That's why this thing will get far nastier before the dust settles. The logic that the athletes don't deserve a larger cut of the millions of dollars their sports are generating because their not famous until they get there doesn't hold much water. Disney grooms child and teen stars all the time. Do these kids not deserve a large chunk of the money they help generate for Disney just because Disney made them famous? Does a star engineer at Google not deserve a really large salary because he wouldn't be in a position to turn his work into revenue if it wasn't for Google?

The status quo of college athletics is very precarious. You have two large institutions, namely college football and higher eduction, with different objectives, trying to coexist. No matter how you dice it, it's illogical. you have college football on one hand that is trying to maximize profit. Don't pretend this isn't true. If it wasn't true, we wouldn't see new bowl games popping up each year. Also, we wouldn't see mega million dollar TV contracts, bowl sponsors, etc. On the other hand, you have higher eduction, which is supposed to be in the business of educating citizens. The founder of the NCAA invented the term "student-athlete" to make the idea of college sports more palatable to the public, courts, and congress. He knew exactly what he was doing. Later in life, he came to regret what he had helped established and was the first to publicly compare college sports to the slave trade.

I believe paying the players will lead to a slippery slope. Title IX will force schools to pay their female athletes equally. At this point, doesn't every student who participates in a school-sanctioned extracurricular activity have an argument to receive payment? I can see it getting out of hand. This is why I believe there will be a clean break from universities at some point. It may be 30 years from now, but I just don't see how the 2 can coexist.