As the NCAA tries to regulate recruiting rules and cut down on cheating many people are suggesting that these players get salaries of sorts. These players are the only ones not getting paid in a system that generates an insane amount of money and the players are being taken advantage of.

That's just untrue. The players may not get paychecks or a salary but they are not being taken advantage of. As a high school senior myself, I have been researching different colleges and a major aspect in my final choice was the tuition. To simplify this, we are going to say that to go to an in-state college university costs the average student (with no scholarship at all) $20,000. However if that student comes from out of state that tuition doubles costing those students $40,000. Any player qualifying for such a "salary" is already getting a free education costing the university anywhere from 80 to 160,000 dollars. As an incoming college student myself I would be dying to have this kind of financial commitment to my university of choice. At a school like Michigan, getting a full scholarship is nearly impossible. There are very few and they are extremely competitive. For the purpose of this argument, we will say that the school invests 100,000 into each full athletic scholarship.

Brady Hoke's contract is for 6 years totaling roughly 18 million. The salary increases with longevity and he makes more depending on the teams performance but for simplicity's sake we will say that he makes 3 million a year. All the other coaches combined make 1.98 million a year. (we are going to round up the extra 2 grand and say 2 million for simplicity's sake) The school has so far invested 5 million bucks in coaching staff. That means that the school spends $58,823 per student on coaches. Now let's multiply that number by 4 since most players will stay for all 4 years at their school which brings us to 235,292 just on coaching, adding this number to the previous 100k for admission gives us $335,292. Since we rounded up earlier we will round down this time to 335,000. (trying to be fair here)

Now let's compare this to the average investment that Michigan makes for their non-athletic students. If you are enrolled in Michigan's College of Literatture Science and the Arts(LSA) then you are eligible for a maximum of 10 grand. No more. Let's assume that this averages out to be right in the middle(I'm too lazy to reseach this however i assume that there are many people getting the minium scholarship than the maximum...whatever) this gives the average LSA student $5,250 a year. 75% of Michigan professors make about 75k. (Just for a comparison only professors in the 99th percentile at Michigan make the top salary, 200 grand. The most economical coach on the football staff makes 205,000.....just saying.) There are 27,000 students currently enrolled in the LSA department at Michigan. And dividing this number equally is about $5 per student making he grand investment totalling $5,255 per student.

This is a complicated issue. There is no easy solution. I know this coverage is not complete but i don't have access to all the numbers. I would love to include the amount of money the school spends on food, hotel rooms, airplanes and all these things. I would love to know how much money the average scholarship player generates for his school in regards to ticket sales or TV ratings(how many more people watch michigan football to watch Denard Robinson than to watch Rusell Bellomy play catch with the turf) My argument is incomplete, but to say that these players are being taken advantage of is far from the truth.