We should call them athlete-students because that’s what they are in college football and basketball.

We should know this by now.

And when we are confronted with the underbelly of college athletics — as we were again Wednesday by USA Today’s cover story about athletes being guided into easier majors in order to remain eligible — we should stop our faux outrage.

We watch ESPN televise 24 hours of college basketball with games beginning at 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. and never worry about missed class time.

We enjoy college football on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and never stop to consider the concessions that must be made.

We see the Bowl Championship Series signing a $125 million television contract and the SEC signing a $225 million deal and coaches signing for $2 million and $3 million and $4 million a year and never question why a coach can’t purchase a hamburger for a hungry player.

We gobble up No. 11 jerseys and No. 41 jerseys and watch games from gleaming facilities and never once consider what the athletes are getting out of the deal.

Or if they are getting anything out of it at all.

We bash the players who are academically ineligible, who get suspended for cheating on a test or who skip too many classes, but we never consider returning football to its Saturday afternoon kickoff root or making basketball a one-semester sport.

We want to hear how someone used his summer to study film or get stronger or take 500 jump shots a day, not how that summer internship at the law firm or engineering company went.

The football coach or basketball coach holds a player’s scholarship in their hands. The ticket to school and books and meals and success in the sport they’ve been playing since they were 6 all hinge on working as hard as you can. Every day.

So what gets sacrificed if that class you want to take begins at the same time as practice? Want to guess? “You’re recruited for sports. As an athlete, you’re recruited by the coaches for sports. You’re not recruited for academics,” former Boise State safety Marty Tadman said. “You’re there because you’re good at sport. You can help the program.”

The NCAA, in its push to inflate graduation rates among athletes, has instituted tougher requirements for eligibility and stiffer penalties for schools that do not graduate enough players.

“You understand what you’re basically telling us. We’re going to encourage our kids to take the easiest path to eligibility,” Georgia Tech men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt told the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics in June, according to USA Today.

Even if coaches and academic advisers don’t do it blatantly, surely there is a subtle push to keep some players where the academic requirements are less rigorous and the demands less time consuming.

Between the wins and classes, the GPA and points per game, it’s hard to know when a player is supposed to be a student-athlete or when it’s athlete-student time.

So the next time a fan cheers a kid on during study hall, a school sells tickets to a science lab or ESPN televises a math test, I’ll start calling them student-athletes.