Perspective on Payment (OPINION)

In just a few weeks, college football players will be reporting for preseason practice in Fayetteville and other towns across the country.

In just a few years, they may be reporting for work.

The debate over whether or not college athletic departments should pay athletes is raging right now.

Whether or not that would ruin college athletics, as some suggest, the financial data is increasingly difficult to ignore.

A report authored just this year by Marc Edelman, a law professor in New York and sports business expert, said the college sports industry generates $11 billion in annual revenue.

The money comes from several sources and is passed along to executives at the National Collegiate Athletic Association, college athletic directors and coaches.

NCAA member colleges as a whole continue to cite amateurism for dismissing any idea of paying any of that money to the athletes.

But the leaders of the Southeastern Conference, Big 10 and other power conferences would love to craft some sort of model to pay their athletes, and are pushing for autonomy from the NCAA.

For those who say the SEC is at the forefront of this issue in amateur athletics, it isn’t. Mike Slive wants to pay players, but only in an environment he can control.

What he doesn’t want to do is have a collective bargaining agreement where SEC lawyers have to sit down with the players and players’ lawyers and actually debate it. And that is essentially what happened when the National Labor Relations Board gave Northwestern University football players the right to unionize earlier this year. NU is appealing that decision.

This debate is driving the sports business news cycle right now. People will complain because people complain when other people are making money.The college sports industry already offers something valuable — an opportunity for a free education — but the landscape is changing. And it appears to be moving toward an era where better compensation is coming to the labor that is doing the work.