We are in the midst of the darkest era of collegiate sports, particularly in college football. The media has recently publicized the Penn State University childhood sexual-abuse scandal, the University of Miami’s illegal boosters funding players with improper benefits, Cam Newton and Reggie Bush (two Heisman trophy winners) receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars (along with a California home in Bush’s case) and the five current Ohio State University players who received cash and other benefits for awards and championship rings they had received in years past. This list is disappointing and includes more incidents.

What do all of these situations have in common? Each was covered up in some form by the college’s athletic department. In these situations, either the Athletic Director or the Head Football Coach was aware of the allegations and did not properly report the incidents.

Why wouldn’t you report Reggie Bush being paid under the table? Because Reggie Bush was the best player in college football. Reggie Bush, Cam Newton, Terrelle Pryor, Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, Willis McGahee and Devin Hester made their teams win, and when your team wins in college football your college gets paid.

Who is to blame? The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA is a cartel of the major athletic universities in the United States. The cartel sets wages, playing conditions and other aspects of intercollegiate athletics. Most prominently of these is a restriction on payments to college football players. Football creates billions of dollars in local and national revenues via ticket sales, TV contracts and merchandise, not to mention millions of dollars annually at member schools in donations by alumni and other supporters of athletic programs, known as “boosters.”

Top college football programs are bringing in between 40 and 80 million dollars a season. Each program is allotted 85 scholarships per season. With an average cost of  living expenses that is 3.4 million dollars (40,000 dollars x85) that goes to “worker salaries.” That is a disparity of 76.6 million dollars for an elite program such as Penn State, Miami, Auburn, USC or Ohio State.

Not many businesses have expenses of 4 percent (3.4/76.6), so where does the rest of the money go? The money goes shockingly to those executing questionable morality: the coaches and athletic directors.

Nearly every Division I Football Bowl Subdivision school is paying their coaches at least 1 million dollars in annual salary. The average salary for a Division I athletic director is nearly a half million dollars. Nick Saban, the head coach of Alabama University, has an annual salary of 4 million dollars.

Division I football coaches are paid almost the same on average to their professional football coaching peers despite the fact that NFL teams have an average revenue of 230 million dollars. Again top college programs are making between 40 and 80 million dollars. So if the team is making quadruple the money, shouldn’t the coach be paid four times more? The answer is that the coaches cannot be paid at this rate in the NFL because the NFL teams need to pay their other employees, the players.

Published research by Robert Brown and R. Todd Jewel took data from the mid-1990s, estimating the revenue produced by an elite college football player. Their study determined that a player who was good enough to be drafted to the NFL generated 400,000 dollars per year he was at school. For a four-year player that is 1.6 million dollars in generated income. Over 200 players are drafted to the NFL every year and not one of them received monetary assistance outside of the stipulations of their scholarship. Legally, that is.

It has been well documented that recently players have been paid, or, as the colleges like to say, have received “improper benefits.” The players will continue to get paid, and as long as the NCAA does not adapt to an evolved market, college football will continue to fester.

Pay the players. Not every player needs to be paid above his or her scholarship, but some are producing at a level that is immensely above the current benefits they are receiving. There are numerous ways to go at paying the players, whether the NCAA wants to allow unlimited spending (a free market) or have a salary cap (limited spending per school). Some sort of organized pay scale for players should be put in place so that the money they are receiving is at least managed.

From 1950 to 2005, 50 percent of the top eight finishes in the AP final poll were claimed by just 12 different schools. As a college football fan, if you’re worried that the top programs would just pay the most and get the best players, that’s already occuring.

Paying the players is the right thing to do. It will not eliminate all problems with college football, but it will lead to an improvement. Unmanaged money leads to corruption in almost any field. With a legitimate system in place, maybe as fans we could get back to talking about the game.