I still think it's a false comparison, though. I think people are misinterpreting my saying that as saying that the athletes are getting a fair shake across the board, which is not what I'm saying. But one of the problems here is that it would be incredibly difficult to commodity each player's contribution accurately. Should the eighth man off the bench in basketball get the same compensation as the star? How would you determine the difference? Points scored? Would it be fluid throughout the year depending on production? Are we just going off exposure? Wouldn't that lead to potential corruption? What about favoritism by the coach and program? What about endorsements? Seems like a fair trade off, actually. But then these kids would need to manage and pay people to handle that. If they didn't have time to be students before, they just lost more time. So then if the solution is just straight up paying them instead of scholarships, treating them like university employees, they would need to be taxed. Any place with a union (and that's becoming more common as we speak) would definitely have some issues with compensation and insurance and everything else. Then these kids would have to pay for the education they get in addition to taxes and the whole nine yards, which is more complicated when you're getting money from many streams in endorsements. That would lead to problems that almost definitely arise from kids who didn't pay taxes properly. Hire an accountant! Another thing the student has to deal with. There's not really a way to eliminate scholarships here, any way you look at it, which is good and makes sense. But when you complicate pay scales from the university, it's not as simple as paying people different amounts. The HR department would get so much pushback from other employees. If all athletes got their royalties from outside the university, which seems simpler, would they really feel as beholden to the school? What if the student isn't upholding their end of the bargain as a student because they're trying to make a living through endorsements? Bench them. Now they aren't doing the work they're expected to do for their "salary" from the university. If you treat them like an employee and they're suspended without pay, well...

Again, I'm not saying it's a fair system. But I have yet to see someone really figure out how this could potentially work out. I think people see it as a simple pay them or not situation and it really isn't as straightforward as that. I would be really interested to know how it could work out, though.