The NCAA has helped college athleticsbecome the dirtiest sports business around. Their rules are too complexand easy to violate for minor infractions, yet they get broken oftenenough and it seems that only in the high profile cases do people getcaught.

Sen. Earnie Chambers of Nebraska hasintroduced a bill that would require football players to be paid a stipend. Aren’t football players in some cases already compensatedbetween twenty and fifty thousand dollars per year? Tuition, books, roomand board in most public and private universities with college athleticscan be put in that range. And lets not even count the numerous “jobs”offered to players by the football boosters which give them more thanenough spending money to have a great 4-5 year run.

So if football gets compensation, what about baseball? Basketball? Thisis going to sound very un-conservative, but isn’t that taking away some ofthe fun of college athletics? Private universities are going to have muchmore money to contribute than public universities. What about Division IIteams? Those smaller universities are trying any way they can to compete,and this would be another blow to their athletics programs if theuniversities can determine the amount of the stipend.

I say, the program is already in place for college players to becompensated. They receive a free college education (granted, most of themare not mature enough to realize the benefits in this alone), nationalpublicity if they are good, numerous kickbacks from boosters and bigcontributors, an instant network of high powered business people to leanon when it comes time to hit the real world and countless other forms ofcompensation.

The system is dirty enough as it is, and it seems to work ok. Why ruinthe purity of college athletics even more?