e same time, student athletes themselves seem to have a much higher expectation of making it to the pros than the odds indicate: with 43% of black and 16% of white high school athletes believing they will achieve a professional ranking (Zimbalist, 1999).
At the moment, then, it seems the NCAA is using these college athletes as fodder in order to produce a slick entertainment package—without having to pay them a proper wage in keeping with the revenues they generate. According to Fulks (1994), the average top athlete's financial aid package came to about $30,000 a year in the late 1990s, while top tier Division I NCAA basketball and football teams were earning in the tens of millions annually for their schools. Brown (1993) estimated that top college football players earned something in the vicinity of $750,000 a year for their schools, while basketball players in the early 1990s generated revenues that in some cases topped $1 million per annum (Brown, 1994).
The indication here is that college athletics programs at this level are just as professional as the most sophisticated of professional sports, with only one exception: they do not pay the student athletes what they are really worth in terms of the earnings they generate for the schools. According to Sack & Staurowsky (1998), "athletic professionalism in the form of athletic scholarships and other financial subsidies has become a permanent fixture in most spectator-oriented collegiate sport" (p. 129). At the same time, the NCAA fights tooth and nail to maintain th
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