ALTOONA, Pa. -- You don't give a damn about my buddy, but I'm gonna tell you his story anyway.
He graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism and left school about $25,000 in debt. He got married. His wife also worked in journalism, and she had more than $50,000 in college debt. So, while they did double their income when they got married, they also doubled their debt, setting their financial futures back even more years.
The moral of this story? Don't get a degree in journalism! I'm DEAD SERIOUS about that. What a waste of money, as shown in this report that lists newspaper reporter as the worst job in the country.
Again, you may not care about my buddy or his finances, but chances are, if you got a college degree in the past 20 years, you walked away with a mountain of debt. So you, or someone you know, can at least relate to my buddy.
Where am I going with all this?
Well, for years and years, I have argued that college football and basketball players who are on full scholarship should NOT receive extra money just because they happen to play sports. My reasoning was that they already were getting something incredible -- a totally free college education.
Zero. Debt.
They could go live their lives, get jobs and not have to worry about student loans that can run upwards of $1,000 a month or even more for a married couple. Hell, that's the price of a mortgage, and one reason why some married couples can't afford a house -- because of all their student loans.
Fantastic Penn State beat writer and numbers guy Mike Poorman from StateCollege.com put monetary figures on this 11 years ago, noting at the time that an out-of-state football player's scholarship at Penn State was worth $212,000.
That is a massive figure. And for years and years, I have cited Poorman's figure on my radio show as my biggest reason for believing that student-athletes should not get paid extra money.
Poorman actually updated his numbers earlier this year in this story. Are you ready for this? Now, a Penn State football scholarship is worth $317,500 for an out-of-state student, and $223,000 for an in-state student.
Zero. Debt.
But I'm here to confess something. I have changed my mind on all of this. After arguing one way for many years, I've taken a hard 180 and have gone over to the other side of this debate.
I'll let Teddy KGB deliver my take in this classic scene from "Rounders":
James Franklin got his money from Penn State (10 years, $85 million).
Mel Tucker got his money from Michigan State (10 years, $95 million).
Brian Kelly got his money from LSU (10 years, $95 million and a boatload of massive incentives).
Lincoln Riley got his money from USC (10 years, $110 million and lucrative real estate deals).
This is all just the tip of the iceberg, too. Because those massive coaching deals will change how future contracts will be negotiated, and before long, lots of coaches will be in the $10 million a year range.
If there's one good thing I can say about Franklin's contract -- and I've been very outspoken against Penn State giving him 10 years -- it's that his salary will remain the same for the duration of the deal, while other coaches could be getting a lot more than that down the road. So, if Franklin is still making $8.5 million in 7-8 years, that could be considered a bargain.
Can you believe such nonsense? That $8.5 million a year for a college coach would EVER be considered a bargain? It's absurd.
But that's where college football already is, and will continue to be headed.
Things have now gotten so far out of whack, with these coaches making insane amounts of money, that I've finally thrown my hands up in the air on all this stuff.
Pay the players.
Cash, not just educational stipends.
Maybe $15,000 a year, give or take. Does that sound like a reasonable number? Tax them on it, too. We're not talking about free money here.
Just don't be making anymore excuses about how the schools can't afford it. Because these big schools not only are showing that they can indeed afford it with crazy escalating salaries, hell, some are even paying coaches close to $10 million or even more TO GO AWAY once they get fired.
I say it's time to blow up the whole damn system.
The TV money is outrageous in college football, so find a way to allocate a whole lot more of that in order to help pay the players some cash.
Believe me, I know -- because I've heard this from a lot of people over the years -- that a lot of you out there agree with my new stance on paying players. I've been arguing against it for so long that I've encountered many, many sports fans who have disagreed with me and explained why.
It just took all of this crazy coaching money for me to finally come over to the other side of the argument.
Now, there are still arguments against paying players.
Legitimate ones.
Ones that I've clung to for years.
Such as, how would a school be able to pay all the rest of its student-athletes, outside of football and men's basketball?
How would any of this be possible under Title IX?
How would smaller schools afford any of this? If you're reading this column, you're probably a fan of Penn State or another big school, so maybe you don't care about smaller programs. But those smaller programs help fill up schedules in football and especially basketball, so they do have a place in the college athletics universe.
I went to a smaller school, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and for 20 years I have covered a small college basketball program, Saint Francis in Loretto. To suggest that those schools could afford to pay hundreds of student-athletes anywhere near $15,000 a year would be ridiculous. Places like that would have to re-evaluate everything when it comes to athletics, and perhaps stop offering many sports programs at all, or else drop down to a lesser level where they wouldn't have to pay.
Either of those options would cause a big problem. Because college athletics are supposed to be about providing opportunities for kids to compete in sports while pursuing their education.
But that word -- education -- is really what has been lost in all of this discussion. And it's a shame.
College football is a professional sport. It just is. There's nothing amateur about any of this anymore when a coach is getting paid nearly $10 million a year, TV deals are worth billions and the athletes now can make lots of money off their name, image and likeness.
I don't have all the answers here. A lot of this stuff is far more complex than any of us know -- with regards to university finances, who can afford what and how it would impact so many other aspects of college athletics.
But I can tell you this: If schools can find ways to throw $10 million at football coaches, and millions more to make other coaches go away, then the time has come to stop with the excuses about how they can't afford to pay the people who are actually the most responsible for making all the money in the first place.
The players.