Should college athletes get paid?

[coxfan]

Paying cash to athletes would open a huge Pandora's box of problems. Most college sports are non-revenue, and are subsidized by men's basketball and football. If football players start being paid, the money has to come out of those other NCAA sports, or else from higher ticket sales or higher tuition, or richer donors. All those money sources would enlarge the disparities between rich and poor schools, even within the same conferences. And once the payment system started, there'd be no away to stop it once the problems became evident.

It is reasonable to take lesser approaches, such as reducing the absurd NCAA scrutiny on every little detail of life. A few years ago, a fan was banned from a college's baseball games because he'd given free golf rounds to players at his country club. Other students could have gotten those free rounds with impunity. Schools have been penalized for an alumnus giving a lift in his car to a prospect!(An academic recruit could have gotten all that without problem. My test scores and high-school awards caused me to be recruited by over 30 colleges, though mainly by mail and invitations to special events.) Some such rules are needed for athletes, but these go beyond reason. Plus, players could be given more meal money, etc. without problem.

Another area where flexibility could occur has to do with the memorabilia market. Players can legally sell their trophies, jerseys, etc. after their eligibility expires. So why not let than sell them while still playing?

The minor- league suggestion has been tried in football but with little success. In baseball, scholarships are limited to one-third of the roster ( 11.7 scholarship value for a 35-man roster.) The result is that maybe half of future MLB players go through college, but the others go straight into the minors out of high school ( where their college eligibility is lost for good if they don't make it.)

[cjclong]

Coxfan, I think you made some excellent points, some I tried to make but probably not as well.
I guess the day of the student athlete has become a thing of the past. Athletics was supposed to be a by product of an education and now it appears to be front and center at so many schools. Like a former President of OU said that he "wanted a school that the football team could be proud of." It seems sad that a kid is deciding what school to go to, supposedly to get an education, depending on how they use their tight end or set up their linebackers.
Don't get me wrong. I have loved college sports and was a student manager of a college football team because I didn't have the great athletic skill to play sports at the college level. But college sports now are completely out of hand and, sadly, there is probably no going back.