OK, soapbox time.
I would not have a problem With kids singing a shoe contract if you could ensure that absolutely positively the school is not involved in any way.....which would not happen.
I know I am in the minority on this one, but I still believe that students should not be compensated. Yes, the university is making money off of the student, but the student is getting 1) Free education 2) Free Food 3) TV exposure of their skills 4) Free tutoring 5) Free clothes, and frankly, those are the financial benefits alone. There are plenty of other benefits that are obtained sociably that go beyond what the school itself provides (Let's call it "perks" and leave it at that).
Even just keeping with the financial portion, for example, for a non-resident of Michigan, estimated costs per year for attendance at Michigan University is roughly $65,000. I think people keep losing perspective about that. $65,000 is $10,000 more than the median annual income of an American male with a bachelors degree. As a football player, you are going to school and earning a degree while playing football, and getting 10 grand more than someone who has already graduated.
The argument always proceeds to: "Yeah, the kids get their scholarship, but that is peanuts compared to the amount of money the university brings in." Which is a true statement, but one that completely ignores everything it takes to put that product on the field.
Ultimately, yes, there would be no football without the players. But you know what, there would be no football without the guy who paints the lines on the grass too. Same thing with the medical staff, trainers, office staff, equipment staffs, custodians, food vendors, ushers, broadcasting technicians (not the networks, the guys from the school who set up the infrastructure so that ESPN can come in and set up to broadcast the game with minimal effort), chefs, ticket sales workers, groundkeepers, the guy who changes the burned out lightbulbs in the stadium lights, program printers, logistics managers, transportation directors, bus drivers, compliance guys, coordinators, and a thousand other jobs it takes just so that those 85 kids can line up and knock their heads together every Saturday in the fall.
It's a huge, incredibly complex system, and everybody gets paid to do it. Why should the athletes get a bigger piece than what they are already getting "paid" when it already exceeds likely 90% of what everybody else just listed gets?
Letting a kid have a shoe contract is all well and good, but you KNOW that as soon as they let that genie out of the bottle, the bigger schools will be able to sell recruits on the fact that "if you sign with us, we will get you set up with a shoe contract lickety-split". Don't even bother denying it. It would happen. That is a recruiting advantage that small schools could not keep up with and they would never get a 4* recruit ever again. The shoe companies would fall over themselves to pour money at every QB, RB, and WR who singed with a helmet school, regardless if that player ever even saw the field or not.
And you know the day would come where A) Shoe company gives player money, B) Player goes out and breaks his ankle in game 2, C) Shoe company rescinds contract and demands their money back, D) Player sues the school because "he couldn't pivot on their crappy field turf" or "the band director let the tuba player on to the field too early and I ran into him". The longer that we can keep money out of the picture in regards to athletes performance at the university level, the longer we can avoid stupid crap like that happening.
I know it's naïve to think that this isn't somewhat happening already, but everyone saying "it's going to be that way eventually" doesn't mean it isn't wrong and something that needs to be fought against.
[/soapbox]
