[Judtech]

SNAQalicous - Nevada hit on some of the points that Knight made. Here are some other interesting ideas and tidbits. Some of this would have to be coordinated with the NBAPA. In the NFL, players have to be out of school two years I believe. Remember the Maurice Clarett situation? Baseball players who enroll in college are ineligible for the MLB draft (even if they were drafted already) until a certain amount of time. So the precedence is out there as a model. If the NCAA wanted to work unilaterally, they could tie this into their academic model. Currently if academic and graduation benchmarks are not met over a set amount of time (5 years I believe) then that sport, usually football and basketball, are penalized by loss of scholarships etc. IF the NCAA wanted to do this, they very well could and have the precedence to back them up. IMO, the NBA doesn't want to 'play ball' b/c they are currently getting a free farm system from the NCAA.
As for paying the players, that is a great idea on the surface, however, there are several reasons that this is not practical. The first being that the majority, something on the scale of over 90% of the NCAA athletic departments lose money. While the dollars look big as a whole, when broken down they are not all that big. Football and Men's Basketball (as well as women's @UT and UCONN) make the money that fuels and funds the other programs. Which leads to the second point. If you are going to pay the football players what are you going to do with the women's track team? Title IX anyone? And if you can find someone clever enough to get around Title IX, how much do you pay players? Does the second team punter make as much as the starting point guard? Can Alabama pay more than Idaho since they bring in more money? So while it appears to be a good idea, the NCAA would have to slap on some ski's for the slippery slope.
On the other hand, student athletes are eligible for need based grants, NCAA sanctioned part time jobs and student loans. Sort of like the rest of the student body. I can neither confirm nor deny that it is sort of cool to have your tuition room and board paid for along with 'free' (loaner) books, free tutors and 10K a year in college. And at the end of it all you walk away with a BS (insert joke), graduate degree and only 40K in school loan debt. And if you wanna go pro, cool, have a clause in your contract that the team you sign with will pay for you to finish school when your playing days are done.