HOLLYWOOD -- Justin Herbert borrowed the size 13 sneakers he wore to Pac-12 Football Media Day on Wednesday.

Oregon linebacker Troy Dye, also size 13, did the same.

I suppose the University of Oregon football players could have shown up barefoot, and that would have been a “talker” but I’m going to use their borrowed footwear to do the same.

Those two Ducks’ players wore team-issued “Oregon Air Jordan Tinker 3” sneakers. They left the tags on them. And when they returned to Eugene on Wednesday evening, Herbert and Dye turned them in. The sneakers will be stored in the football equipment room until after their college eligibility expires.

Then, they get a pile of their team-issued shoes back.

“I guess they’re afraid some guys would sell them,” Herbert said.

What we’re talking about is a scarce batch of customized team-issued sneakers that were the brainchild of Nike-designer Tinker Hatfield. He did it for the Ducks’ football team in 2011 with Air Jordan IX’s in front of the Oregon-Auburn BCS Championship football game. Those “BCS IX’s” were a hit with players, fans and shoe collectors. Now, Hatfield and Nike do it for multiple sports programs in Eugene and around the country.

But in 2013, the operation hit a snag. Two Oregon men’s basketball players -- Dominic Artis and Ben Carter -- were suspended indefinitely for their selling pairs of team-customized not-for-retail-sale Air Jordans on the secondary market for $1,800 a pair.

UO self reported the violation of NCAA rule 16.11.2.1 -- which prohibits student-athletes from receiving extra benefits. I mean, the players still own the shoes. The NCAA doesn’t have an issue with that. They just need to be put on layaway until their eligibility expires.

“I guess you’d then have to go figure out which size were sold and who was missing the shoes,” Herbert told me. “You’d have to have everyone turn theirs back in and it would be a lot of trouble. So they just have us turn them in now and we can get them back after we graduate.”

I’m not among the hard-liners who believe college football players should be paid a full-time salary. After all, they’re getting the value of a college scholarship, room, board and exposure to tremendous resources and professional opportunity. But there’s some gray area in this discussion.

The pay-for-play debate is a much deeper discussion with a lot of tentacles and we all know the college programs don’t want to share revenue. But it strikes me as silly that Pac-12 executives, coaches and administrators, are raking in lucrative salaries while Oregon’s players aren’t even allowed to take their team-issued shoes home.

Why?

Because if some players decided to sell the shoes they own, the NCAA might suspend them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I believe if a someone is gifted a pair of shoes, they own them. Wear them, bub. Sell them. Give them away. That’s up to you. I’d be more interested to see whether the NCAA is really willing to dream up a bylaw dictating the precise number of pairs of shoes, socks, underwear, pants and shirts a player can be given by his or her university.

Oregon State’s players at media day, Jermar Jefferson and Isaiah Hodgins, were allowed to keep their team-issued shoes. They wore them home on Wednesday night. But again, Oregon State’s players weren’t wearing high-demand, ultra-scarce Air Jordans designed exclusively for players on the team by Nike’s chief designer. Oregon State doesn’t want players checking in and out their shoes.

Joked one OSU official: “There would be an athlete’s foot epidemic otherwise.”

Herbert didn’t seem to mind borrowing from himself. Neither did Dye. After all, they’ve now grown up in the system. But I think the UO players should have removed their sneakers during Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott’s opening remarks on Wednesday and thrown them on the stage.

Scott said, “We are very clearly opposed to any type of pay-for-play system.”

Then, he added that compensating athletes, “would run counter to the fundamental nature of collegiate athletics and amateur student-athletes.”

Scott made $5.8 million in salary last year.

That’s a lot of shoes.