AP English Language — Reasoning and Organization — Writing Drill 2

The following is a draft of a student argumentative essay arguing that college athletes should be compensated, written for an AP English class. [1] College athletics is a multi-billion-dollar industry. [2] The NCAA generated over one billion dollars in revenue in 2022, primarily from television contracts and tournament licensing. [3] The athletes whose labor generates this revenue are compensated with scholarships and, in some cases, name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals — but not with salaries. [4] This arrangement is presented as amateurism, but it is more accurately described as a labor structure that captures the value athletes produce while denying them the economic rights of workers. [5] Defenders of the current system argue that athletic scholarships represent fair compensation. [6] A full scholarship to a Power Five university can be worth over $300,000 over four years. [7] This is not nothing. [8] But the athletes generating the most revenue — football and men's basketball players at major programs — often come from low-income households that scholarship money alone does not fully support. [9] They cannot take outside employment without risking eligibility. [10] They cannot negotiate their compensation. [11] They are bound by rules that serve the institution's financial interests far more reliably than their own. [12] Some argue that paying athletes would destroy the culture of college sports. [13] This argument proves too much. [14] The culture of college sports has already been thoroughly commercialized — by conference realignment driven by television money, by coaching salaries that routinely exceed one million dollars, by facilities arms races that produce palatial training centers and stadiums while athletes use food banks. [15] What remains of amateurism is its application to the athletes themselves. [16] The culture argument does not defend amateurism. [17] It protects the existing distribution of revenue. [18] The introduction of NIL rights has demonstrated that paying athletes does not destroy competitive balance or fan interest. [19] Programs that predicted collapse have instead found new ways to recruit, and fan engagement has not declined. [20] The evidence of the past three years suggests that the catastrophe predicted by opponents of athlete compensation did not materialize. [21] College athletes should be compensated fairly for the value they produce. [22] The scholarship model was designed for a different era, when college athletics was genuinely amateur. [23] The industry that exists today is not that. [24] Treating its workers as amateurs is not a tradition worth preserving. [25] It is a subsidy worth examining.