Maybe one day we can enjoy college athletics without feeling guilty. No more wondering if the football and basketball superstars we love to watch actually work for their grades or attend class. Better yet, maybe there will come a day when we don’t have to hope that at the very least, these guys took the SAT to get into college.

We’ve all seen the stories. But to refresh your memory here are a few currently under investigation by the NCAA:

Former USC stars O.J. Mayo and Reggie Bush may have received gifts illegally, including rent money and cars.

Former University of Memphis basketball player Derrick Rose allegedly submitted bogus transcripts to get into college and cheated on his SAT.

Both Florida State University and University of Alabama football programs could have past victories stripped away due to academic cheating scandals.

Sure, it’s nothing new. Big players at big college programs are treated like demigods and given free passes through college. Maybe it was worse back in the day. There are rumors that NFL owners actually used to hand out drugs In locker rooms before games in the 1980’s. Pro athletes used to literally get away with murder (see: O.J. Simpson and Ray Lewis).

But we’d like to think that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore with all the Facebook and Twitter gossip exchanged by bored beat writers hanging out in locker rooms, but the system is far from fixed.

More than ever there is too much of a big-market bias in the collegiate sporting world. Florida State athletics are being placed on probation for four years for committing academic fraud involving 61 players. The football team will lose one scholarship over each of the next two years.

So let me get this straight. FSU gets docked two scholarships and essentially gets slapped on the wrist for helping 61 student-athletes cheat, yet WSU football lost eight scholarships last year for not meeting some confusing progress standard. Basically, WSU lost all those scholarships because too many players transferred from the school and a few players couldn’t post good enough grades. There was no cheating involved.

I’m not excusing our beloved Cougar football team and the mistakes some of our players have made, but give us a break. It’s no coincidence that WSU was the only Pac-10 team penalized scholarships last year and also brought in less money than any other school in the conference. They penalize the little guys to set an example while handing out softball punishments to storied programs like Florida State and USC.

The smart money says USC will get off nearly scot-free even after major NCAA violations like bribing players. The multi-million dollar TV contracts are worth just a little too much for the NCAA to ever really deal any punishment.

Not only is the NCAA’s bogus progress standards part of the problem, but rules like the NBA’s “one-and-done” don’t help either. Under the rule, a player must finish at least one year of college before gaining eligibility for the NBA draft. Not only does this rule make a mockery of every student-athlete in the world, it has also led to cheating, as we’ve seen with both Rose and Mayo last year.

College is something most of us have to work for and pay for. Even for scholarship athletes, it’s no easy task to spend every waking moment devoted to a given sport.

How does it do any of us good to watch a player attend classes in ballroom dancing and underwater basket-weaving for a year, knowing full well they intend to sign a pro contract the following year? We shouldn’t have to waste our tuition dollars and athletic department money on such prima donnas. Either force these players to finish a full four-year degree without cheating or keep them off campus.

After all, the other 99 percent of student-athletes around the country would rather not have their reputations tarnished by the few divas who think they’re above us all.

It’s an uphill battle to get things straightened out in college sports, but in the mean time we can rest easy knowing WSU does things the right way. As the opinion section so eloquently put it a couple weeks ago, WSU has had its fair share of problem athletes in recent years, but they are mere blemishes on a well-operated athletic department.

WSU upholds a solid standard of a student-athlete and we can only hope that standard continues.