By Mike Lopresti
Gannett News Service

The governor of Nebraska wants a law passed so his state's college football players can be paid. We could debate the timing, after seven Cornhusker defeats last season. Who gets a raise after losing the Independence Bowl to Mississippi?

But that can come later. The issue on the table is cash stipends for football players.

Once, it might have seemed like a reasonable idea. Until I started paying for a child's college education. And next year, two at the same time, when it will be like locusts going through the savings account. (We'll pass the hat later).

You've heard the arguments. How football fattens the school treasuries. How the players get none of the booty. How they're exploited and oppressed, and deserve a piece of this cream pie.

But let us spend a moment with real life.

It will cost an out-of-state student more than $60,000 to get an education at the University of Nebraska.

Most will have to work. Many will graduate in debt, the payments stretching out for years. Even the best and brightest of them.

It will cost a football player nothing. While there, he will get the finest medical care the school can offer. The best food. Any tutoring help he requests. He will leave without a cent to repay.

Let us be honest. In most cases, he is not there because of his GPA. He is there because of football. The scholarship was not based on merit or need. It was based on his 40 time.

Fair enough. It is right that so many get the chance. It is right that so many get an open door.

Just don't come back and say they're getting nothing. Since when did we so devalue a college education, that it became nothing?

I have a son who is a senior in high school. He thought about Duke, and I gagged at the annual price tag of $38,230.

He mentioned Michigan, and I went into convulsions at $29,508 a year.

Had he been a coveted quarterback, he could attend either for free. I wouldn't have felt very exploited.

The governor wants the Nebraska Legislature to act. He wants other states to join in. But it's a slippery slope of questions from here.

Do you pay the basketball players? They bring in a lot of money.

And if you pay the men, do you pay the women? Or are you going to tell, say, the women's team at Connecticut they don't deserve it?

Do you pay only the athletes whose sports show a profit? Does that mean the third-string kicker gets cash, but the swimmer who wakes up every day at 5 a.m. to put in 10,000 yards is on his own for pizza money?

It is a road that goes nowhere good.

More money should be found for one thing. Special travel.

A kid gets recruited a thousand miles from home, his family should be able to come see him play every so often.

Ohio State's Maurice Clarett loses a close friend, he should be able to fly home from Fiesta Bowl practice for the funeral. And not be grounded by a paper blizzard of bureaucracy, as each team takes away $13 million.

It is the silly things that glaze the eyes.

But there need be no check for the players on the first of every month. They already get paid. It is called a full ride, with all the trimmings.

If anyone doubts its value, ask somebody trying to go to college these days without one.

Tuition will go up next year. It always does. Here, there, everywhere. Hardly a major college football player will notice.