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Message: [QUOTE="HtownOrange, post: 2742421, member: 622"] Before fans get carried away devising conferences, pods, pay scales, etc. One would do well to see what schools are actually making money. Sure, Alabama and few others could conceivably pay players on a decent enough scale, but most schools are in the red. With Title IX, football paying for other programs, few teams in the black, there really is not a pool of schools that will pay the big bucks to get to an NFL lite. You would need a minimum of 30 teams, and realistically, at least 50 as they would be based at colleges, and presumably, still require some level of academic performance, which makes travel and scheduling that much more difficult. Virtually all of the private schools (yes, I think Stanford, which CAN afford to pay players, and USC (the real one, not the phoneys in Jersey) will refuse to pay players) and many highly regarded State universities that will refuse to tarnish their academic reputations that the young kids can strike, but they may fail and, even if they "win" they will have to begin paying taxes on their education as it would be part of the income package. The Free ride is predicated on an amateur status, if the kids get paid, benefits may be taxable. Anyway, the monies generated by football and basketball are huge, no doubt, in a vacuum. Universities are Billion Dollar entities and even the best athletic programs are less than 10% of the annual revenue (aside from a roughly equal percentage of the expenses!). The costs to actually play with the big boys (FBS) is far greater than just the costs of the football and men's basketball teams. Though I believe there is far more TV money to be had, there is far less money than people think because they refuse to acknowledge ALL the costs of having a full football team (Title IX requires 85 women's athletic scholarships, assuming 50/50 split in gender of the student body). Anyway, the greedy, arrogant kids have the right to sue the greedy arrogant universities, so have at it. P.S. I am not against the players getting a share of revenue generated by schools using the players' likeness/names (video, jerseys, posters, etc.) [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?