Railbaronyarr, you can't possibly be serious? Besides the fact that you completely ignore the hundreds of millions of dollars being generated by these student athletes for their universities, multimillionaire coaches, grossly overpaid AD's, grossly overpaid NCAA executive staff, grossly overpaid bowl representatives who run these bogus nonprofit bowl organizations.
With all do respect you are off on some of your assertions. These kids don't get free medical unless the parents don't have health insurance. Everyone in the above paragraph does. Not all football or basketball players are on scholarship so it throws your math way off. The families of the staff get way more free "swag" than the athletes; charted flights to bowl games, 5 star Hotels and not to mention their spouses absorbent salaries.
So to summarize:
The athletes generate tens of millions for the schools, the schools claim nonprofit status pay multimillion dollar salaries and depend on everyone else to fill in the income gaps for it's athletes/bell cows.
I believe the universities should be responsible. The scholarships should be full ride (they are not), income shortfalls should not be the responsibility of tax payers, athletes of revenue producing sports should not eligible for pell grants.
I work for a publicly held company where me (marketing), 3-4 engineers, 2 operations, 3 manufacturing engineers, and about 8 floor production people's salary (plus raw material cost) nets the company over $40 million dollars a year for our product line. DO our salaries equal that all divvied up? Hell no. And that's just the private sector.
Non-profit organizations need to pay their employees and particularly directors, VPs, and presidents large sums of money to ensure they are marketed and executed properly to fulfill their mission. A university is no different. You may think ADs, coaches, etc are grossly overpaid, but they NEED to be people who are educated and good at running organizations: financially, strategically, personel management, etc. If it were a for-profit body why do 90+% of athletic departments still require money from the general university fund? The mission of the athletics department is to funnel money from revenue sports to support other ones to engender the growth of athletes at a higher level than HS in this state/country at an amateur level, for both males and females of many sports.
The athletes DO get medical treatment: treatment for injuries, care after games, etc. They can even take out insurance policies during college on their bodies (look up Eric Decker and many others who have done this).
You are right there are more athletes on a football squad than scholarships. There are 85 scholarships and 117 current football roster players. Again I state that the remaining members CHOOSE to be on the team to either play a sport they love, play for their university, or hopefully earn a scholarship (or some combination). Basketball 13 are allowed and we currently have 15. Not exactly proving your point. Beyond that I believe I made perfectly clear how very conservative my numbers were (hours being on the high side, total 'payment' given to them on the low side due to excluding certain things).
Quantify or prove families of staff getting more 'swag' than the players?
Why should student-athletes not qualify for a pell-grant? Let's make a corollary. Very bright student attends the U. Not bright enough for a full-ride, or even partial scholarship. Maybe $2,000 a year for 2 years. But family and he/she can't afford all of tuition/fees/room/board for a full year. Qualifies for a federal pell grant to help cover cost. While at the U works for a professor or department at an agreed-upon salary/wage doing research work as part of work-study (filling in the gap the pell-grant couldn't cover). The research he CONTRIBUTED to made the university millions in donations, patent money, etc. Shouldn't he be paid more than his wage? That fat cat professor making $400k that year doesn't deserve it all!! How about this: the student recognized that taking part in that opportunity satisfied a short-term need for money to help pay for school and living but also served a longer-term purpose by gaining knowledge and experience he otherwise wouldn't have gained. He helped his university gain notoriety and respect and that money went to help other departments within his college or the whole university to keep other programs afloat. Sound similar???
Also, keep in mind that it isn't JUST the athletes making the university the millions you're complaining about. There are many other aspects that go in to a college game that bring in the money from the university via student workers who are "underpaid": the marching band and the atmosphere they bring (all 300+ members 100% unpaid), student workers for the Big Ten Network on internship through the U working cameras, lighting, etc that make the BTN possible to broadcast and bring in all that $$, student interns for the athletic department driving ticket sales, ad promotions, etc that bring in millions. Why aren't you calling for them to get paid the big bucks???