You're leaving out the fact that most of these players never get to the NFL, and they have a very high risk of brain injury, but they get paid $0.00, even though their work is generating billions for the NCAA, for ESPN, for basically every large university in the country, etc.

College football players need to be paid fair market value.

Hell--high school players need to be paid fair market value. Which, in many parts of the country, is not a trivial amount.

A high school in Texas just built a $72 million football stadium.

That's right. A fucking high school stadium.

http://www.wacotrib.com/sports/high_schools/central_texas_fo...

And it's in Katy, a relatively well-off suburb of Houston. I really hope they haven't built all the rest of the stuff in that enormous school bond issue yet.

That school bond issues, which are voted on directly by residents of a school district, are the main funding mechanism for school construction in Texas goes a long way towards explaining the ridiculous stadiums.

Don't they essentially get paid with free tuition and such? Not that it's fair market value, but it's not $0 either.

The problem is with the demands of being a D1 athlete it's pretty ridiculous for any player to hope to get a great education and be successful in their sport. And given the obvious payoffs of being a successful football player (Millions of $ at age 22 in the nfl) that's where they focus. It's a rare, rare individual who is a top performer while also pursuing a degree in a demanding field.

Below is an interesting article I read that describes the day of a d1 football player at a top school. Note, it is a 15 hour day and only includes 1.5 hours of studying which wouldn't be enough to even cover hw for most engineering degrees.

https://www.alligatorarmy.com/2015/6/9/8752711/florida-gator...

Yup. There seems to be a lot of focus on the NFL mistreating players, but college football seems far more exploitive.

The big problem with the NFL is that they keep trying to suppress the information and act like the risks are far lower than they really are.

You can't fairly describe it as "willingly do it" if they don't have all the facts, and the other party to the transaction is intentionally hiding facts that make it look worse.

And as for the factory worker, it does bother us a great deal. Dangerous working conditions get a ton of attention, and attempts to cover up workplace dangers are criticized severely.

We directly spend billions of dollars on occupational safety.

And people raise issues with buying goods from countries with lower standards all the time.

I would say it is at least as big an issue in the public consciousness as the danger to the players of professional sports.

Agreed. See this quote from the OSHA website.

Under the OSH Act, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace. OSHA's mission is to assure safe and healthful workplaces by setting and enforcing standards, and by providing training, outreach, education and assistance. Employers must comply with all applicable OSHA standards. Employers must also comply with the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act, which requires employers to keep their workplace free of serious recognized hazards.[1]

https://www.osha.gov/law-regs.html

Very few NFL players make $10M over 5 years - most careers don't last that long, and/or compensation isn't that high. Then consider that few elite college players make it to the NFL, and very few high school players make it to elite college programs.