Tell that to any injured student... or those students not actually given enough time to study for classes that aren't excessively easy to pass.

IMHO, if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing, and if you fail to meet scholastic eligibility, you should be released for a year to "catch up" while continuing coursework.

That would more closely resemble a fair exchange. As it stands a significant number of student athletes don't get a real education and/or are dropped before able to complete because of injury.

> if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing,

This is significantly the argument between Bobby Dodd and Bear Bryant leading to Georgia Tech leaving the SEC.

> regardless of injury or ability to continue playing

And short term disability insurance, and long term disability insurance - along with the school paying for health insurance (currently students are required to have health insurance, but the school isn't required to pay.

I think an illuminating question is what do you consider more important, fair compensation to the workers, or maintaining the sports magic? Or, even, do you care about the tension of the two at all? For example, I don't care about the sports magic, which makes the solution simple to me - pay the athletes, and whatever happens as a result is a better result, because we're not longer exploiting them.

It's a tricky question, because they're not workers. They're players.

How are they not workers? They have to show up to work (practice) and play in games. If they get hurt, they loose their scholarship (just like an hourly contract employee).

Training for and playing the game is their labor, which generates enormous revenue for the institution they belong to. In any other setting - including professional sports - we would call them workers. And it's brutal, punishing work that they will live with for the rest of their lives.

If players are getting paid they should also be disqualified from receiving scholarships and ALL the other "free" benefits student athletes receive, while still maintaining academic progress. No more free "tutors," athlete-only[0] meal-plans and dining halls, and even access to trainers, PT's, etc.

Are top performing student-athletes being exploited? Maybe, but people seriously underestimate the value of benefits they receive on campus beyond scholarship amount. And there need to be substantial consequences for both students and universities if athletes fail to graduate.

[0] These dining halls might technically be open to all students, but non-athletes have to pay steakhouse prices for slightly better cafeteria food, while athletes eat for free. These are the ways universities get around NCAA rules today.

The amount of benefits is miniscule relative to the value they are generating and their true market value. Further, the biggest benefit, free college, effectively doesn't count because no one in a competitive program has the time to major in anything that would plausibly provide a good job right after graduation. It is a big story whenever a football player graduates with a STEM degree given how hard it is from a time management perspective (or at least this used to be very rare iirc). Also if we are being real, a lot of these players don't belong in college academically. They would not be accepted on grades alone and would not survive without the hilariously enormous support system in place solely designed to keep them in compliance with the rules.

Most college students in STEM won't even work unpaid internships and yet these guys are expected to generate orders of magnitude more value while being unpaid or hilariously under compensated.

You're right, it's unrealistic. But the benefit value to the player is only miniscule if you ignore the biggest benefit, which almost no one includes:

The biggest benefit is the free 4-5 year top-of-the-line professional training camp.

(I didn't mention it above because I don't think this dollar amount should be counted against scholarships, if you could even calculate it.)

They're getting (upto) 5 years of intense training in their field, by teams of professional-grade coaches. All of their required equipment is paid for, facilities are free, they're being marketed to the pro scouts, traveling across the country, and they're getting all of this with free room and board.

It's really hard to put a true dollar amount on that, but the closest comparison in the professional world is a college degree. Which they should be getting, and at no cost to them.

When this is included, I think it balances out enough to be fair.

Or to put it another way... How many of these players could go pro without the benefit of college training. I'd argue very few. And by definition, fewer than the number who declare early for the draft, which is already a small number.

And I don't feel any more sympathies for them than I do any other startup millionaire that probably could have skipped college but didn't.

Tangent: I've also argued that being an athlete should/could be a degree in and of itself, given a properly designed program. It should include classes in kinesiology, dieting, health, financial management, speaking to the media, marketing yourself, etc. I think that would also solve many of these issues.

Very fair point. I had never considered this before.

I'm unclear why these players are students at all. if your playing well enough to make millions for the university, surely you're good enough to make millions for a professional team?

The NFL has a rule for draft eligibility. You have to wait for four seasons if yo do not attend college. There are ways to get an exception, but it is rare. Makes it very hard to go from High School straight to the NFL.

https://www.nflregionalcombines.com/Docs/Eligibility%20Rules...

While this is true, if players weren't benefiting from college, more would declare early for the draft, after 3 college seasons. I don't know what the percentages are, but there are more players getting drafted after 4 years of college than those drafted after 3.

Which implies that players not only seem to value the training and experience of college athletics, but that they value all 4 years of it. Arguably red-shirting extends this to 5 years.

I knew some athletes at OSU. They get lots of free stuff, like backpacks, ipads, etc.

Shutdown unprofitable teams. That's what will happen.