As a former D1 swimmer, I can tell you 20 hours a week is on the low end. Sure, the NCAA mandates it be 20 hours of training but coaches aren’t really doing that. The amount of hours spent PT hours spent to essentially recover has to be considered.

Let’s address your other points: 1. Scholarship money. Scholarship money is great, but here’s the deal. Normally very few people get a full ride. There are only a certain amount of scholarships per team. Each sport has a different number of allotted scholarships and it is fixed across the schools in a a division. Your average scholarship is mostly like half of tuition or less, because of trying to make the team as a whole better.

2. Athletes have to go to class. Yes the have to. Unfortunately, there are these pulling demands or just crap reality.

First scenario: So your broken down student athlete, who has been training 30 hours, has to attend class. He/she attends class but honestly being mentally present is tough.

Second: You’re a student athlete whose ability to attend school is based on athletic performance. You don’t perform well or get hurt, you can lose that scholarship next year. Say bye bye to school.

Sure. I'm not saying it's a great job. I'm just saying that it's a job and there's a real quid pro quo. It just bugs me when people like to get preachy and say the athletes aren't compensated. Baloney.

And you're correct to point out that many of the scholarships in minor sports are fractional. The funny thing is that there's so much prestige involved in getting an athletic scholarship that many don't complain about this. Indeed for many schools up to and including the very best, the prestige may be worth more than the dollar value.