They are paid; scholarship athletes get tuition waivers and room and board. In short, they trade their athletic skills for education. I know now this transaction is all hypocritically ‘winked at’, they don’t really get an education. Perhaps now we can admit the education thing is irrelevant.
Maybe they should be taxed on the tuition, scholarships, etc!
If it’s all just entertainment and an opportunity for alumni to sit in the stands and get plowed like they did when they were young. Let’s admit that and tell the pro leagues to set up a farm system, the universities\colleges can license their names to these farm teams. We all then can continue to pretend there’s such a thing as college\university athletics. The schools, particulate taxpayer supported schools can get back to education. That’s a hard enough problem for them. (Currently failing!)
That’s not paid. Those scholarships are a leash. Because the coach can take them away any time. Payment is MONEY in the BANK. A method of controlling your own life. Not a tool for others to control you.
The minute coaches got paid more than teachers we all knew it was entertainment. We just keep lying to ourselves about the “student athlete” myth. For no good reason either. Other than it makes a good structure to not pay the athletes. To maintain some illusion of purity. A very stupid illusion because every other student out there can also make money. You can take software classes AND work. Why were student athletes called out to have to be amateur? It is stupid. It is evil. And it should have ended DECADES ago.