Arian Foster: I Got Paid So I Could Eat While at Tennessee

((ht: si.com))

An interesting story is developing involving Houston Texans RB Arian Foster and what he says he did while at the University of Tennessee.

And mind you, we agree with him, but he's setting off a bit of a debate.

Foster, in an interview for a documentary called "Schooled: The Price of College Sports", admits that he and several of his teammates took food money (an NCAA violation), while on a football scholarship.

He says he did it, because after a game and the celebration after a win, he went home only to realize he had no food late at night and no money to go get any.

Read more from Sports Illustrated RIGHT HERE

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Our suspicion is, nothing will happen, though the Twitter debate amongst sports writers has been interesting.

Foster spoke out and the documentary producers used him and others to illustrate a fact of life in today's college football.

Everybody is making gazillions of dollars in the game.

Except the players.

Yeah, sure, the old argument that they get a "free-ride" scholarship is true. Though thousands of kids get into school on academic scholarships. And if they take a free meal or a couple bucks from a teacher, the school doesn't run the risk of getting in trouble with the NCAA.

The athletes, most of whom come from poor backgrounds, don't have the pocket money that other college students do. They don't have discretionary money to spend and their scholarships only get them the meals served at the training table. Which isn't necessarily 3 meals a day 7 days a week. Or in their case 11 or 12 p.m after a game.

The NCAA is under a tremendous amount of pressure to allow athletes to have some "spending" money, but nobody can figure out a good way to do it.

We really don't think this should get Tennessee in trouble, but the possibility does exist. Part of the bizarre NCAA rules system tends to punish schools for things that happen, well after the fact. The people involved who may or may not have been involved have long left town and the current players are the one's left to suffer the penalties.

Really, it isn't fair and we, like many, hope it soon will change.

Here's your video of Foster talking about his case: