College exist to educate people. College Athletic programs are an added benefit for student-athletes. Because of the time involved, student-athletes are usually provided all expenses required to attend the college.
If college athletics take the road you suggest, then we in the US should do what the Europeans do and form clubs and separate them from the colleges.
That will never happen, I know.
They are disappearing, I know, but I believe in amateur sports.
College athletic programs exist to make money. Problem is that until very recently those student athletes actually got LESS benefits than academic scholarships. The school can give academic scholarship students stipends for food and books and stuff. NCAA rules prohibited athletes from getting stipends until around 2015. Of course non-athlete students are also allowed to make money on the side, which until NIL got forced down the NCAA’s throat students weren’t allowed to.
There’s no reason why college athletics can’t be acknowledged to be a business. Colleges are businesses. Colleges run other businesses within the business of the college. Student union? Business. Bookstore? Business. Logowear being sold in that bookstore? Business. And all those businesses PAY the people working there, even if they’re students. There’s absolutely no reason not to acknowledge sports at the college level as all the other crap on and around the college campus that generates money and pay ALL the people working there, even if they’re students.
I’ve got no problem with amateur sports. Unless those amateur sports are a multi-BILLION dollar business. Then it is NOT an amateur sport, and we should stop lying to ourselves that it is.