GOP Congressman: Paying NCAA Athletes an 'Inevitability'

With March Madness highlighting the billion-dollar enterprise that is NCAA athletics, pressure is building from prominent former athletes, state lawmakers, and even members of Congress to allow -- or even require -- colleges to pay the student-athletes who bring them so much revenue.

Speaking on the ESPN/ABC podcast "Capital Games," Rep. Charlie Dent -- a leading congressional critic of the NCAA -- said the idea of providing student-athletes at least a stipend for their services is "very reasonable."

"Big-time college football and college basketball are the minor leagues for the NFL and the NBA respectively - that's what it is," said Dent, R-Pa. "It's professional athletics."

You can listen to the full "Capital Games" podcast HERE on desktop and HERE on mobile devices, or download it for free via smartphone podcast apps.

Payments to student-athletes would be permissible under a broad reform bill Dent is pushing that's aimed at requiring more concussion tests and preventing schools from cutting off scholarships for reasons that aren't connected to academics.

"Our legislation does not prohibit stipends, and I think there's an inevitability to it. A lot of people are getting very rich on the back of these student-athletes," Dent said. "I suspect that the only people who aren't getting paid are the players."

Ralph Sampson, a college basketball hall-of-famer, said on the podcast that it's only fair to find a way to compensate athletes, particularly because being a high-level college athlete is now a year-round commitment that doesn't provide much extra time for part-time jobs.

"I think there's got to be a creative way to get that done," said Sampson, a three-time national college player of the year who was later an all-star in the NBA. "They gotta eat, they gotta sleep. The meal plans at school are OK, but you're talking about athletes -- they have to perform, and you want them to perform at a very high level."

"It's like taking a race car and putting in unleaded gas in it, and it needs octane gas, it needs high-level gas in it or it doesn't work. So you got to find creative ways to get these kids to perform at a high level but also compensate as well."

Sampson, who's had two sons play college basketball, is now working with a project called FanAngel, a crowdfunding system that allows fans to pay to keep players in school, with the money due to be disbursed to them after their college eligibility expires.

"It will be a creative way to stop all the under the table, unnecessary stuff that go on in college sports," Sampson.

If neither federal intervention nor the private sector wind up providing money to student-athletes, states may wind up taking the lead. South Carolina state Sen. Marlon Kimpson has filed a bill that would require the two biggest public universities in his state to pay some athletes weekly stipends, as well as larger payments that would come after graduation.

"People are starting to get on board," said Kimpson, a Democrat from Charleston. "We need to make sure that our universities, who are making huge sums of money - again, this is no longer amateur business, we're talking about major commercial enterprises ... We need to make sure that there's some economic justice on the field, and some of that revenue goes to the people that are largely responsible for generating those returns."

"Capital Games with Andy Katz and Rick Klein" is a podcast program that explores the intersection of sports and politics, as part of the ESPN Perspectives audio series.

You can listen to the full "Capital Games" podcast HERE on desktop and HERE on mobile devices, or download it for free via smartphone podcast apps.