I suspect that most of us need an arithmetic lesson, but that is for another day.
We need to look at the following and see what is at stake:
the total revenues to Division 1 schools from football, including all sources
annual payment to coaches
other cost of running a football program
the number of Division 1 players
The analysis has been done many time. We can review it in another thread in the offseason, or before if others are interested. It will be obvious that the colleges can easily afford to give players stipends at pay equivalent to part time jobs. Many players cannot afford to go home, or purchase the simplest of necessities. Obviously, this would be possible if they spent time at a part time job instead of funding the entire athletics programs of the schools, and ridiculous salaries for the coaches.
So it's worth nothing the fact that they already get a free education, and by virtue of such emerge from college in better shape financially than probably 99% of the rest of Americans? What do you think the average student loan debt is now?
Athletes also get advantages while in school that the rest of the country can only dream about. Free tutors, gourmet food, medical staff that would bankrupt the rest of us since we would have to pay for it, etc. What about the inherent advantages that the ones who don't go on to play their sport professionally enjoy when they go to look for a job, i.e. contacts and nepotism the like of which would make the 99% of us who didn't have that puke if we knew the extent of it?
Every other college student in America works a part-time or multiple part-time jobs, or sometimes a full-time job like I did for my final degree, in addition to going to school just in an attempt to lessen somewhat the mountain of student loan debt they have to accumulate to get the degree. This whole players-are-being-shafted narrative is just a lie.
The other argument made for paying players is that the schools are making a killing and cutting the players out of having a slice of the pie. The last I checked, there are a lot more nonprofit universities with big football programs than there are private ones. Most of the power schools walk a thin line every year with budget despite how much they take in. Many college coaches are paid too much; and they're paid peanuts compared to what the average back-up player in the NFL makes. All that gourmet food and free tutoring and trainers etc. doesn't come for free - it gets paid for by the money those programs take in.
Have you ever seen photos of Alabama's football training facility? What do you think paid for all that ridiculous opulence? How much every month do you think the school is still paying for that building? Would the athletes be happy with having a doublewide trailer for their training facility in exchange for getting paid? Because the money has to come from somewhere. If hundreds of millions a year suddenly has to go to paying the players, that money won't just magically appear in new revenue.
Bottom line: college athletes,
especially football players, get to live on a level while they're in school that most Americans will never even experience for one day, much less four years. They get a degree for free that costs the rest of us anywhere between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands depending on how good of an institution we try to attend. They get advantages for the rest of their lives in forging a career that 99% of the rest of the country can't even dream of. I think in sum, that's enough.
It's terrible what happened to Tua, and I pray that he will be completely healed and still have a great career. Even if he never plays again he has already had a better life, and will have a better life, than most.