I think the article was garbage. For the reasons you stated towards the end. One of her solutions is to reduce scholarships to 70. Arbitrary on her part like most other suggestions. How does this help the kid by having less opportunity.
Also, it’s not free. The benefits package they receive in football all in is equal to about $100k. Median household income in the U.S. is $72k. For 18-22 year olds, significantly less. She fails to mention the bloated athletic budgets have a lot to do with Title IX as well. Football pays the bills for all of that. Failed to mention booster contributions are still the largest portion of “revenue” for an athletic department, not TV contracts. Is the spending out of control, yes? But there is a lot more to it than greedy athletic directors. If people are willing to donate money so Saban can have 13 analysts so be it. Free market Capitalsim is in the process in terms of supply/demand (better football product demands more money for TV, booster levels, priority seating etc...
It just wreaks of an agenda driven article that was sparse in real facts about a much more complicated problem. And so crazy coming from WaPo because they are never agenda driven.