Every so often, when a pay-for-play scandal jolts college football, it prompts the question: What should the NFL do to help rectify the system?
Can the league root out unscrupulous agents?
Can it somehow punish current pros who took money when they were in college?
Should the NFL even care?
The last question is easy: Absolutely. College football is essentially a free farm system for the NFL, and it's even better than that. It's a multibillion-dollar publicity machine that makes it possible for a rookie such as the Broncos' Tim Tebow, who has yet to take a snap in the pros, to lead the league in jersey sales. Reggie Bush, the player at the center of the latest scandal, was a coast-to-coast celebrity long before the Saints made him the No. 2 pick in the 2006 draft.
So, yes, the NFL cares about how college football is perceived.
Still, the irony of Alabama coach Nick Saban equating NFL agents to "pimps" was not lost on people around the league who remember vividly how that coach lied his way out of Miami, vowing he wouldn't leave the Dolphins for the Crimson Tide, and how he and other college coaches now make millions on the backs of essentially unpaid players. Coaches are as culpable as anyone in this mess.
That said, it's clear there needs to be more effective regulation of agents — including the currently unregulated so-called marketing agents, financial advisers and publicists — by the NFL Players Association.
"They should be doing something to the agents," Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana said. "Everybody goes after the players when it's the agents who are putting them in those situations. These kids don't know anything. They're just trying to get into the NFL. The agents are the ones out there making these kids have to make a decision that they're not sure about."
Agents counter that these players and their families aren't wide-eyed innocents who have had piles of money thrust upon them, but savvy negotiators
with their hands out the whole time.
The pot of gold at the end of every paid-player scandal is the NFL, the promise of riches that a pro career brings. If the right people were to agree the current system is in need of a major overhaul, the NFL — and, more directly, its players union — could play a significant role in reducing the number of future infractions.
A look at some possible remedies:
