There is a story on ESPN.com about a trustee at Auburn who pretty much runs the football program because he donates so much money to the school. The story is a good read, and it sums up pretty nicely why D-1 college sports are a joke.

The NFL and NBA need a minor league system, where young players can get used to the rigors of playing at a high level. Just don't make students, who pay to go to school to get an education, foot the bill for the athletes who attend the minimum number of classes to retain eligibility so they can go pro as soon as they're ready (unlike the athlets at smaller schools, who aren't on scholarship and must meet the same academic standards as everyone else).

Meaningless bowl games, entire basketball teams who don't graduate a single player, boosters who hire and fire coaches on a whim and run the lives of 18-year-olds like their own personal rotissierie league, the more you look at it the less it looks like college and the more it looks like the ridiculous travesty that it is.

When I applied to college, if I said on my application "I'll stay there one, maybe two years for experience and then drop out and get a job", no school would even think of offering me a scholarship. Yet that's exactly what happens to many students at the larger college programs, where the coach, AD, and boosters are often one big good-ol'-boy network trying to milk the student athletes for as much money as possible before they jump to the pros. A scholarship offer is just a drop in the bucket compared to the megabucks they get from bowl games (even the meaningless ones), merchandise sales, and TV deals, while the real students are paying their way in.

It's about time that they get honest with us and just drop the "college" from "college sports". Programs should either be like they are at D-III schools, where there are no scholarships and the athletes play in addition to their academic workload, or they should be full-fledged football teams not affiliated with a university.