The fundamental problem is that we've combined big-time spectator sports with academics. No other country in the world does that because they recognize these are two very different endeavors with entirely different priorities. In almost any other country, elite athletes go straight to the pros (majors or minors in their multi-tiered club system), whereas students that plan to do something else for a living, go to college or trade school. You don't do both at the same time as one effort will inherently interfere with the other. Whatever sports exist at the college level are for the participants, not spectators. But 100+ years ago, American students, alumni, and paying spectators got emotionally invested in college football and basketball and that system grew instead of a robust minor league system. Thus, the massive contradiction we have today with amateur athletes participating in a $multi-billion sports enterprise that is professional in every other way.
But no one is going to want to scrap major college sports entirely and start over. It's too big a part of our culture and fans are far too emotionally invested to completely undo that model. So, the remedies we see from the Rice commission are about the best we can realistically expect, which means the game will always have some degree of corruption. Whatever the new rules are, certain coaches and programs will break them because of the huge pressure to win and all the money that is at stake. Unless you replace our college system with non-scholarship, D-III athletics that no one watches, a degree of corruption will always exist.
