Look, I get the appeal of paying college athletes. It sounds fair on the surface. But the reality is most athletic departments already run on thin margins. Only about 20 schools actually turn a profit from sports. The rest rely on student fees and university subsidies to keep the lights on. If we start paying players, those costs don't disappear. They get passed down to students through higher tuition or get cut from non-revenue sports like track and swimming. Title IX also complicates things. You can't pay football players without paying female athletes equally, and most schools can't afford that. We'd end up destroying the very system that gives thousands of students a shot at competing.

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