On the eve of Superbowl 48, Joe Theisman opined that College athletes need to be paid a grant or salary apart from their scholarships. I agree with Theismann that colleges rake in billions of dollars on the backs of these talented players. This problem is huge in football. There are only 32 teams in NFL. NFL gets it players from colleges using the draft system. This system is heavily tilted towards NFL. NFL gets talented players ( trained ) for zero investment. Colleges make money and pay their coaches in multi-million dollar contracts. Both NFL and Colleges benefit from this exploitative system.
There are many solutions to this problem. One solution is to bar the colleges from making any money out of the NCAA tournaments. Handover the college tournaments to a for profit organization that conducts these tournaments and pays the colleges and the athletes. ( Athletes can decide either to take full scholarship or pay the schools from their earnings, if they decide to take scholarship, then the school gets his/her part of earnings ). Since NFL gets trained athletes at no cost, make them pay for that athletes school costs. NFL makes so much money without any investment, they should have some skin in the game for taking college athletes from the colleges.
Another solution is completely bifurcate athletes from students. A college is supposed to impart the real life training for the students, so that they can use them later for productive purposes. An athlete's routine is complete opposite to a student's routine. Athletes need more physical training and they should have professional trainers for fitness. Students do not need professional trainers, they need lecturers and professors who can teach them. So make all the college athletics departments as associations with the colleges and pool them in a minor league system. Each coach/athlete gets paid under this system. These departments are independent of colleges and they are associated in name only, they may share few resources like stadiums , training facilities etc.
