Four months ago, the NCAA said college athletes will be paid for their name and likeness, ensuring college athletes the opportunity to make a decent amount of money in their college days.

College athletes can earn money from their name, image and likeness, the NCAA ruled. The NCAA has approved a temporary policy to allow college athletes in all three divisions to get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness, which is a positive development in the eyes of athletes. According to a former Division-I football player, “They should definitely be paid just because they go through hard stuff in college and have different backgrounds.”

Cam Harrell played football at BBCHS for four years and committed to Iowa before transferring to Southern Mississippi, where he is currently a junior defensive back. When asked about this policy change, Harrell was in favor of the opportunity. “Yes college athletes should get paid because with school work and athletics combined, there’s no time for an actual job,” Harrell said. We are still college students, so we need a way financially to be able to sustain.”

Coach Allen, a BBCHS assistant and former defensive end for Illinois agrees.  “I truly believe they should get paid because going through my experience and eating ramen noodles almost every night, it was hard because you wouldn’t have a lot of money for college. And the work ethic you have to put into school also, it’s so hard for these student-athletes.”

This is the first time college athletes are getting paid because they were never allowed to make money since video game company EA Sports made NCAA Football until 2014. Players realized they weren’t getting money when EA was making millions of dollars off their likeness, and they felt it was wrong. A group of athletes sued EA, and the company stopped making NCAA Football video games. But it looks like that’s going to change, because EA released a statement that they will be making a NCAA football video game later this year with the new policy in place that will benefit the players.

The players really pushed for making their case to be paid, and the NCAA finally said they can make money and now some athletes can make millions of dollars on their name and likeness.

It also goes for Division II and III athletes — they can also make money because they are also in the NCAA, but you’ll rarely see them make money because they don’t have the big, recognizable names of Division-I athletes, but they still have that opportunity under the new rules.