Picture a recruit choosing a school based on a bidding war, while the nursing student in the same dorm is stacking loans just to stay enrolled. That is the world paying college athletes creates. A full athletic scholarship is already substantial compensation: tuition, room, board, books, and elite coaching, often worth over a hundred thousand dollars. Turning players into salaried employees would twist a university's mission, making a fraction of students paid professionals while everyone else remains a student. The reward is already there, in the education and the degree. That is the point worth protecting.

Look at actual athletic department budgets: the vast majority of Division I programs run at a loss, and only about two dozen schools generate enough TV revenue to even consider sharing it. So this huge 13.1 billion figure is concentrated in a handful of conferences, not spread across college sports. If we pay athletes, that money has to come from somewhere, and for most schools it means cutting the academic programs and scholarships that already serve everyone else. The full scholarship is real compensation, and the entertainment you mention only exists because universities, not the athletes, built the stadiums and institutions.

The NIL change actually proves the point: athletes can already get paid for their name, image, and likeness without turning them into salaried employees. That is the right model, because it ties money to a real market rather than to a university's budget. And the nursing student comparison matters for a different reason: a scholarship is indefinite, but it also comes with a mission. If we pay college athletes as employees, every other student becomes a second-class citizen on their own campus. The degree is the compensation.