A Question to Pursue for Fall Sweeps

Why should academic students, many of whom are working jobs and taking out loans, have to pay so the athletes can go to school for free?   Why do our universities apparently think it's more important to educate a quarterback than it is to educate a scientist or an engineer or a teacher?  My students documented the numbers for the Mid-American Conference.  At some schools, even distance-learning students, students who never set foot on campus still have to pay the athletic dept.   Students and parents don't realize where their money is going because as the reporting project of my students show, most universities in the MAC don't provide line-item detail on the bill.   Ohio University does make the information available on its web site, but it's buried so many layers deep it's unlikely anyone would ever find it. 

Why do you suppose universities aren't more forthright with their billing practices?  That's a great question for a sweeps piece, one of interest to a big chunk of the audience.