The NY Times recently interviewed legendary college football coach and ESPN analyst Lou Holtz on a wide range of topics relating to college football. Check out this particular exchange from the interview:
NY Times Question: Are there too many [college football] games on television?
Holtz’s Answer: No. If people didn’t watch, they wouldn’t be on TV. Let the market decide.
Follow-up Question: Should ESPN, and not the colleges, be paying football players with the enormous profit from televising their games?
Holtz’s Answer: Absolutely not. Our contracts are with the conferences or schools, not the athletes. One percent go on to play in the N.F.L. They are students who play athletics. They want to be paid, go work for Walmart. I don’t have time to tell you how strongly I feel about this.
There is something horribly hypocritical and logically contradictory in Lou Holtz’s answers to both questions. After all, if “the market” should determine the optimal number of football games on television, then why shouldn’t player salaries at the college level also be set by market forces and not by arbitrary and self-serving NCAA rules?
Check out the full interview here.
prior probability 
Even though the college football players are getting benefits from the school, I feel like the schools benefits and the amount of money they get paid in comparison to the benefits the college athletes receive is nowhere near in comparison.
I totally agree with both of you. They should definitely be getting paid. After all they are taking a major risk by playing that type of contact sport.
These players are already getting paid… They get full scholarships, free food, and a lot of times some extra spending money. Lets remember these players are still “kids”, a lot of them still being teenagers. By giving them money for playing may not be the best idea. These kids are still to young and would not know what to spend the money on. Also, although football and basketball are more popular compared to less popular sports, why should these athletes get more than a volleyball player for example. Although I see the argument that they generate more popularity for the school, it just would not be fair to the volleyball player in my example.
If we decide to pay college athletes than what makes them any different from professionals? Where is the line? Can they then unionize? Can they sign endorsements? If they are being payed, is going to class and attaining the required gpa a condition to employment? And since the ncaa requires incoming students to have a certain high school gpa and test scores to be eligible to sign scholarships, denying the students who do not fit these qualifications would certainly bring about hundreds if not thousands of disparate impact cases once a college athlete was declared an “employee” by being payed to play. Being a former collegiate baseball player, I know the amount of time and conflicts with school that go into it, but the repercussions of paying college athletes would be drastically harmful to the structs of “amateur” sports. Instead of college athletes complaining about being forced to go to college to play with out pay before going to the pro’s, they should be challenging the age restrictions that the NBA and NFL have in place. Long story short, keep it the way it is!