Whoa whoa whoa... so words actually have meanings, and you can't just make up whatever you want and say it on this message board?!?
The answer to the first part is it depends - when the words are figurative and hyperbolic, not so much, and the answer to the second part is, of course you can ? people do it all the time.
I don?t get many opportunities to counterpoint both you and byco at the same time.
I touched on this in post number 64 of the thread with your poll, and I?ll expand on it here.
The players are neither working for peanuts-obviously that was idiomatic, I get that, nor are they being exploited.
The marquee players who generate the wealth for the entities that you and byco speak of don?t stick around long anymore. They create or expand a brand for themselves, and are able to head off and avail themselves of relatively monumental wealth.
The ones who stick around for four years and have no pro football opportunity going forward ? they?re not really the ones who people are tuning in to watch nor are they really creating the vast wealth. They?re the supporting cast.
They?re getting the same thing scholarship athletes always got - a valuable scholarship and the marketable prestige of having played big-time college football.
I see that before I was able to get to this, Tom Dalton 22 has already made some of these points.