Collegiate student-athletes deserve financial income from the National Collegiate Athletic Association in spite of the fixed stipends they currently receive.

Sports are a meritocracy in that you earn everything you receive. Leadership positions, respect from your teammates and coaches, awards and recognition, and just about everything else in collegiate sports must be earned. Therefore, pay should not be distributed any differently considering the NCAA and universities across America annually make a profound profit directly from the performance of student-athletes.

In August 2015, the NCAA passed regulations allowing universities to offer student-athletes on scholarship a fixed, cost-of-attendance stipend which lasts the length of the academic year and can be renewed each academic year that the athlete is offered a scholarship. Values of the stipend vary across universities from a minimum of about $2,000 to a maximum around $6,000.

According to Daily Press, the cost-of-attendance allowance is not considered a salary by the NCAA because the stipend covers only secondary expenses not paid for by the athlete’s scholarship. Examples of these secondary expenses include travel costs and social activities.

The NCAA does not want to be a source of income for its athletes because the association does not want to recognize its athletes as professionals. The term “professional” would imply that the athletes receive cash income from their universities and are thereby employees of the university which they represent, as opposed to being simply students of those universities.

The line of whether the NCAA treats its athletes like amateurs is blurred, however, because of the immensely large revenues which the NCAA and Division I universities make off the athletes.

According to the New York Times and Statista, the NCAA football and NCAA men’s basketball markets yielded a combined revenue of more than $6 billion in 2011. Whereas, the National Basketball Association, a professional athletic league, generated $3.8 billion in revenues in 2011.

Some argue that student-athletes do not deserve any form of financial pay from the NCAA—not even in the form of a stipend—since they already receive collegiate scholarships worth up to tens of thousands of dollars annually.

However, the concept of student-athletes receiving financial income from the NCAA is worth defending because academics typically do not constitute the primary focus of the student-athlete.

Furthermore, no college presidents are going to their head coaches and telling them to only recruit high school athletes who want an education from that university. Financial support for a college education is an incredible blessing and something most student-athletes do not take for granted. Nevertheless, they’re not stupid and they know that the reason they’re wanted at any college is primarily for athletics over academics.

The scholarship that a student-athlete receives certainly is a valuable resource, but that scholarship helps the student-athlete in the secondary reason—not the primary reason, why they attend college: academics.

The stipend is some form of financial benefit which on-scholarship NCAA student-athletes enjoy, but the cost-of-attendance allowance does not give many student-athletes the income they deserve.

Lamar Jackson, the starting quarterback for the University of Louisville’s football team who scored over 50 touchdowns last season, receives the same stipend as the third-string point guard who averages playing two minutes per game for the University of Louisville’s basketball team. You tell me if that’s fair.

Student-athletes, especially those who individually provide significant profit to the NCAA and their respective universities, deserve to be paid for what they are recruited to do: be an athlete and bring the university financial revenue.