As someone not from the US, the whole role of sports in college/universities seems so... weird.

Mixing institutions with an education and research purpose with sport tribalism seems like a terrible idea to begin with, adding tons of money to the mix surely can't result in anything that has anything to do with education...

As you elude to, I think it speaks to a bigger problem which is that Universities don't really know what they want to be or what their main purposes are. Are they places of learning for the sake of learning and scholarship? Are they job training and placement centers? Are they social clubs and camps for young adults? Are they sports franchises? Are they centers of basic research? Are they centers of collaborative industrial research? Are they incubators for companies? Are they political entities that want to shape public policy? Are they centers of social justice? They seem to want to be all things to all people but that's not possible when pursuing mission A inherently puts them in conflict with mission B.

I have nothing against of schools having clubs doing sports. Even marginally supported by funds from students for things like travel and gear.

But the level of strange commercialisation is just different from rest of the world. Insane amounts of money spend and revenues generated, but nothing really end up at athletes.

This is precisely what should be done. The scholarship model should die. The athletes should be employees of the University and paid a salary for their work. If they want to go to college on top of that, they can pay for that separately or negotiate reduced tuition as a benefit or in lieu of salary.

I agree, but football and basketball are part of college culture, and it would take away a built-in fanbase. I'm not sure if people would be as interested in NFL-lite games with 100+ teams where the players and teams aren't at least nominally associated with colleges. I think it might be too late to actually split them up.

Yeah, it's too ingrained now. Personally I would prefer breaking up the franchises, moving to regional leagues that could feed to top with relegations and promotions.

But then we'd damage their profits. The system you're describing is how it works in most of the rest of the world.

Should we also stop using tax money to subsidize education for doctors?

College athletics are education too. It's not like you become a tennis pro by just hitting the gym a lot. The best players study the rules, study physiology, study human nature....

Comparing eg tennis players and doctors doesn't really explain anything about your position to me, one serves a critical public function and one does not