Or are we applying corporate-compensation logic, in which all the money that a company brings in is credited to the CEO, who promptly gives himself a lavish raise?
Preferably, in fact, these unquestionably professional athletes would stop pretending to be students at all, with some sort of hybrid university-sports structure. (keeping in mind that this graph uses the top 150 college coaches; schools like Yale and Stanford unquestionably have true student athletes)
MIT has one D1 sport, rowing. I'm not sure whether they give athletic scholarships for it, but without bothering to check, I suspect not.
"Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university with the most success in collegiate athletics, for 14 consecutive years (1994-95 to 2007-08)."
Some people just don't care about sports.
The problem is that high-level college football and college basketball, in particular, have grown from amateur sports into de facto professional leagues, with athletes who are grossly underpaid relative to the revenue gathered by the sport they play.
I'm in favor of separating de facto professional sports away from the truly amateur sports, but I think there's value in having amateur sports. (bias alert: I'm an amateur athlete who spends a lot of his time and money playing sports, and coaches a club ultimate team.)
There's a ton of downside to this, I know, but I don't think that universities should be regulating what sort of money their students bring in.
Another way to look at it is that the university is 'paying' them with a free education, and 4 years with no financial obligations. Depending on the school, that has the potential for massive financial equivalents.
That said, let me propose a deal for you: Instead of being paid for your next four years of work, your employer gives the cash to a university. In return, the university gives you a four-year scholarship with a value equal to your deferred salary plus X%. Note that the scholarship is nontransferable, it cannot be deferred, and you cannot stretch it out over more than four years, unless the university agrees to give you a single extra "red-shirt" year. Also, if you quit your job, you lose the scholarship, so don't expect to be a full-time student unless you're really good at multitasking and don't need a lot of sleep.
How large does X have to be before you accept this offer? My guess is that it is considerably higher than zero.
If I were a high-school kid coming from a family with very little ability to help pay for college I'd say that sounds like fantastic deal.
Some of these guys come from financially destitute situations and will leave school the minute they hear NFL so they can support the rest of their family.