College athletics and school spirit are among the most cherished of American traditions.

But college sports in the United States are unique in their appeal, both in relation to the rest of the world, which does not share our obsession, and to other forms of entertainment. We pay to see Oscar-caliber actors at the movies, not theater-school novices. We wait in long lines for Bruce Springsteen concerts, not high school battles of the bands. Yet you'll rarely find a fan of the NBA or the NFL who dismisses college basketball and college football as trifling or insignificant.

So why don’t we regard the winners of the BCS Championship and the NCAA tournament as merely big fish in small ponds? What’s the source of our enthusiasm for college sports that minor league baseball teams would kill for?

The answer dates back to the inception of intercollegiate competition, and it comes down to one word: amateurism.

Popular American sentiment holds a special place for the amateur ideal – we adore the concept of student-athletes who are students first, who wear their school colors, who share a special connection with their fan bases composed primarily of their classmates and alumni and who learn life lessons about teamwork and discipline while also working toward a college degree.

Above all, the conventional wisdom tells us, student-athletes are spared the temptations of huge paychecks. We find it wholesome that they walk away with only an education. Even if it’s just at a subconscious level, these factors bring charm and an innocence to college sports that is absent in the professional realm.

We cry foul when a college athlete is caught taking cash or other perks from a shady character with close ties to the athletic department. We condemn former USC running back Reggie Bush for taking gifts from agents, revoking his distinction as the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner. After all, making money isn’t what college sports are about.

At the same time, we eagerly spend on tickets, t-shirts and bumper stickers. We tune in on Saturdays and lend our captive eyes to television advertisers who pay big bucks to be sandwiched between coverage of young hot shots like Denard Robinson taking snaps while serving as walking (and running, and throwing) promotions for ADIDAS. We buy the magazines, the video games, the key chains and the posters. Various entities – athletic departments, media outlets, apparel sponsors, top-flight coaches – cash in for billions when all is said and done.

The only ones who don’t, it seems, are the athletes who put their bodies and futures on the line for our entertainment.

California State University-San Marcos economist Robert Brown told ESPN.com for a December 2009 story that the average NFL-bound college football player would be worth $1.3 million to $1.36 million per season to his school “if the college game were subject to market forces similar to those that govern the NFL.” Former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, he said, would likely be paid more than $2.5 million.

Tebow’s full-ride scholarship was worth $13,000 a year.

Critics of the status quo contend that amateurism is not so much an ideal as an outdated construct, beloved for its quaintness but ultimately serving to bar those who generate value from the compensation to which they’re entitled.

Through the decades, beneath the positive developments for fairness in intercollegiate competition – most notably desegregation and Title IX – the lurking trend of perpetually increasing commercialization has led activists, national columnists and some politicians to insist that the public has been misled, and that the brunt of the labor going into college athletics goes toward lining the pockets of everyone but the laborers themselves.

Ernie Chambers is a former long-time Nebraska state senator who repeatedly introduced legislation that would require stipends for college football and basketball players in the state. It never came to be.

“There should not be surprise at the number of young guys who take what are called ‘extra benefits,’ ” Chambers said in a recent interview. “The shock should be that not all of them do it.”

Chambers, who never uses the word scholarships without preceding it with “so-called” and prefers to call them “contracts of indenture,” says athletes in the revenue-producing sports – at most schools, just football and basketball – are entitled to compensation for the value they bring to universities.

“No other level or classification of employees could be treated as unjustly as all these players, generating this amount of money, and nothing be said about it,” he said.

According to Erik Christianson, director of public and media relations for the NCAA, athletic scholarships are compensation enough.

“Their goal is to graduate and to achieve that college education,” he said.