I'm getting the feeling more lately that the NCAA is like that crazy uncle that you invite to Thanksgiving who everyone knows will do something wildly inappropriate at some point, but everybody has to pretend it's all ok because he's family.
Here's the problem I see with paying athletes (and mind you the problem is bigger with football). There are over 300 teams in D-1. Say you've got 10 scholarships (paychecks) for each team. So that's 3000 kids who you now have to put on the payroll.
If we just let free enterprise take over, the teams with the deepest pockets will get the best players because they can pay the most. On the other hand, if you put in a salary cap, what might be easily funded at KU or Duke might STILL be out of reach for someplace like Alcorn State.
So what do you do then? Tell anybody outside the top 100 or so that they're no longer in the same Division 1 as KU? Even in a place like the Big 12, we all know that KU generates a ton more hoops revenue than, (until recently) Texas Tech. Places like Tech, ISU, and TCU see fluctuations every year as their teams are alternatively good or bad.
Then apply this model to football where you've maybe got 30 new "player salaries" to cover. Could KU support a football team if they suddenly took on a 7 digit financial hit?
In the end, I think it'll end up being very difficult to avoid straight up bidding wars for players. Hell, even pro sports avoid this by a draft process. Could you imagine taking the top prospects and having schools draft them even if the kid didn't want to go there?
I will say this though: the first place they should go to get the cash is from the NCAA itself. They don't need more than 4 or 5 people running that mess and none of them should be making more than $30k per year based on their performance to date.
