As Mohajir often points out, “Besides the G.I. Bill, there has never been a scholarship program to help the youth of America change their family’s circumstances more than intercollegiate athletics.”

Did you know that NCAA institutions provide nearly $4 billion in athletic scholarships annually to more than 180,000 student-athletes? Many of these athletes would not have the financial wherewithal or academic credentials to get into college without sports. And 99% of these athletes will not play professionally and therefore will go into the real-world job market after graduation.

“I know first hand the benefit of a college scholarship,” Mohajir says. “I wasn’t an elite athlete, but I was able to get a football scholarship to a smaller school [Arkansas State]. If not for that scholarship, I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. Do you know how many millions of kids through the years were able to change their circumstances in life because they were able to get a college scholarship through playing sports?”

If and when colleges start cutting sports just to pay for the football team, what happens to all of those Olympic sport athletes who suddenly don’t get a college scholarship? And what happens to the United States Olympic movement, which has vastly benefitted from a collegiate feeder system whereby Division I schools spend an estimated $5 billion annually on Olympic sports, according to Stricklin?

“We’re the only country in the world that combines higher education with athletics,” Stricklin says. “That’s why our Olympic program is the best in the world — because we have this unbelievable development system that no other country can pay for.”

The dilemma, of course, is that all of these Olympic sports and the entire athletic operation — the coaching staffs, the support staffs, the strength and conditioning departments, the orthopedic surgeons, the nutritionists, the tutors, the facilities, et al. — are being paid for mainly from the revenue produced by the football team.

“It’s certainly not a business model you would design from scratch,” Stricklin says. “It doesn’t quite fit in the for-profit box and it doesn’t quite fit in the non-profit box. But as Winston Churchill once said about democracy: ‘It’s the worst form of government — except for all the others.’ College athletics is similar. It has a lot of issues, but it provides a lot of opportunities for a lot of student-athletes.”

College athletic leaders, state politicians and the federal government will have to answer a very big question in the very near future:

Do they really want to blow up the entire system to benefit powerhouse football programs while destroying the dreams of thousands of student-athletes across many different sports?

Be careful what you wish for.

Those unionized players on the Dartmouth basketball team may think they are fighting for the future of college sports, but, more likely, they are contributing to the demise of them.

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