Even the ones who are given scholarships and living stipends still can't profit off of shit that they could have done in any other industry. They can't make money off of merchandise, their likeness, or anything with their name on it. They make college football coaches the highest paid public employees in the US, bring in literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and end up not seeing a fucking dime.

And that's in the good cases.

I think Northwestern got smashed for two separate scandals:

Those "living stipends" didn't come through for a lot of the athletes, and were actually so low that the football team complained of starvation. After an investigation was done, yeah, the football team was malnourished because they were burning way more calories in practice than they were given to take in via a measly stipend that couldn't pay for much of a lunch. That is on top of the fact that they sometimes weren't given access to food. Full retardation.

Then we need to have a conversation about the cheerleaders. Turns out while the men were starving, the cheerleaders were basically being exploited in a human trafficking ring. "Barely legal" aged cheerleaders were basically required to dress in scantily clad clothing for school donors during fund-raising events, including being given instructions about how to behave and respond if any of the donors got frisky (which was to basically let them have their way). Several of the cheerleaders allege that they were required to have sex with some of the donors as a reward for some of the fundraising.

Nobody gets paid appropriately. But also, nobody gets paid enough to starve or get trafficked.

What I'm saying is: don't go to Northwestern.