I had to laugh out loud when I saw this quote. ITZ, you must be in graduate school after your playing days, because anyone who has ever worked a job after college would give their left nut to only have to go to football practice, lift some weights, watch film like they are paying attention and play a game on the weekend.
I had a friend in college who worked his way through UA as a night janitor at a junior high school on South Main Street. His nights consisted of cleaning everything in the school from the floors to the boxes full of used tampons in the girls restrooms. He took a full schedule and graduated with an Accounting degree in four years while living off of pasta and cigarettes. Now he's a controller for Sherwin Williams. How were those prepared meals for you in Robs?
You can try to full some of the people on this site like they don't know any better, but some of us can see right through the "look how hard the athletes have it" argument. It wasn't all that tough.
GP1, I've got a real job now, and no, it's not harder then what I did in college to earn my keep. Sure, most guys would give their left nut to go back and play college football again, but it's for the games, for the comradery with your teammates, for the thrill of victory, the good times, the parties, the feeling like you are above the rest of the student body and you are something special. It's definately NOT for the grueling summer conditioning sessions, the absolute HELL that is fall camp, and the grind of 3 months of getting up at 6 for treatments, scurrying to class, going straight to lifting and busting your ass, going straight to the JAR to get grilled in the meeting rooms for an hour and a half, and then busting your ass in practice for two and half hours, going straight from practice to study table, and then scurrying home to try to get some food in your mouth before you pass out. Just about all the normal students who think they work so hard to make it through college wouldn't last the first 3 days of fall camp, and that's a fact. You've obviously never played college football if you think a janitorial job would be a harder way to make it through college. D-1 and 1-AA college football players deserve every cent of their scholarships, and probably more.