College athletics should be disbanded and replaced with a sponsored club model organization. It is a farce to believe that many of these athletes are actually college level students. The grade point averages reported by teams often appear like the team is made up of real students, but the real students are the third team walk-ons and student managers. It is those back benchers that boost the gpa and the graduation rates. It does not mean the athletes are stupid because they are victims of a terrible public school system that teaches them little to nothing, and leaves them totally unprepared to do any kind of academic work above an elementary school level. The colleges corrupt themselves by pretending they are able to address the athletes inadequacies when they really just provide the athletes a means to cheat the system.
If we could go to a club model then colleges could still sponsor teams, but athletes could work at a job, go to a vo-tech, or go to college. Why is it so important that we link amateur athletics to colleges? The club model would end the farce. We know, however, the answer to the question is money and who will control it. Colleges, the power five in particular, are not going to give it up no matter how ridiculous the pretense that these are student athletes becomes.
Those grade stabilizers on the team are called the “swimmies” in the late Tom Wolfe book...I am Charlotte Simmons...they kept the team gpa above the stated gpa goal(water level)