do not receive money for playing sports. They just get a free, less strenuous education to go along with everything on the athletic side of things.

But walk-ons get none of this. They have to work for everything they get. They have to fight tooth and nail to even get a spot on the roster. 

Along with deserving to be paid, college athletes deserve to lead normal lives. They deserve to have gifts that they want on Christmas Day. Not gifts that have to follow the NCAA’s rules.

The NCAA has taken this too far. They can’t keep blocking people from being given monetary benefits. They already know it’s happening under the table. 

So please, National Collegiate Athletic Association, make it snappy. We can’t wait until 2021. Make an effective plan for college athletes to be paid. It’s for the benefit of everybody; from kids playing video games to the athletes putting in the daily work for the success of their team.