Thank you for writing about this; it's something I feel really strongly about. The whole elite college athlete thing is just crazy. And by that I mean outright exploitative and immoral.

The people who run the programs, and the universities themselves make fortunes off 18 to 22-year-olds who for the most part get little to no benefit from it. They're doing all the work, exposing themselves to high risk of injury, and usually losing the opportunity to apply themselves to serious studies that would get them ahead in life outside of sports. Only a very small percentage of them are going to go on to have professional sports careers. So since they're raking in millions with their work, why aren't they getting paid?

Occasionally, a highly gifted athlete can also do very well academically, but most people aren't super human like that.

My brother played college football, and he said it was a full-time job he hated.

I don't know how we got to this place where a head coach can become a multi-millionaire off the backs of kids living in poverty, but we need to do something about it, because it's obscene.