Your point is a narrow one. I am not certain what you conclude if what you say is correct. But in order to understand the subject completely, the widening gap between the worlds of athletes and coaches and students and scholars you might read "The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values" by Shulman and Bowen. Money is important but it is not everything.
I assert that the premise of "The Game of Life" is shallow. The authors argue that today's student athletes have lower academic scores than their predecessors in the 1970's and other eras. The leadership skills taught by athletics don't necessarily translate into skills needed to succeed following their audition to become pro athletes. The authors go so ridiculously far as to recommend cutting coaches salaries to bring universities back to their core academic missions.
Guess what Shulman and Bowen don't tackle? They don't argue the supremacy of colleges and universities that choose to forego NCAA athletics. Lots of schools choose not to play already. Among them are brainy places like the U of Chicago, MIT, Emery or Harvey Mudd. There are hundreds more institutions with religious or liberal arts or other niches and no big athletic departments (Knox or Westminster or Oberland). There are on-line colleges like DeVry and University of Phoenix. The market has a place for the overly athletic-centric like Alabama or Oklahoma State, the apex athletic/academic like Stanford, and the academic first institutions like Rice or Vanderbilt and Northwestern. The system we have offers something for everyone. Who do they think they are to defy Americans passion for college sports being played at levels never reached before?
There are factors influencing higher ed driven by remote teaching, the internet and digital delivery. Governmental financial aid programs have driven up tuition up by saturating admissions offices with students holding billions of dollars of low interest debt.
The whole mission of higher ed has shifted, as theology and history programs of the 1920's gave way to sciences and economics of the 1960's to the high tech and business based curriculum of today. College presidents run a big business that offer education plus a life experience with access to a network of alumni. The point of higher ed isn't ivory tower academic research. Universities are business, just as are the athletic departments. Who cares if athletes have lower SAT scores than some film studies or psychology major who might never find a job in the same field as their degree?
You can find more types of degrees and departments than ever. You argue that athletes are less equipped now to succeed after graduation? Well, what about the sociology major who works retail? Or the woman's studies graduate working tables?Or how about the business major who has never studied philosophy who will earn less in some cubicle that his brother the welder and friend the plumber?
The fact is that college sports is firmly rooted in American culture. Your Game of Life authors should be content letting Michigan be Michigan, big house and all. The thing about college athletics is that the net result is a Darwinian process that ensures survival of the fittest. If Northwestern or Colorado or Maryland or CSU are relegated to the margin, it's just the market working.
College athletics is so much more than the $1.5 billion scholarships earned by thousands of student athletes. It's the fight song and colors and tradition that ties grandfathers to grandsons. It's who we are.
