Todd Gurley is routinely described as a freak of nature: he's 6ft 1in, tips the scales at 16½ stone and has run the 100-metre in 10.7 seconds. Gurley's first two seasons as a running back with the University of Georgia Bulldogs gained him national renown and marked the 20-year-old out as somebody likely to be starring in the NFL by 2015.

For a kid who first learned to play in pick-up games on a field across from the trailer park where he grew up in Tarboro, North Carolina, turning pro next year will mean signing a contract worth millions of dollars. Until then, Gurley is a college business major receiving a free education in return for bringing his considerable talents to bear for the Bulldogs every autumn.

What seems like a convenient arrangement for everybody involved often isn’t. Many athletes, especially those from poor families, discover that subsisting on university sports scholarships is a financial struggle. And those destined for greater things are regularly offered the opportunity to cash in on their future stardom by earning easy money signing autographs for memorabilia dealers.

Last week it was alleged that, back in March, Gurley sat in a car on campus, scrawled his signature across 80 items and was paid $400 for his hour’s work. The university suspended him and authorities launched an investigation into whether he breached the amateurism regulations of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

That body’s arcane rule book runs to more than 400 labyrinthine pages and is the reason why something as innocent as an athlete receiving a free drink from a fan outside the stadium represents a violation of the hallowed Corinthian code.

Whether or not Gurley signed stuff for money that day, or for other dealers at other times as is now rumoured, isn’t that significant in the greater scheme of things. Of much more import is the fact his case has again brought into sharp focus the ludicrous inequality at the heart of college sport in America.

As with the GAA, the NCAA's only serious equivalent in the world, this is a place where everybody in the game seems to be making handy money – except the young men and women out on the field. The University of Georgia gridiron team has a television deal worth in excess of $20 million a season. The coach, Mark Richt, draws down a salary of $3.2 million (normal at this level). And, until last week, Gurley's No 3 replica shirt was retailing in the college shop for $135 a pop.

So, a 20-year-old whose mother reared her kids working in a nursing home laundry has been banned over the princely sum of $400, an amount the university collects every time it flogs three of his jerseys. Thousands have been sold since he arrived.

"Our stadium had, like, 107,000 seats, 107,000 people buying a ticket to come watch us play," commented Houston Texans running back Arian Foster of his time playing for the University of Tennessee. "It's tough just like knowing that, being aware of that. We had just won and I had good game, 100 yards or whatever. You go outside and there's hundreds of kids waiting for you. You're signing autographs, taking pictures, whatever.

“Then I walk back and reality sets in. I go to my dorm room, open my fridge and there’s nothing in my fridge. Hold up, man. What just happened? Why don’t I have anything to show for what I just did?”

Foster was speaking out about the plight of college athletes long before the Gurley episode. Last March, the refrain was taken up by Shabazz Napier, a University of Connecticut basketball star, who described going to bed hungry because his scholarship meal plan didn’t provide enough for him to eat.

Bad publicity from these and other cases forced the NCAA to relax the rules about how much food colleges can offer players. That this process included clarifying whether or not free pasta represented a meal or a snack sums up how bonkers the regulations truly are.

There are many out there who still cherish the ideal of the strictly amateur student athlete, pointing out they receive access to an education that will stand to them throughout their lives.

In theory this is very true. In practice, there are too many universities that pay such scant regard to making sure players are in class and learning that some have left college with basic literacy problems. In those institutions, it only matters that they perform on the field or on the court. Ensuring they get educated is the least of the priorities.

All of the above explains why retired basketball player Ed O’Bannon, an icon of the UCLA Bruins in the 1990s, sued the NCAA for the right of college athletes to be paid for the use of their names and images in television broadcasts. Earlier this year, a judge found in their favour.

From July 2016, universities will have to offer improved sports scholarships and pay image rights money into trust funds for when students leave college. However, any individual caught receiving $5 for autographing a shirt will still remain liable for suspension.

Thankfully, Todd Gurley should be safely in the NFL by then.