Sorry, for going off like that. Obviously this is a major hobbyhorse for me. When it really hits you how awful the NCAA is and has been and continues to be, it's pretty heavy-duty stuff.
Even the sort of historical accident of big time sports, with high level BB and especially American tackle football being associated with college attendance, I don't sympathize with it. There was never some golden age of the true student athlete ever. No sublime 'amatuerism' from the mists of America's past. There were ringers playing for the Ivies and for ND and all the big glamour schools pre-WW2, and getting paid on the side. Like George Gipp. And they weren't serious students. Or just guys coming out for the team to do their alma mater proud.
And the official 'student-athlete' designation was a very calculated legal creation, not to mention the cultural mythology, absolutely designed to allow schools to forestall, I suppose, any attempt at or natural evolution wherein players would eventually make a claim on the growing revenue stream of what was at that time I believe the most popular spectator sport in America, other than MLB and a big championship prize fight. And they nipped that very deliberately in the bud. To monopolize all the revenue, under quasi-legal pain of death so to speak. And the rest is or was history, with the little waiver you used to sign where you renounce any sort of right to be paid in any way whatsoever deemed 'professional', and they will expel you with extreme prejudice if you do, so as to always set no possible precedent. And of course they know there's pay for play going on under the table because it was ever thus, and so they selectively put the hammer down from time to time for appearances' sake. Even though everyone does it. And the NCAA, who's supposedly an independent, dignified, impartial actor but really acting solely on the schools' behalf, who of course keep all the money, lords over it all. And that's the name of the game and their raison d'etre.
Pretty dark stuff I would say in the history of America, right under our noses. And yet college sports are held up as some beacon of American wholesomeness. If anything if American universities maintain such robust athletic depts with all these different sports that they're so proud and self-congratulatory about handing scholarships out for, it's because of all that football/basketball money that has to get spent on something. And scholarships are not all that frequent outside of BB and CFB. But they do have the facilities and recruiting budgets and well-paid coaches and all that. And as one last stinging insult, who is it that's getting exploited in this almost overt, hidden in plain sight fashion? Poor blacks. Yet again. So you take all that money that should rightfully be going to black BB and CFB players, and you redistribute it to white soccer and lacrosse and women's field hockey players who get partial scholarships and nice uniforms and equipment for their games nobody goes to or cares about. Nor should care about quite frankly.
Anyways, it sounds like you're on the other side of the aisle on this one. You might even lose interest in the sport altogether. Unless they're willing to keep doing it for free. I'm surprised, you're a like a software designer. I thought they were more progressive than that.
