How much money do you think Leonard Fournette made for LSU? Did he get a fair cut of that? How about Tua? Is his 60k per year in expenses that UA picks up fair compensation for the amount of money he generates for them? I'm not suggesting professional type contracts. But small monthly stipends that the player can spend as they see fit would help many of them quite a bit and probably stop some from making a bad decision to enter the draft too soon.
So 10 players get paid and the other 65 or 75 or however many don’t... sounds like that wouldn’t go over real well. If across the board stipends or even profit/revenue sharing could be figured out, maybe that would work. Gap between haves/have nots would increase if every school didn’t pay the same, which I’d hate. If you kill the golden goose there might be no money to split. That NCAA football game was great but it wasn’t “fair” so now it’s gone. These athletes get a ton out of their scholarships. Diminishing the value of that is disingenuous IMO. The level of training and networking they get is unrivaled in college.
Leonard received compensation in kind in the form of television exposure, professional coaching and training, nutritional expert guidance, room, board, access to health care, media training, exposure to professional scouting services, oh and a college education seems like a case could be made for independent contractor
Players on his level "get taken care of." Betcha he drove a nice car, bought whatever clothes he liked and plenty of spending money. Average players not some much. The better you are the more you will get from some booster if not from the coaches or athletic department.
No doubt it happens behind the scenes. But it shouldn't have to be that way. There's plenty of money to go around.