Now that the frenzied news coverage of Reggie Bush's alleged violations has died down, I have finally been able to watch ESPN without throwing things at the television whenever they waste my time discussing it. I will mention that this will be a tangent from the actual topic, but I will also warn you that you might begin throwing things at your computer very soon, because now it is my turn to talk about it. As to the actual alleged violations, whether Bush's family did accept free rent for a house they lived in, I really don't care. And neither should you. I don't think that anyone should care, there should have been no news story, no coverage anywhere of this sort of thing happening. Why? Because it should be legal. Or more properly, because the reasons they accepted the generosity should be negated by allowing NCAA players to profit from their playing. That is what I am endorsing here: players that play well, that awe us with their athletic ability and win games that somehow matter to us, players that sell tickets and in many other ways profit their respective universities, those players should profit as well. I read an interesting article about the profit individual players like Reggie Bush can generate for their schools; an economist created a formula that took into account all of the various ways a school made money. According to this formula, Reggie Bush accounted for $500,000 of profit, without even including merchandise sales. The NCAA itself is the main beneficiary, basically exploiting the college athlete as a way to receive corporate sponsors. There is an estimated 3.5 billion dollars being created just by Division I football and basketball programs, yet the NCAA refuses to pay their players. The argument made is that all of the money is spent on enabling NCAA events to happen; all excess money goes to lower profile sports that wouldn't otherwise have any funding. Often mentioned, along with this argument, is that the NCAA is not going to hand out salaries to the college players; "We have a model for paying players. It's called professional sports," NCAA President Myles Brand says. While I agree with that observation in some aspects, I will quickly point out the inherent exploitation: The model for paying football players, the NFL, does not permit athletes to be drafted until three years removed from high school. If this was not the case, if players were offered the choices of either going to college or playing professionally, then I would wholeheartedly agree with Myles Brand's comment. As it stands now, however, there is a transitional period where potentially amazing athletes cannot profit from their playing- instead they are forced to take on a great deal of risk and responsibility while playing in college. I am not against this situation-I think that the three years in college help athletes both mature physically and as a football player, thus creating better prospects and also giving the NFL teams a better glimpse into the true talent level. On top of being inefficient, it would be near impossible for scouts to pour through all of the local high schools and try to choose which players would be good candidates for the NFL. Major League Baseball does this to an extent, scouting high school players along with college, but they have the luxury of sending their draft picks to the minor leagues. Teams make judgments based on high school or college performance and then gamble on selecting players, assigning them to increasing levels of competition in order to hone their game and mature them to be ready for the Major League level. Now contrast that to College Football-in effect, College Football acts as the Minor Leagues of the NFL. Players are not signed, nobody has gambled as yet; those two distinctions are actually what separate the two and also allow the NFL to be a cleaner operation with less overhead. It benefits them to not need a minor league system-instead they choose from the best of the football prospects and throw them directly into action. That is one of the differences between baseball and football-football players need a couple years of physical development, but at that point in time they are ready to take on the challenge of competing at the professional level. Baseball players do not need as much time to physically develop, but oftentimes it takes years for them to develop as a player capable of competing at the highest level. Now that I have laid some framework for my argument, I will stray back on topic and attempt to drive my point home. I am not encouraging the NCAA to pay a salary to the players; spreading money over that large an audience would hardly benefit anyone. At first I thought that the universities themselves could pay their players, but that creates a greater gap between large market schools that have a lot of revenue and the smaller but still competitive schools that do not. There is also the concern of who would be paid; would only the top players be given money or would the entire team benefit? Money based on merit could also happen-corporate sponsors could set up individual payouts or stipends to players winning league or conference honors. The best solution, as far as I am concerned? Corporate Sponsors giving endorsement deals based on merit. Endorsements are currently not allowed and justifiably so-if playing for a large market team like USC could get more endorsements, more players would follow the money to USC and enlarge the talent gap between large and small market schools. No, instead of popularity-based endorsements, merit-based endorsements blur the line between big and small school appeal. A company could buy the rights to the Heisman winner, for instance, not ensuring any one player in particular but guaranteeing a top player overall. To make it more profitable, all of the runner-ups would be given endorsement deals too, thereby increasing interest in the competition and allowing companies to advertise certain players in certain regions for greater effect. The point to all of this is not the commercialization of college football-that has already happened. The point to this is allowing the players that have set themselves apart as players to benefit; guidelines would be created to tolerate a select few endorsements deals, thereby allowing the biggest names to profit before they reach the Professional level. As the system is now, the NCAA acts as a policing organization, not allowing any money to trickle down to the players. While not supporting illegal booster programs, I think that something should be done to benefit the top players; players that oftentimes do not have much money and would love the chance to stay in college and compete yet still make enough money to help their families.