College athletics: the source of pride, and money, for some schools across the country and the focus of community spirit. Yet nothing is without its hint of scandal. Although some schools rake in the big bucks with their athletic teams, college athletes should not get paid or get "improper" benefits because of their participation on a team, wrote C. Thomas McMillen, a former professional basketball player who was once a Democratic representative from Maryland, in a recent op-ed for The New York Times.

McMillen argued that schools should keep a closer watch on the benefits and incentives their scholar athletes receive lest the school be involved in a scandal related to such incentives within the athletic program.

He blames both the National Collegiate Athletics Association and the schools themselves for letting the situation get to the place it is today. If both the NCAA and the colleges are to blame, then the only possible way to regulate college athletics is through an impartial third party.

College is, first and foremost, a place to learn. College isn't one big gym where people sit around trying to get buff and bring in money for those that sponsor them. Though college athletics feed into the field of professional athletics, the truth is that scholar athletes, or students involved in athletics at their schools, should primarily be scholars.

In a March article in The Huffington Post, Dexter Rogers wrote that college athletes should get paid in order to reflect the amount of money going to universities, the NCAA and television stations. However, doing so would only prioritize the "athlete" part of scholar athletes. There's nothing wrong with being a scholar athlete.

But it does become a problem when the entire purpose of one's education is to perpetuate the athletics that are supposed to be on the side. Paying the college athletes is turning an education into a job.

What he says is compelling. It is impossible to expect the NCAA to police the schools and the athletes, considering the amount of time and effort it would extract. But beyond that, the NCAA is getting millions of dollars based on the performance of its scholar athletes. Can they really be expected to regulate the conduct of their own money makers? It's like saying that the CEO of a Fortune 500 company should be entrusted to regulate the safety of the company's product. Human nature obstructs fair self-regulation, choosing instead to take the money, and time and time again we have learned that we cannot expect money-making groups to regulate themselves.

So who should do the regulating? McMillen suggests the boards of the schools should do so. This makes sense, considering he is a regent at the University of Maryland. According to him, the boards should want to regulate to a degree necessary in order to avoid the scandal involved with public recognition of improper benefits.

I don't think this is enough. While the boards do have some self-interest in staying free of scandal, they also have self-interest in bringing the best athletes to their schools. After all, their first priority should be the well-being of their school, and certain schools across the country live and breathe college athletics.

Many of these types of colleges make tremendous amounts of money off of college athletics. I'm not as optimistic as McMillen in thinking these school boards will value the potential of scandal over the benefit of making money and fame off of the scholar athlete.

So what needs to be done? College athletics needs what every industry in America needs: an outside observer, an objective third party to be the watchdog, ensuring that everything within the field of college athletics goes as it should. What college athletics needs is a regulatory agency.

I don't have a clear answer for how this should be set up. If the NCAA sponsors this third party, then the NCAA might as well be the one watching. If only some colleges or school boards sponsor the outside observer, then the party may be biased in favor of those that sponsor it.

Perhaps if we think of college athletics as an industry, pumping out money-making products, then it would make sense to create a governmental agency, a bureaucratic group dedicated to watching out for "improper" behavior and fining those colleges and universities that allow such behavior to exist. You'd better believe that it would motivate the schools to prioritize correct behavior from its athletes.