Tennessee Football: College athletes shouldn’t get paid to play because of COVID-19

With COVID-19 still looming, Tennessee football and other college athletes could get paid for hazard pay for the 2020 season.

Rocky Top Talk posed an interesting question surrounding the 2020 season. Should Tennessee football and other college athletes be paid hazard pay for the 2020 season?

And I don’t mean to be “that guy” when I say this, but no, I don’t think that college football players should be paid hazard pay for the 2020 season.

Hear me out. Yes, I think college athletes should be compensated for their likeness and play on the field. Universities make a ton of money off of these players, and they’ve earned something in return. Whether that be a portion of the money made from jersey sales, video game likeness, or a stipend per game played.

I don’t know what the best formula is, but I do know that they should be getting something. That doesn’t mean that I think that they should be paid just because of COVID-19. If they are going to get paid for hazard pay, then why haven’t they been paid since the beginning of college football.

Athletes, especially in football, know the hazard of playing the sport. CTE, career-ending injuries, and life-threatening injuries are all something that the player knows could happen, but plays the game anyways.

That might be confusing, so to clear things up, I am all for paying athletes, but hazard pay is a bad excuse to pay them now when hazard has always been apart of the game.

Hazard pay would make sense if, you know, college athletes were already being paid, but what would the standard pay rate be? How would that be adjusted with hazard pay? With fans not being in the stands, can every D1 school afford to pay its athletes this year?

There are a lot of questions surrounding the topic that haven’t been answered and likely won’t be answered until athletes are officially being paid by the NCAA or its schools.