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Former Ohio State player Christian Bryant thinks players should be paid and rule will change in five years

Former Ohio State player Christian Bryant thinks players should be paid and rule will change in five years

According to former Ohio State safety Christian Bryant, you're not going to find many college athletes opposed to getting paid. At least not on Ohio State's football team.

“Almost everybody I would say believes that we should get paid,” Bryant told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. “People who don’t play a sport, I feel like their argument would be they get a scholarship to a university. That’s fine and dandy.

"Still, the amount of money that’s made for the university, that collegiate athletes are making for the university, that isn’t shared to the collegiate athlete … I feel like that rule will definitely be changed in the next five years.”

Corey Brown, a senior receiver on the team last year, told the Plain-Dealer he handed out "APU" wristbands to every player. The All Players United movement for players' rights started in September when some players, including Northwestern QB Kain Colter, a leader in Northwestern's union efforts, donned the acronym on their equipment.

“All college football players feel the same, and if you don’t, you’re not a human,” Brown said. “Everyone feels this way, especially the way Kain is presenting it and taking charge. Just to see a dude like him, who was a senior last year, really try to start a movement … I handed the bands out to everyone, and everyone wears them now.”

Bryant said he would find something like $5,000-$10,000 per player fair. The NRLB board's ruling on Northwestern players' efforts to form a union said all scholarship players were classified as employees. So with 85 scholarship players, it'd be anywhere between $425,000-850,000. The minimum salary for an undrafted free agent in the NFL is $420,000 in 2014.

Something under $1 million could be palatable for BCS-conference schools, right? South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier thinks so. It wouldn't be a solution for every athletic program at a school and for football programs who don't make as much as the Ohio State's and Alabama's of the world, but it seems like a fair start for big football programs. And with how long the athletic reform process looks like it's going to take, the more possible solutions, the better.

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Nick Bromberg

is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!