SEC ready to jack up price of winning

So football coaches in the Southeastern Conference want to pay their players thousands of dollars out of their own pockets.

Well, isn't that a major bowl full of irony.

You mean out in the open this time?

Kidding. Kidding.

Sort of.

Hand it to those who annually run several of America's best programs: Just when it appears college football might be inching toward a more equitable landscape in terms of postseason legitimacy and a four-team playoff, the SEC reminds us that there is no such thing when it comes to the bottom line.

It appears the good ol' boys met at the conference spring meetings this week in Florida, probably lit a batch of stogies and poured themselves some Wild Turkey shots, and proposed hitting their ATMs to shell out $3,500 to $4,000 for expenses not covered by a scholarship.

Not for all 85 players on scholarship, mind you. The coaches were said to have voted 14-0 in support of such a stipend, but Lord knows they couldn't be thinking about their third-team linebacker or backup long snapper.

"Well, that gets a little tricky," South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier told a reporter when asked if the plan included paying all players.

Of course it does, because any self-serving coach (is there another kind?) of an SEC power would realize the starting running back deserves more money than some scout-team scrub.

Oh, brother.

Where to begin ...

It's not a new concept, this idea of paying college athletes a stipend. The NCAA membership has actually delayed a proposal that would give players an additional $2,000 annually to close the gap between a scholarship's worth and total cost of attendance while allowing them to afford some of the miscellaneous expenses they incur.

It's not an awful option on its face, though it would likely guarantee countless schools that don't benefit from multimillion dollar TV contracts within a conference suffer scholarship shortfalls as power leagues find no issue at all providing their athletes more money.

Spurrier and his Merry Men of Win-At-All-Costs have a lot of opinions on the matter and yet few definitive answers to important issues. They say men's basketball - the other revenue-producing sport in college - should also benefit from such a financial bump. They sort of stopped there.

I can already see tens of thousands of women's athletes holding a copy of Title IX legislation, screaming bloody murder about a lack of compliance.

Is Spurrier also planning on paying all female athletes at South Carolina? Will the women's softball team at Alabama be getting monthly cards from Nick Saban with wads of cash in them?

The problems with paying college athletes today are the same ones as last week and last month and last year.

No stipend, whether paid by the NCAA or football and basketball coaches who make millions of dollars annually, will stop cheaters across the college landscape. In fact, a proposal such as the one SEC football coaches are now asking their presidents and chancellors to consider would only enhance the idea (truth) that college athletics at its highest level is nothing more than a free-agent system where the highest bidders win out for the best players.

"We as coaches believe (players) are entitled to a little more than room, books, board and tuition," Spurrier told reporters this week. "Again, we as coaches would be willing to pay it if they were to approve it to where our guys could get approximately three, four thousand bucks a year. It wouldn't be that much, but enough to allow them to live like normal student-athletes. We think they need more and deserve more. It's as simple as that."

Let me get this straight: They want to pay their players but not all of them, which I assume would really kick-start that whole team chemistry concept each fall. They have no answer for the backlash this would create from gender-equity proponents. They understand this plan couldn't possibly just be for football and men's basketball, that it would have to be a national proposal, and yet have no idea how those leagues and coaches not in their hefty tax brackets could take part.

Yeah. This has a chance of working.

Suggestion: Spurrier, who has championed such payments for a few years now and is about to enter his eighth season as Gamecocks coach, should worry more about winning his first conference title at South Carolina than dipping into his millions each month to help widen an already ridiculous gap between the haves and have-nots of college football.

Wow. Chalk another one up for the (S)outh (E)go (C)onference.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.