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.