Dartmouth has been debating the academic qualifications of its athletes lately (Jan. 6 editorial, response, another view). Athletes in the Ivy League are not paid to play but have at least the same access as other students to financial aid, which, as the Times points out, has lately made the league competitive with the scholarships of the big-time sports schools.

Meanwhile the big-time schools and the NCAA are under pressure to raise or eliminate the wage cap on their athletes. Joe Nocera’s proposal in the Times makes sense but might not go far enough, since it doesn’t excuse athlete-employees from the obligation to attend classes — a wasteful distraction that has long been something of a sham at some schools.

But Liberty University is leading the way: the school has sponsored a professional freestyle skier named Jay Panther (press release). Panther, who is pictured in the press release wearing a school shirt at the school’s football stadium, trains at the school’s ski area and represents the school in competitions — but he is not a student!

This goes well beyond the weirdness of the University of Phoenix having a stadium without a team to play in it, and it might represent an honest way out for big-time football. One wonders whether a place like Auburn or Miami might be better off if it eliminated its football program and then sponsored (like Liberty) or purchased (like Red Bull GmbH and the New York Red Bulls MLS team) a new minor-league football franchise that would wear its uniforms and represent it in competitions. The players would finally be paid what they are worth on the open market; the schools would no longer have to deal with a group of distracted and occasionally underqualified students; and the fans wouldn’t necessarily notice any difference.