Many non-athletes are often biased against student athletes and assume that they have everything given to them whether it be in the form of scholarship, clothing, equipment and food expenses. However, there is a lot more to being a student-athlete than free stuff.

Too often have I seen student athletes get taken advantage of by coaches, athletic directors, or other people who are involved in administration. As a whole, athletes have little to no power in terms of airing grievances or requesting a change within their program. Usually, these opinions and requests are disregarded.

This failure to take athletes seriously becomes an even larger problem when there is an unjust coach. I have both heard stories and personally dealt with a coach who took advantage of her athletes as well as degraded them to the point where many athletes on the team played with little to no personal confidence due to her neglective behavior.

Despite the many complaints put forth by student athletes against this coach’s unreasonable actions, their attempts to get justice or change was nearly futile. Coaches get off with a slap on the wrist or with a meaningless probation that does not result in any change. Athletes can be miserable in a program due to their coach’s ineffective tactics or terrible leadership. Sometimes coaches just need to be fired because they are unfit and should not be responsible for leading a team of skilled athletes. Using degrading methods in an attempt to “motivate” a team is a poor use of power.

At all levels of the NCAA, exploitation of athletes occurs. However, they manifest themselves in different ways depending on division, sport or gender. In more popular programs, such as men’s football, basketball, or baseball, these athletes are often only seen as a lucrative money source for the school. The athletes on these teams miss countless numbers of classes, have difficulty juggling school work with the amounts of practices and meetings they are required to attend and are still expected to perform for their school otherwise they will be cut from the team.

On a different note, many women’s teams are underappreciated and many athletic directors only keep them due to Title IX. I have had a personal friend tell me an encounter with an athletic director where he directly told her that he could care less if the whole program was cut. How is talk like this supposed to make an athlete want to perform well for their school if their athletic director has no interest or faith in them?

This phenomenon also occurs in less popular men’s sports. Men’s sports that are not popular are often times severely underfunded. Sports that are not lucrative are just not thought of as being as important, which is an unfortunate way to think about a competitive sport. Regardless of the sport, the majority of college athletes have trained for their whole lives and the sport is important to them.

Additionally, if a student-athlete desires to transfer to another school, they must be released from their current program by their coach or they will not be able to compete for an entire academic year. This rule is absolutely ridiculous. A spiteful coach can control whether or not an athlete can continue to compete for another program if that athlete is unhappy with their current situation.

A student-athlete should be able to compete for wherever they please, as the opportunity to be a college athlete is a limited one. No coach should be able to stand in the way of an athlete’s desire to play for a different school if they cannot make their current arrangement work.

The amount of ways that student athletes can be exploited is endless, and usually, it is not as pleasant as it seems. Sure it’s great to get a scholarship and some free stuff, but it should be up to coaches and administration to make sure that these scholarships are not the reason for a miserable four years of college. Becoming a college athlete after so many years of hard work is so rewarding, I just hope we can give athletes a little more say in how they are treated in the future.