Even if Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers and those that support paying college athletes get the NCAA to buy their philosophical argument, there's still another major hurdle they have to jump.

The money has to come from somewhere, because all that money that schools are bringing in from football and basketball is going somewhere else.

That's the reason why many football coaches lean toward paying college athletes a stipend, but the heads of the athletic departments don't feel that way. Athletic directors are acutely familiar with the budgets of their schools, and they know they've got a lot enough problems breaking even without stipends factored in.

An annual NCAA study showed that 40 out of 117 schools in Div. I-A reported a profit in 2001, with institutional support excluded.

Even with institutional support, 36 schools still spent that year in the red. In Div. I-AA, which includes some major Div. I basketball schools, times were even tougher as only nine schools made a profit without support. In Div. I schools without football, only six did.

In almost all athletic departments, the football and men's basketball programs have to subsidize the rest of a department's sports. In order to be a member of Div. I-A, a school has to have at least 16 varsity NCAA sports.

Some of the bigger schools have far more, including Ohio State with its 35 sports and Penn State with its 29. Every one of those sports costs big bucks to fund, as evidenced by the $54 million Penn State's athletic department spent last season.

It's a rare occasion when a sport other than football or men's basketball makes a profit. Many don't even have revenue streams because charging for admission wouldn't make enough money to pay the necessary ticket takers and ushers. Even women's basketball programs have struggled, despite usually being the third major sport at a university. Only six such programs in Div. I-A turned a profit in 2001, with the 104 that didn't reporting an average loss of $840,000. Only five colleges made a profit on their entire women's sports programs in 2001, and on average, the programs were in the red by $3.2 million. Because of Title IX and the NCAA's dedication to gender equity, it's likely that more money is going to be put into women's sports.

"There are some segments of the athletic department that we know will never generate money," Kansas State athletic director Tim Weiser said. "But those kids are just as deserving of a college experience as football players. And there's also an issue of equality. A great many programs are doing a lot to see that female athletes have the same type of opportunities as male athletes, but those sports aren't bringing in any dollars. "

In order to pay just football players and men's basketball players, schools would have to be dishing out a lot of money, especially if they listened to the suggestion of Chambers. He suggests a stipend of about $500 a month. With 85 football players on scholarship and 13 basketball players, that would set a school back $582,000, and just more than $1 million if it went up to $1,000 per month.

Considering the Title IX implications and other legal considerations, it is likely that all athletes -- not just football players -- eventually would have to be paid a stipend. Plenty of athletic directors think they'd be justified in doing so.

"Do you really think a track athlete deserves to get paid any less than a football player does? I don't think so," Michigan State athletic director Ron Mason said.

Penn State has about 800 student-athletes, according to its Web site. Paying them each $500 a month during a nine-month school year would cost about $3.6 million.

Penn State's athletic department could've have pulled it off last season when it made a $6 million profit. However, that was in a season that included eight home games and two road games in 100,000 seat stadiums. It was also in a year when two Big Ten teams were selected for BCS bowls, making a gigantic bowl pot, which all the Big Ten teams split. In 2000-2001, without so many factors working in its favor, Penn State brought in $45 million in revenue but spent $44.94 million in expenses.

A few schools could afford to pay their athletes without going into debt. That would give them a major edge in recruiting players, and according to many, destroy any competitive balance between big schools and smaller schools.

"Those at that top level like Texas and Ohio State and Nebraska would be able to further distance themselves from everyone else," Kansas State's Weiser said. "Those teams that can absorb the stipends would be much more competitive."

Even if the NCAA were to take over the duties itself, the organization would have to find a lot more money than it has. If it paid athletes a stipend of $50 per week, it would have to spend about $700 million per year on athlete stipends, well over its $422 million total budget.

So paying athletes probably would require some major cuts. As is usually the case, the non-revenue sports likely would take the hit. Mason and Penn State athletic director Curley both agreed that they likely would have to cut some sports altogether if required to pay athletes. Weiser also said that student-athletes would be taking a hit.

