Earlier today, we wrote about the Big Ten's stance on increasing scholarship money to cover the so-called cost of attendance. We quoted Penn State assistant coach Jay Paterno, who had some interesting thoughts on the matter. So interesting that I thought I'd share some more of them now.

Paterno noted that this is hardly a new topic. He said he wrote an article for the Penn State school newspaper in 1990 about whether college athletes deserved more money. But after reviewing his notes from back then, he said players in many ways have it better now.

"Back then, a $3,000 Pell Grant was capped for student-athletes at about $1,800, roughly," he said. "Since that time, the NCAA lets you get the full amount of the Pell Grant, which is now up to about $5,500.

"Some people talk about a stipend of $300 per game, which for 13 games is $3,900. If you qualify for a Pell Grant, you're already getting $5,500. The NCAA has the needy student fund, so you can get $500 for clothes. We're allowed to fly kids home for family emergencies, which we couldn't have done 15-to-20 years ago."

Paterno scoffed at the idea that an additional $3,000 per student to cover cost of education would do much to cut down on NCAA rules violations.

"The truth of the matter is, it's not going to cut down cheating," he said. "A kid trying to get paid isn't asking for 300 bucks a game. The [Albert] Means kid from Memphis that Alabama got in trouble for, that was over $200,000. That's a little more than a stipend. So I don't think it's going to solve any of the major issues people think it's going to solve."

Paterno says he sees no way that college can give extra money to only football and men's basketball players. Even though the Big Ten is making millions of dollars in TV revenue per school, covering cost of education for every scholarship athlete on campus starts to become awfully expensive.

"When you look at most athletic departments, they are not self-sufficient as it is," he said. "So when you add a two- to three- to four-million dollars to that, that's going to come out of the school's general fund. And I don't think politically right now there's an appetite to take that on."

Paterno said athletes are already getting great value from their scholarships, and that many players might not have gotten accepted to their current schools if not for athletics. He thinks colleges need to do a better job of underscoring what the scholarship provides.

"We have to do a better job of selling to young men we recruit what a scholarship entails and the benefits it's going to give you the rest of your life," he said. "We tend to oversell playing in the NFL and being on TV and all that kind of stuff, while we tend to undersell the educational part. If they can graduate college with zero student loans, they're far ahead of the curve."