The streets of Madison were thronged with Badger fans from across the state in anticipation of the first football game of the season against the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Rebels. Tickets on resale sites were marked up to three times their original price for students, and Wisconsinites tried to snap up the few tickets that were left.

UNLV’s football team went 2-11 last year. They haven’t had a winning season since 2000, and their most famous football alumni is Suge Knight, a defensive end better known as the co-founder, alongside Dr. Dre, of Death Row Records.

This doesn’t matter one iota to Wisconsin sports fans. Nor does the fact that the Badgers aren’t even a professional team, but a collection of student athletes trying to balance their hectic sporting schedules with their academics.

To Wisconsinites, and indeed most Americans, watching sports is a rite of passage. It is an automatic identifier of one’s heritage, their hometown roots. Across the U.S., people wear their team merchandise with pride. The Cubs might suck, but that doesn’t stop Illini from wearing their baseball caps around campus.

There is really no applicable comparison to the importance of sports in America. In Australia, where I’m from, we consider ourselves quite sports mad. Australian rules football games regularly draw crowds in excess of 50,000. But even that is no comparison to what I’ve seen in America.

The UNLV game was a sell-out. Camp Randall was packed to the rafters with 80,000 baying fans. To a game contested between student athletes! A game against a team that last year won a whole two games! If my home university, the biggest in Australia with a student body of 48,000 (6,000 more than the University of Wisconsin), held a game of rugby, the crowd would be lucky to reach four figures.

Why are Americans so crazy about college sports, games contested by athletes who aren’t paid for their performances, apart from paltry tuition scholarships? For these football players, the costs of the scholarships are being more than offset by the money they are bringing in to the university by way of sponsorships, TV and video game royalties and gate receipts.

Part of the reason that college sports thrive in America in a way that is incomparable to any other part of the world is the American sports economy. The mind-boggling TV contracts for nationally televised games has driven up the value and prestige of attending these games and has made it possible for college teams like UW to service the huge stadiums that house them. In 2009-10, UW brought in a whopping $93.9 million in revenue from its athletics department, making it the 10th richest college in terms of athletics-related revenue in the country.

While all this is well and good, it does raise the question of why student athletes aren’t being adequately remunerated for their financial contributions to the university. Of the $93.9 million UW brought in from athletics-related revenue, just $9.4 million was disbursed to the students in scholarships, while the coaches netted $14.5 million. After other expenses, the university made a profit of $3.8 million off their students, all of which went straight back into their own coffers instead of going to the athletes.

Of course, the university will say that it provides its student athletes with an indispensable service: a quality education that will continue to serve them well beyond the years the lucky few might spend as professional athletes. And while that is certainly true, that does not excuse them from profiting financially off their students while not rewarding them adequately for their efforts.

Which brings us full circle to the UNLV game. How much money do you think UW has made from the high profile recruitment of Russell Wilson from NC State? The Badgers have gone from being a solid team with a question mark at quarterback to being a preseason contender for the national championship.

The UNLV game would have been a minor fixture, one viewed as nothing more than a tune-up for conference play. But then ESPN decided they would televise the game, and everyone across the state of Wisconsin was excited to see how the Badgers would perform. The UNLV game was an audition for Wilson and the Badgers, a way to gauge their chances at making a run for the national championship.

The Badgers now have six of their 12 regular season games broadcast on national television, a fact that can certainly be put down in large part to one man: Russell Wilson. How much of the ESPN TV revenue do you think Russell Wilson and his teammates will see? My guess: Not much.

Shawn Rajanayagam ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and American studies.