(Image Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune)

BY KAVEH KAGHAZI

ANCHOR ZACH TOOMBS

College athletes getting paid?  NCAA President Mark Emmert announced Monday he supports a proposal for a two thousand dollar increase to student-athlete grants. Here’s what Emmert had to say at a conference on Monday.

"This week, I'll be asking the board to support a proposal to allow conferences -- not mandate anyone, but allow conferences, not individual institutions -- to increase the value of an athletic grant in aid to more closely approach the full cost of attendance."

A study conducted by the National College Players Association in September estimated the value of each college basketball player in the nation to be more than two hundred thousand dollars. But Emmert and the NCAA only want to increase the grant by two thousand dollars. So, what gives? A writer from Examiner says Emmert and the NCAA must be joking with this proposal.

“...when you stack up these numbers against what universities make on student athletes it becomes laughable.  If you throw in coach salaries and compare them to the new “raises” student athletes may be in store for, and this idea immediately becomes one of the silliest I have heard in a long, long time.”

Emmert says the proposal will be finalized this week. The increased grant will go toward tuition, fees, and housing. Some say college athletes don’t deserve anything at all. In a September interview with ESPN’s Outside the Lines, former college basketball coach Tom Penders said players today should be lucky to get anything.

“Each conference can decide what they want to pay over and above what is now a scholarship. Well that’s fine, but you know I was always told that the pot of gold came after college, after you got your degree. And I’m more concerned about money going into things like academic support.”

While the pay-for-play debate rages on, a writer for Business Insider says with this move, he believes the NCAA is moving in the right direction.

“…this plan suggests that the tide is turning and that the NCAA brass believes college athletes are under-compensated. We're miles away from outright paying players. But this is certainly a step toward that end.”