Universities of higher learning milking student athletes for millions while cashing out unequal "education"  is hypocrisy at the highest level.  A college degree will never add up to the collective millions generated by the student’s athletic exploits.

Especially considering the main reason for a degree is, well… to make money.

There has to be a better compensation plan for high end student athletes. Stripping scholarships, trophies, wins, and player murals will not decrease the bloated bank accounts of these institutions. So why not pay these athletes what they’re worth and stop pretending  collegiate athletics aren’t one million percent ‘about the benjamin’s baby’?

Take a look at these 2005 stats from the Tournament of Roses:

• Rose Bowl Game revenue sources produce the largest single payout of any post season collegiate football game – $14.5 million to each conference in 2005.
• This revenue source is a direct benefit to all universities within the two conferences whether they play in the Game or not.
• The 2005 Rose Bowl had a total payout of more than $30 million which directly benefits all the universities within the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences. Each school receives more than one million dollars each year regardless of whether they play in the Rose Bowl.
• The Rose Bowl Game also pays $1.6 million to the BCS, which supports 100 other universities.  (italics added)

While you ingest those gaudy numbers remember they only represent two of 56 teams that participated in bowl games in 2005. The total payout for bowl games in that year amounted to a staggering $83.187 million.

The average tuition for a public university is a little under $25,000 annually. Private universities are about double that amount.

In theory, the 2003-2005 academic years cost  private University of Southern California a skimpy $150,000 or so to "educate" Reggie Bush.

In reality, his super hero-like exploits on the football field brought in an estimated $60 million  in bowl appearances for USC, Pac-10, and Big Ten conferences.

Not to mention millions more in television revenue, booster donations, car flags, sweat shirts, NCAA revenue sharing, and increased student attendance from giddy rich kids whose parents pay the entire tuition upfront in most cases.

So much for market value.

The "full ride scholarship" these greedy schools "give away" turn out to be  tunnel sweat jobs where the promising student athlete gets railroaded.

So much for molding young minds.

The NCAA is an organization built on the legs, arms, backs, muscles, and minds of young men and women. The money generated from their efforts go to administrators, agents, celebrities, boosters, professors,  and any one who can influence a student athlete in any way.

So much for amateur athletics.

Meanwhile, the athletes who don’t make it to a professional league (over 98%) struggle to buy simple items such as diapers while enrolled and are strapped after graduation or drop out with additional school /friend /family loans that were necessary to survive  the "free ride".

So much for higher learning.

While the NCAA and universities like USC use ESPN and other media outlets to pretend they care about institutional integrity by defaming former athletes and their seedy parents, don’t purge the thought that they waddled in a lucrative moss for five years while "investigating" and "restoring".

Wow, who knew honesty and integrity took five years to mature? Did you? I didn’t.

So much for common sense.