In the college world, it seems like athletes are treated like royalty. Drew Stanton and Drew Neitzel sightings on campus are a bigger deal than students seeing a celebrity in East Lansing. I am pretty sure people can name the starting five of the men's basketball team rather than our university's president and provost. These collegiate athletes play their game, do the school thing and get as much recognition as some professional stars.

But behind the daily scores and shifting team rankings, there has been a controversy brewing between the NCAA and Congress about the legitimacy of our athletic institutions.

During the past month, discussions between the House Committee on Ways and Means headed by Congressman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., and NCAA President Myles Brand have pushed the financial books of the NCAA into the public eye, as well as their tax-exempt status.

When NCAA babble happens, I typically don't really pay attention to the bureaucratic pageantry. But this time, I noticed something different.

Several weeks ago, Thomas, the outgoing chairman, accused the NCAA of not living up its tax-exempt status and treating its athletes, coaches and programs more like the professional world does. Since then, I have seen waves of media organizations highlighting the extreme price tag on college athletics, starting with coaches' salaries and firing packages.

The issues Thomas raised to the NCAA are not being swept under the carpet, but dissected and analyzed more than I have noticed the NCAA do in a while.

Brand had to do something to respond to the accusations, so he began with a nationwide call to universities to examine their budgets. It was almost like he was saying, "clean up your books now before we get audited," in a very press-conference-appropriate way.

Then, the NCAA started re-releasing statistics about academic success of athletes and graduation rates that already had been publicized in earlier weeks. One set of releases said athletes are graduating at a higher rate than the normal student body.

Jim Pignataro, MSU's director of student-athlete support services, confirmed that the new releases were just replicates of the prior data released. He said this may have been an NCAA P.R. campaign to assure people that college athletics are just as much about the grades as they are about the games.

I called MSU Athletics Director Ron Mason to see if the NCAA had contacted MSU about its athletics budget. He said he didn't know much about the situation and that nothing specific was being done at MSU. If we are one of the biggest schools in the nation with prominent men's and women's basketball programs and a somewhat well-known football program, why aren't the NCAA big wigs in contact with us when they ask schools to be more financially responsible?

Brand had to do something to respond to Thomas and the committee's questions. So he did — in the form of a unnecessarily detailed 25-page response that depicted an idealistic image of a collegiate athlete. In most scenarios, this image doesn't hold true.

Now, after the accusations and response, my guess is the congressional committee still is not satisfied with Brand's rebuttal and is wondering why colleges get to use the tax-exempt status on athletic operations that are often similar to the professional operations. It's no secret there are schools out there marketing their football or basketball teams for all they're worth and making quite a profit. But that doesn't mean there aren't some student-athletes doing what regular students are doing, too — going to class, getting good grades and proving the athletic programs they're part of are at least a little bit academically driven.

This debate is far from over. College athletics departments certainly need to do a better job of tightening their belts and regulating their spending. But let's not make college sports more like the pros just yet. If that were to happen, the authentic, anything-can-happen nature of the games and teams would be lost. They would practically be guaranteed to become an over-marketed, overpaid collection of showboaters who get paid too much to do what they do.

Laura Collins is the State News sports administration reporter. She can be reached at colli313@msu.edu.