Yes. Thy devote so much time and energy t their sport that that they deserve significant benefit for their effort.

A sociologist once told me young people are marginal, in the sense of minor or not important.

I had told him of my experience in the military. I had been in the Navy during the Korean War, and was again a civilian when negotiations to end the war started in Paris. The news said the negotiators delayed while they argued over who would sit where at the “peace table”.

I complained to the sociologist that while the negotiators argued, young men on both sides were dying or being maimed. I didn’t like hearing that I had recently been one of those marginal young men.

Young athletes are not the only marginal people. Elected politicians may see their funders as more important than the people who’d elected them.

They get a college education. That is pay.

Is it work which carries a risk of injury? Then of course they should be paid. Just another ripping off of people trying to live within confines of thievery laws instead of saying no and not playing.