Collegiate athletics are intended to be sports in their purest form, a stage where athletes can compete at the hone their craft and potentially play at the professional level. Money isn’t supposed to be a driving force as much as it is at the professional level, where contracts and collective bargaining agreements are always on the forefront. Due to all of this revenue sharing, the student athletes deserve to be paid for their efforts.

The problem of unfair revenue distribution worsens when the NCAA refuses to make any legitimate changes to accommodate the athletes. NCAA president Mark Emmert and his organization continues to grow college athletics, especially in basketball and football, monopolizing the game into essentially money monsters. Outside of winning, it’s all driven by money.

It sounds so cliche, yet it’s still a problem even this year. The NCAA, including the colleges themselves, are profiting off these student athletes, while the athletes themselves are suspended and reprimanded when they try to profit off of their own name and likeness. It’s been a problem for years and nobody seems to care enough to force serious change.

Even with all of that, the NCAA continues to create new programs and ideas, such as TV deals for March Madness and the young College Football Playoff (which is imperfect as is) to make the rich richer and make crazy cash off these athletes. It’s a power struggle that the higher-ups continually win.

I can’t say there’s a perfect way to fix this. It’s so difficult to come equally share all of the money that floats around in college athletics. I’m also not saying these college kids need to become millionaires by any means. But a small portion of money to compensate these athletes for the unfair welfare distribution could go a long way in leveling the playing field.