When people think college sports, they're typically thinking of the big players: men's football and men's basketball. These are the most popular sports, the ones that fill the stands, draw the alumni, supposedly increase alumni donations to the school, and are aired on television.

I hate them.

These two sports, at least for the bigger schools, are professional sports. The team management, the schools, engage in unethical collusion to artificially deflate athlete salaries. Clearly these are professional sports. If they were just for fun and school spirit, would their coaches be some of the highest paid people in the university? Would schools build massive stadiums to house gthem? But by falsely labeling the athletes are "amateur" the schools can unethically impose restrictions on the athletes to keep their costs down. Schools get many of the benefits of a minor league football and basketball team, but don't have to pay what the market would bear. (Of course, the free market, like a cockroach, is hard to keep down. Thus every few years there is a crackdown and it's discovered that schools are breaking the rules to attract top players, offering them cars, prostitutes, cash, and more.) The professional leagues appreciate this because they get the benefits of a minor league without having to actually manage it.

This makes me very angry.

Baseball gets it right. There are professional minor leagues. Minor league players typically aren't paid much, but they can charge what the market will bear. The player and a college don't need to lie about giving a damn about a good education; it's all about the game. Players who are skilled enough move up to the major leagues whenever they are ready, a player who isn't can fall back to the minor leagues.

This was all bad enough, until I learned something new, but something I should have realized. Colleges are paid to use their student athlete's likenesses. (backup) To play, a student must sign away the rights to their very face. This sickens me. At this point a college can't make any plausible claim that this is an amateur sport. Third parties are willing to buy, and the colleges are willing to sell, the right to use a player's name and face in a video game. The colleges are trading on the commercial value inherent to these players. This is overt professional use. It is shameful, unethical, and absolutely should be illegal.

I am absolutely sickened.

(I bear no ill will toward the less commercial college sports, nor honestly professional sports, just few cases where the label "amateur" is used to abuse the poor athletes. And I have nothing but pity for the poor college athletes who much suffer under this system. A career in professional sports is rough on the body, and an athlete generating value for their parent organization deserves the right to negotiate for as much pay as they can. Having years of one's inherently limited career stolen by a college is foul.)