If multi-billion dollar football enterprise is forced to compensate players it will be the end of life as we know it.

Did you catch NCAA Czar Mark Emmert talking with Greg Gumbel? Really fun stuff.

Here’s the money shot:

Would going to unionization mean no more NCAA? It’s entirely possible. Emmert said if student-athletes essentially became paid employees of universities it “completely blows up the whole model, and it’s not clear whether anybody would want to continue the games under those circumstances.”

He has a point. I mean, we can only wonder what would have happened had the NFL not gone out of business when its players unionized in 1956. Can you imagine if schools have to start paying coaches and administrators, too?

Besides, as Greg Basta explained in one of my online sports groups, if we let players unionize our universities will just move overseas.

[sigh]

It isn’t like money is especially tight, Mark.

On average, each team (in the six major conferences) earned $15.8 million last year, or well over $1 million per game.

They posted that jump in combined profit even though revenue rose by only 6% to $2.2 billion. That means the schools had a combined profit margin of 49%, enough to make any pro team owner green with envy.

We shouldn’t be surprised, though. This ain’t the first time the well-dressed gentlemen sipping mint juleps up on the porch have pitched a hissy over attempts to bust up the plantation system….

Jesus is coming and he’s packing a union card.