A firewall isn't enough. The real scandal is how the Athletic directors and coaches use the NCAA cartel's ability to fix compensation for athletes in order to skim any surplus not for the educational mission of the University, but for themselves. The reason so many institutions (an overwhelming majority) have athletic budgets in the red is because of coach and AD salaries - particularly for football and basketball coaches, where ASSISTANT coaches can make several times the salary of a full professor or Dean, and head coaches get multimillion dollar deals. At my most recent school, two coaches alone ate up almost 10% of the athletic budget. Without Trustees limiting compensation for coaching and other athletic department staff like the NCAA does for athletes, all a firewall will mean is that no money will be directly siphoned off academics, but the surplus generatedwill continue to be eaten up by the coaches rather than returned to the school to support its academic mission.

In addition, athletic department revenues include a significant amount in terms of donations, which in addition to the tax benefits accrued to donations to the academic mission of the University also accrue benefits like ticket preferences and parking privileges, creating incentives that siphon off funds that would otherwise go to the academic side of the University. Real reform of the type discussed would put donations to both areas on the same footing or privilege donations to the ACADEMIC side (perhaps by removing the tax deduction for donations to athletic programs?). I would not be surprised if as much as half the donations received to support athletic programs in fact would go to support academics if not for the additional incentives provided by athletic departments, or that 80% of athletic departments supposedly in the black found themselves in the red if this were accounted for.

Along the same lines, athletic scholarships represent a similar siphoning - particularly because barriers to transferring (not just for athletes - consider the difficulties in transferring credits between schools without losing some and thus increasing the opportunity cost associated with obtaining a degree) means that colleges operate to some extent as price discriminating monopolists. Essentially, financial aid is the tool for price discrimination and allows the college to set a higher base tuition level and extract greater rents from the student population as a whole. The athletic scholarships do not "cost" the college anything, because they are paid for by higher tuition charges on purely academic students. It would be far more honest to pay the athletes a salary, but that would reduce the surplus available for coach and athletic director compensation. This, rather than concerns about "amateurism" - most athletes are already paid in terms of fixed tuition and housing benefits - is behind the opposition of most athletic directors to open payment of athletes.