Reflecting on the Shame of College Sports: Should NCAA Div 1 Basketball and Football players get paid?

According to Taylor Branch's article in The Atlantic, "The Shame of College Sports," the United States is the only country that competes internationally in big name sports at the collegiate level, which immediately presents a bias inherent to the argument of whether or not collegiate athletes should be paid to play-- those Americans and their sporting culture have some backwards priorities. On one hand, representatives from the NCAA argue that the "amateur status" of the athletes operates in direct correlation to the proverbial "sanctity" of the sport in which they participate, and paying the athletes would alter the game, that "commercialism was hurting college sports, and that higher education's historical balance between academics and athletics had been distorted by all the money sloshing around" (Branch). 

The flip side of this argument is presented flawlessly by a New York Times article that explores the sports economy in the United States, specifically the impact of money on college football. The assertion of this article is made blatantly clear within the first paragraph of the piece: "big money has taken over everything else in sports." Poignant? Certainly. Upsetting? Only in its truth. Uniforms, pre and post workout energy drinks, and even stadiums are being stamped with the name of the highest bidder: Duke and Louisville played their Elite Eight game during March Madness 2013 in Lucas Oil Stadium, for goodness sakes. Anyone who argues for the sanctity of sport has obviously not been paying attention to the growing logos on the jerseys of their favorite team or that they all wear the same brand of shoes.

Highest paid public employees by state: Most are college
coaches-- do athletes deserve to benefit from a trickle down effect?

I've thought a lot about whether or not NCAA athletes should get paid for their work, and though it would be nice to get a check every once and a while for entertaining hoards of adoring fans and being a major draw to a specific university, most athletes are getting paid via tuition to attend specific schools. Scholarships are, in a sense, means of getting paid, are they not? Many athletes also receive stipends from their given schools for housing, food and books-- that's another acknowledgement of the efforts being put into the school. But on the other hand, in most states, the highest paid public employees are football coaches (exceptions in North Carolina and Kentucky are basketball coaches), so why wouldn't their players, the ones who execute the actual work, get to reap any of the benefits? I think largely, my stance on the payment of NCAA athletes is centered around the phrase "student athlete." It implies a level of priority, that being a student should come above the sport that said student plays. If they're getting paid for a sport, then suddenly the priority shifts, since the sport, and not the academics, would present a major source of income. Programs all over the nation are already pushing unprepared collegiate athletes through the school for selfish fiscal gain (See also: the University of North Carolina "African Studies" Major that turned out to be a fake department, giving football and basketball players A's in classes that didn't even exist on campus, ever); if athletes were suddenly getting paid for their sport, there would be even more motivation for coaches and athletes to counterfeit their way through education. 

Also, paying college athletes would just cause the current sports paradigm to shift downwards: then high school players would be the new college players, unpaid, full of potential and ready to turn it into a career. And with college athletes being treated like pros, what would that make the professional athletes? Demi gods?