Major college football is dirtier than an Eddie Murphy stand-up comedy routine.

I feel like I have to take a shower every time I watch a game or read a story about the latest violation.

The reason? The system is as broken as Joe Paterno’s hip.

There are 120 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision teams. I’d be willing to bet (which is an NCAA violation) that about 100 of them knowingly violate the rules.

I’d also be willing to bet (also a violation) that about 120 of them unknowingly have violated an NCAA rule.

It’s impossible not to.

Buy a hungry, fourth-string running back a donut.

Violation.

Give the punter a ride to practice without demanding gas money.

Violation.

Order a pizza at an Italian restaurant with the starting quarterback and eat it there,

not back at the practice facility, coach office and/or home.Violation.I guess pizza in public is a no-no. Pizza in private a thumbs up.It’s no wonder programs are getting sanctioned at an unprecedented rate.Even Boise State, the darlings of college football for the past five years, got slammed by the NCAA.The punishment: a cut in scholarships.And how exactly does that hurt the university? It hurts the future student-athlete who was in line to snag one of those scholarships much, much more.Now he will have to go to some inferior football school, like Notre Dame.What happened at Ohio State is in the minority. That was wanton disregard to the rules.But the rules themselves need to be examined.Major college football is a multi-billion dollar industry now.In 2009, the Texas football program raked in more than $120 million. Even my alma mater, Kent State, stuffed nearly $19 million into its coffers.Players made a grand total of $0 (on the record, that is.)Sure, some of those players got scholarship money — a free education is nothing to sneeze at.But the universities they play for made huge profits.And the NCAA rules are beyond strict. There is no wiggle room for common sense.It needs to change.Either the rules need to be relaxed or there needs to be a system put in place where the players get some kind of compensation other than scholarships and an occasional pizza behind closed doors.It’s absurd and naive to think for a moment that programs aren’t finding ways to skirt the rules.This is a football crazed culture. The NFL, despite an ugly spring and summer, is as popular as ever. College football in many ways is just as popular, if not more so.There is extreme pressure to win, and with it, extreme pressure to break the rules, which are rigid to begin with.The system needs to be overhauled so the news on the field is more prevalent than the news off of it.