Student athletes in revenue generating sports (football and men’s basketball) do a lot of work and make the university a lot of money without being compensated fairly for that. They are forced into these roles because the NFL and the NBA have agreed with the NCAA not to give players under a certain age the opportunity to play professionally. So these athletes have no choice but to either play for colleges for well less than their potential value on the open market or not play at all (look at Zion Williamson who almost lost out on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars because he was barred from the NBA draft and he did so in exchange for the “value” of one year at Duke University – about $70k). This is fundamentally an unfair taking of an athlete’s right to market his services. More big picture, there are those who question why institutions of higher learning are in the multi-billion dollar sports industry at all.