There aren’t many people who love college basketball and football more than we do, especially compared to the boring NFL and NBA.

But as we’ve said before: can we stop pretending these are “student athletes” and the giant universities that make hundreds of millions of dollars off of them are “non-profit” institutions?

They clearly aren’t.

Northwestern just opened its $800 million “Ryan Field” glitzy football stadium, plush with skyboxes and corporate suites. Many of the college “amateur athletes” earn more than they could make if they officially turned “pro.”

Colleges also typically don’t pay property taxes which means homeowners and businesses have to pay more. But the schools benefit from the police, the roads, the fire protection, and so on. Why don’t these users pay?

Our friend Scott Hodge, former president of the Tax Foundation, finds that if hospitals and colleges paid property tax in Washington, DC, it would bring in more than $280 million. That’s enough to cut the average homeowner’s property tax by over $1,600, an almost one-third reduction.

This is typical of many American cities, where the big “non-profit” universities and hospitals have been exploiting their tax status to go on acquisition sprees, taking properties off the tax rolls.