Posted 7:48 PM by Gene

We cannot say how exasperated we are to have to comb through five thousand Web sites to get three insights -- and this one came from John Dudley in, of all places, Erie, Pennsylvania:

South Carolina's Steve Spurrier weighed in Thursday, saying he is willing to fork over $294,000 of his own salary to pay players $300 per game, a proposal that will be received by the good ol' boys at NCAA headquarters like a fart in church.

On the surface, it doesn't seem so unreasonable for someone, perhaps even a rich coach like Spurrier, to feel obligated to cough up some loot for the folks who do the actual heavy lifting on Saturday afternoons.

But it doesn't make it right.

And it doesn't solve the problem.

In fact, paying college football players would open a new set of issues that no one, least of all the NCAA, is prepared to face.

Next in line would be men's basketball players, whose annual March Madness tournament is worth $10.8 billion in TV money to the NCAA and its member schools over the next 14 years.

If Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck is getting $300 per game to toss footballs 12 or 13 times a season, what's the going rate for Nolan Smith to lace it up 37 times for Duke?

Or for the backup setter on Pepperdine's men's volleyball team?

Are we proposing to pay athletes only in revenue sports?

Only men?

Because you wouldn't have to wait long for the stampede of lawyers rushing to file Title IX-based lawsuits if female student-athletes aren't compensated, too. And who could argue with them?...

Paying the athletes wouldn't be enough to satisfy the most gluttonous offenders in college sports. It would merely be an appetizer.