Furthermore, your post provides a strong argument in support of my assertion that they shouldn't get paid. They need the college more than the college needs them. Why should the college bend its mission to accommodate that? (I do recognize that colleges already do, at the present moment, significantly bend their missions to do exactly this - but I think they shouldn't).

You can't on the one hand say that your only way out of poverty is through college football and on the other say that you're being exploited and that the college is getting more out the arrangement than you are. Which one is it? Are you desperate to get out and college is your only option? Then feel grateful for the opportunity to display your wares for four years. You have lots of options and other people willing to pay you for your services? Then don't go to college. Go somewhere else. You can't have both. It's a logical contradiction.

Besides all of that, everyone has choice in life. Everyone. But no matter your walk of life and economic situation, if you do not believe that you have choice, if you believe the world imposes its will on you, if you choose to see the world that way, then you do not, in fact, have choice. But not having a choice in this case is a choice. All of these players have other choices. All of them. If someone has been in their ear their whole lives telling them the cards are stacked against them and they're being kept down by forces both seen and unseen, well then, their ability to see those choices diminishes greatly. But the choices are there.

[Post edited by pienkows at 08/02/2018 7:11PM]