"It would be hard to say off the top of my head, but frankly, first we'd have to look at scholarships," Weiser said. "It would be a sad scenario that we would have to reduce opportunities to kids to offset the stipends, but we spend $4.5 million per year in scholarships. So that would be one of the first areas we would look to try and solve that problem."

This obviously isn't good news for non-revenue sports, which already get less funding than the revenue sports. The NCAA makes only six sports (football, men's and women's basketball, women's gymnastics, women's volleyball and women's tennis) of the 39 it sanctions head-count sports. Those sports are given a certain number of full scholarships, a number usually close to the amount of roster spots on the team.

The rest of the sports are called equivalency sports. They are given money equivalent to a certain number of scholarships, but the coaches are allowed to split up the funds to give as many athletes aid as possible. The number of scholarships is usually well short of the number of roster spots on the team. It is a rare occasion when a coach of one of those sports gives an athlete a full scholarship.

Baseball teams, for example, get money for 11.7 scholarships to distribute among the 24 players on the team. Penn State baseball coach Joe Hindelang said that the most any player on his team gets per year is 80 percent of the total cost of education, and the average player gets only 45 percent. It is therefore hard for Hindelang to sympathize with athletes who are getting a free education and are asking for more. He said that in his 27 years of coaching, he has never heard a financial complaint from a player, despite the fact that his players are paying for part of their education.

"When is enough enough?" he said. "These players are saying they deserve this money because they brought in the money, but they're given a full ride, and if their need is such that they need money to pay for everything else, there is already a mechanism in place for that. If the state and federal organizations that take care of those things don't feel you've shown the need, then why isn't a scholarship enough? Your parents paid for your transportation and entertainment before. Why does an athletic department have to do it now?"

He also expressed concern about where the money would come from, and said that he could imagine athletic departments being forced to cut sports.

NCAA spokesman Wally Renfro said that such a scenario would go against the mission of the NCAA. He said the purpose of the organization is to make as many opportunities for students to play intercollegiate sports as possible.

"You have to wonder," he said. "If we just got rid of every other sport, and just kept the ones that make the universities money, would that really be a better day?"

Not everyone is buying that argument, though. Former Sports Illustrated college football writer Rick Telander wrote a book about the problems facing college football called The Hundred Yard Lie: The Corruption of College Football and What We Can Do to Stop It. He also wrote a book about the Wisconsin athletic department called From Red Ink to Roses: The Turbulent Transformation of a Big Ten Program. Telander said he doesn't think it would be as hard to find money to pay athletes as athletic directors say, and he doesn't think it matters if it is.

"If you give an athletic department $200 million, they'll find a way to spend it," he said in a telephone interview. "So I believe they could find the money if they had to. And it doesn't matter what kind of contraption you've got set up. It doesn't matter what they've always done, or what makes it easier for athletic directors. What's right is right, what's illogical is illogical. In a capitalist system, you pay your workers and whatever needs to happen for that, needs to happen."

What's Next?

The plausibility issues keep the issue at a stalemate. Even if the NCAA wanted to pay athletes a stipend, it still would take time to decide where the money would come from and what kind of cuts would be possible or necessary.

Telander said that for any movement toward compensation for college athletes to be successful, the athletes themselves would have to get involved.

"Until athletes just decide that they're not going to play for free, they probably won't be able to get anyone to change," he said. "The unfortunate thing for college athletes is that they have no clout. They're there four years, and they're gone. As long as they're willing to bend over and take it then nothing is going to change."

Chambers knows this as well. But he said that players would need backing from outside sources to help them make a stand, and that before they even tried to do something, they would need to know that it was a fight worth fighting.

Though his 23-year fight finally has made some headway, Chambers knows it probably still will be a long time before he sees an end to what he considers hypocrisy, corruption and slave labor. But he said he is prepared to keep fighting.

"I'm the type of person who never reveals the cards in his hand," he said. "In legislation, you try to move incrementally, build a foundation and go from there. You don't try to do everything at one time. ... It's an ongoing contest, and I don't want to reveal my plans yet, but I definitely plan to continue working on it."