College athletes getting paid can actually do a great deal for universities revenue and may improve the state of the college, considering matches being held at the college would also bring in money for the college, the practice keeps the players and students in touch with sports and may improve their overall performance.

Yeah, fans are the usual reason teams make so much money and why players make more than doctors. Is your argument that it's exploitative and someone's going to lose? I agree but there's nothing ethical when we live in a capitalist system, someone is always going to lose. I brought up genuine benefits you haven't even acknowledged, that these college opportunities opening up may help a lot of students, and can have a legitimate positive result on morale and the reputation of a university. Yes, scholarships already exist, but there's money being made for both the colleges and the students if college athletes get paid. You're sending an innuendo that something horrible is going to go wrong again and that the more this becomes the norm, the state wont improve to consider this a genuine source of income.

Bringing up a genuine possibility doesn't make my argument fragile, the location of the college is also heavily reliant on this, local colleges in towns or smaller cities certainly can generate revenue for sports, no one specifically also excluded football and basketball either, just because they're popular doesn't really exclude them, it just gives a college more reason to host a football or basketball team over a swimming or cricket team. "Hand a 19-year old a paycheck and see how focused they stay on organic chemistry" is also silly to assume, not every 19-year-old thinks the same, and it's a hasty generalisation to assume they'd all slack off, on the contrary, many working-class college students families do struggle with money, and scholarship or not, earning a paycheck, however small from a sport they enjoy improving their morale isn't that far of an assumption to make. I don't see whats wrong with college students being employees either, they can be both and either ways, they'll become one in the future, thats how capitalism works unless they're independently rich. I struggle to see how that's an issue considering many college students themselves balance a work shift outside their education, so what's exactly wrong with a college student making potential revenue from a sport they enjoy? Not everyone has access to a scholarship either. You're also assuming that just because a college hosts a sports team to hold matches for crowds to watch, that these young players would become the equivalent to a star player somehow and have thousands of fans, realistically, they're just making a quick buck.