Managers get paid handsomely for coaching them and tickets for the biggest games go for ridiculous amounts of money. Television stations pay millions for the rights to show matches live, newspapers in their home areas sell thousands of extra copies on the back of the public interest, and merchandising of team paraphernalia mushrooms with each passing season. Given that the players are the only ones disqualified from earning a cent from the entire operation it's little wonder some argue the time has finally come for them to be recompensed for their incalculable contribution to the sport.

If that scenario sounds familiar to the members of the GPA, it could be because the student-athletes of American collegiate sport might just be the closest thing in the world to inter-county Gaelic footballers and hurlers. In fact, they may well be the only amateur sportsmen out there with a more legitimate gripe about how much money others are making off their talent. For the rights to broadcast the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship game live from the Georgia Dome in Atlanta tomorrow night, and the tournament leading up to it, CBS pay just over half a billion dollars a year. The players receive $15 a day in dinner money.

According to online brokers, the going rate for a courtside seat at the final between the winners of Ohio State v Georgetown and Florida v UCLA is currently hovering around the $12,000 mark. There will be no shortage of takers even at that outrageous price. Yet, if any of the players from those four teams were to receive a free sandwich from a fan in the team hotel or to accept drinks sent to their tables by admirers, their side could be disqualified from the competition because of infringements upon their amateur status. Everything down to a kid using the coach's mobile phone to ring home after a game is strictly prohibited because "it would constitute an impermissible extra benefit and represent a violation of NCAA regulations".

The last quote is taken directly from the NCAA's arcane rule book, an infamously hefty tome that stretches to over 500 pages and governs every possible aspect of the players' lives while they are at university. If you can imagine a body with the fastidiousness of the IRFU's old amateur ethics committee and the zealotry of the pro-Ban elements of the 1960s GAA, you are some way towards understanding the people in charge of collegiate sport. Between grid-iron and basketball, they run a couple of billion dollar industries in which the only people not making vast sums of money are the gifted students who make their games must-see TV for American sports fans.

That these individuals get a scholarship to university to play these sports, and in a small percentage of cases a shot at the NBA or NFL too, is what separates them from their counterparts in the GAA. With annual tuition at the best schools in America running at $40,000 a year, the talented sportsmen and women are receiving for free an education that costs every other student on campus near enough 200 grand.

Well, that's the theory anyway. The problem at many of the institutions is that the college cares less about how the gifted point-guard or quarterback does in the classroom and far more about how he performs on the court or on the field.

To this end, admissions offices often bend the rules to allow the best athletes into colleges where they are academically way out of their depth.

Once on campus, they work to ensure the best players don't flunk exams and thereby lose their eligibility to play. At schools that genuinely care about the kids' welfare, this is done by providing extra tutoring and babysitting them all the way. At those that don't, it's achieved by pushing them towards professors with a propensity for marking leniently and even enrolling them in courses that are often nothing more than a joke.

In his last year as the star quarterback at the University of Southern California, current Arizona Cardinal Matt Leinart's only class was ballroom dancing. In 2004, the University of Georgia was mortified when it emerged their basketball team were enrolled in a Physical Education class the final exam for which was posted on the internet. Here are a sample of the multiple choice questions given in the test. How many halves are in a college basketball game? How many points does a three-point field goal count for in a college basketball game?

So defenders of the collegiate system can argue all they want that the athletes receive a rather expensive education for free. The reality is too many of them are chewed up and spat out by the colleges once they've given four years to the team. About half fail to graduate and many of those who do leave with a worthless degree. Since a lot of the star baskeballers and footballers are AfricanAmericans, leaders of that community especially regard the setup as a form of exploitation. They feel a living wage would give these teenagers a better foothold in life than a faux stab at education in a high-profile university.

As that argument rumbles on in the background, 54,000 people will shoehorn into the Georgia Dome for the decider tomorrow night, cheering the most professional amateurs this side of an All-Ireland final.