College football is one of America's greatest pastimes. But there is a growing epidemic among college football players. Concussions are the most common head injuries for a football player and are taken lightly on the football field by players and coaches. 4.8% of college football athletes reported a concussion during the 2012-2013 season, as well as other head injuries, including subdural and epidural hematomas (Guskiewicz, 1). The National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA exists to develop guidelines to protect student athletes while participating in collegiate sports. But is the NCAA really protecting student athletes with these guidelines, and are they ethical about it? In college football, head injuries are not treated as seriously as they should be, and players are constantly reminded of this. This is concerning because the recent statistics above may be largely inaccurate. At one college the players remember Wally Pip, who played baseball and decided not to play because of a headache. Wally's support was Lou Gehrig who then took Wally Pip's starting spot. The purpose behind this story and the reason it is told to college football players is to tell them to fight through the injury they may have received and not to give up on practice or the game. So, if a football player gets hurt, he is expected to shrug it off and continue playing, regardless of the extent of the injury. The player may not even want to report the injury because it would take him out of the game he loves to play. So why wouldn't the athlete simply fight through a head injury to continue playing? Let's start by defining what the different types of head injuries are. The first and most important… middle of paper… is to pay players who are truly putting their lives on the line so the NCAA can make a profit. As shown before, concussions can indeed affect someone later in life, so shouldn't athletes receive some sort of compensation for this? The NCAA has more than enough money to do this and if they gave a playing fee and required colleges to use these new concussion technologies, the rate of concussions would decrease significantly. And there won't be as many attempts to sue the NCAA for failing to adequately protect the student-athlete. If this happens, everyone benefits except the NCAA's profit. But when they make more than $740 million a year from players who put their lives at risk for the entertainment of others, it seems immoral that they don't receive compensation. But the NCAA is the only part of collegiate football that is behaving unethically??