There are a few problems with your argument but I will address only two.
1. The governing board of the NCAA is made up of a group of University Presidents and Chancellors. I'm pretty sure they are all very much interested in the academic progress of all students, including student athletes.
2. Some coaches don't even use all of their scholorships now, some of which are prepaid through endowments. Why give them any more when they aren't using all of their ships now? You can blame coaches for that but not the NCAA.
Now, I don't agree with every silly rule they have instituted, not by a long shot, but to say the entire organization is flawed because some problems exists, is simply not true.
Really? Let's examine the history of this.
Originally, a college would simply pay a good football player to join their team on a Friday or Saturday. Ten or fifteen dollars was a reasonable compensation for playing for good old Chicago University.
The problem was that the players didn't stay bought. They would play for Chicago U today and against Chicago U. tomorrow if Columbus U. offered more money. Some even complained that none of these players were actually students at either Chicago U. or Columbus U. Indeed, gold old Joe may be thirty years old and a professional fighter.
So, the schools began to get together to stop this practice of switching schools. It wasn't so much the hiring of players that bothered them. It was the switching. This was made quite clear when the rules that were institutied did not actually require that Joe be a student. They simply required that Joe be registered. Now, everyone was becoming happy. Joe couldn't switch schools from day to day.
Some people actually did begin to complaint hat Joe was simply a hired hand rather than a student. So, the assembled schools evolved a new rule. Joe had to be enrolled. Now, class attendance wasn't exactly required, nor was progress toward a degree. But, Joe had to be enrolled.
Sometime about this time,the organization of schools actually became the NCAA. Still, Joe wasn't actually required to graduate. The status of Joe wasn't actually checked. Joe just had to be a student.
Finally, they began to require some minimal progress as a student. Some very minimal standards were set to measure Joe's progress. Joe didn't actually have to make much progress toward a degree, and a good many Joe's didn't. There was little effort by the schools to check on Joe's progress, and none of the schools actually had any program that would help Joe make progress as a student.
Joe is still a hired hand and may as well be the gardener. The school is not interested in Joe, the student. Although you hear about the Joe's that took advantage of the education to get a degree, the NCAA doesn't actually do anything to promote that. Indeed, one of the charges leveled at Wilkinson when he was put on probation was supposedly that he had provided scholarships to students until they graduated---which the NCAA stated was inducement! A degree was an inducement.
The NCAA was still not really doing much to help Joe, the student. There were some minimal requirements for progress. As a result, many schools never graduated an athlete. There were no academic advisors or counselors. Joe, the student, was on his own.
Yet, the NCAA had a great number of rules about how Joe was recruited and paid. What did this have to do with Joe, the student? This was nothing more than the NCAA operating as a business organization, with the participation of the schools which had discovered that sports were a profit center. Nearly all of the NCAA rules had something to do with Joe's recruitment, something that had nothing to do with Joe, the student, and everything to do with the NCAA, the business organization.
Then, we had the ultimate proof. The NCAA actually limited the number of Joe's that could be granted scholarships. Rather than saying that a school could bring in thousands of kids and give them an education if they could play sports, the NCAA limited it to thirty per year. Was this for the students? This was nothing more than a crass attempt to control the business of sports and promote some balance that the NCAA thought would be profitable. This, of course, is the same NCAA that wanted absolute control of the television rights, forbidding any school or conference from making a TV deal until OU and Georgia took them down.
Why does an organization whose stated purpose is to protect the student athlete interested in reducing the number of people who can become students? Is this in the best interests of the student?
Still, there is not one rule that says that the NCAA is concerned with graduation---not one! This institution which exists for the student has a great number of rules about his recruitment, but not one rule that states that the student must graduate, should graduate, or even that it might be nice if he got an education.
Indeed, it would be another thirty years before the NCAA, for the first time, came up with a rule that stated that it would monitor the graduation rates of students. Almost a hundred years of paid players went by before the NCAA actually had a rule stating that a player should graduate. The NCAA existed for how many years before they began to pay attention to graduation rates?
We had kids who had degrees that were completely illiterate. The NCAA didn't seem to care. We had the most complex handbooks of rules that governed every part of a recruits visit, inducement, and benefits as a player, but almost nothing about his progress as a student. This, of course, was from an organization whose stated purpose was the welfare of the student-athlete.
You buying it? What in the history of the NCAA has indicated that they are the least bit concerned about the student-athlete? Why should this organization be permitted to exist on college campuses.
I could care less about their rules. Period.