Good question. A Pell grant is worth about $5,500 a year, another $450 a month. Undoubtedly, a Pell grant helps, but "most athletes" do not receive a Pell Grant. On a team of about 100 kids maybe 25 receive Pell Grants. Some parents have the $ to help the players with extra cash each month, some don't. The fact that they need to send money (if they have it) to the players belies the "Full scholarship" misnomer. A Pell grant is dependent on how much the "Family" makes. A family might make ok money, and therefore be ineligible for a Pell grant, but can not send their player money because they have other kids in college, have health problems, parents with health problems, etc. Also it's up to the parents or the player to fill out the FASFA form to see if they are eligible, and some famlies/kids are not up to this.
You have to realize that Pell grants are not just for football players or even other athletes, but for any student whose family falls into a low adjusted income bracket. So this is not just money for football players, and really isn't a lot to start with.
Another thing, the $960 a month mentioned above is just for when school is in session. Christmas break, Spring Break, Thanksgiving, they get "short checks". However, the landlord doesn't want to hear "short check" when the rent is due, nor do restaurants or supermarkets understand this concept very well. If a kid chooses to live in a dorm, he has to move out during the breaks. Where does he go? Buy a ticket back home? Sleep in his car?
A couple of years ago, the NCAA approved the paying of summer scholarships to students attending summer school. This was good for the football programs cause the kids could practice in the summer. If schools didn't take advantage of this, they would not be competitive at the beginning of the schedule with the schools that did. Some schools only pay for one summer school session, not two. Again, what happens to the budgets of the players that have no scholarship money for one summer school session? Do they move out and go home, try to find another place in a month when they come back? What happens to their bits of furniture? Kids used to be able to work during the summer to save a little $ for the next season. Now with only a month or so off, jobs are harder to find and the money, of course, is less.
Yeah, the kids might get a degree out of all this, but in today's market what is that degree worth?
This is going to change. The system is faulted and needs to be addressed. Changes are in the wind.