Great piece on the NCAA and amateurism

[The_Admiral]

So how many people actually read the whole article and would like to offer specific thoughts.

[HedleyLamarr]

And they're getting the same education us general students are getting.

baldly false

For what it's worth, I had an English class with David Greene, who was a 4-year starting QB at Georgia and was drafted by the NFL. The only classes he missed were the Friday classes that preceded a road game.

I'm not saying every athlete is a star pupil in the classroom, but to state that the average student-athlete isn't going to class and not getting an education is a pretty lazy argument.

So let's say the Nebraska football/basketball organization gets its big cut of Big Ten money from BTN and ESPN and CBS and whoever else, pays its staff, including players, and then pays the University of Nebraska for the right to use the university's trademarks, maybe pay some rent, however you want to arrange it so that money gets to the universities after it gets to the players. Why can't this work?

Because Nebraska is an NCAA institution, and as such, the NCAA stresses equality across the board...whether it be football or golf, men's or women's sports, Division I-A or Division III. Every school would have to pay each and every athlete...in every sport...in every division...the same amount. The starting QB at Nebraska has to get paid the same amount as the benchwarming softball player at Tusculum.

Nebraska can afford to pay every student-athlete. The same can't be said for the likes of George Mason, Mount Union, Georgia State, and even some of the lower-tier Division I-A schools.

Fundamental question: if baseball has a robust system of professional minor leagues, and hockey has affiliated professional minor leagues and major-junior leagues which grant stipends, why must football and basketball be the province of higher education?

The NFL season's too short (and you only play one game a week) to bother having a minor league system.

The NBA's roster size is too small to waste decent money on a minor league.

Since the better basketball and football players were already playing in college and the college game had been long-established, the NBA and NFL knew it made a lot more sense to forgo a minor league system in favor of just drafting the best college players.

[DCDuck]

I don't wholly disagree with that, but at the same time, these student athletes are getting a good deal out of their colleges. How many university graduates will earn as much in their lifetime as a decent NFL running back will in their football career? Or even an NFL punter? Are you going to start suggesting that all college students should be paid a wage? They have to defer earning, why shouldn't student athletes?

Only about 1-2% of college athletes will actually make it to the pros, according to the article. Not every back-up QB in D1 FBS will end up making Tom Brady kind of money.

[Gothamite]

That makes the education they're getting all the more valuable.

[Saintsfan]

That makes the education they're getting all the more valuable.

This is the point. Most NCAA athletes are going to college for an education. For many a sporting scholarship is a way to make college affordable. If you go down the route of paying players, you'll either still end up players being paid well below their 'value' or you'll end up with a totally messed up system were some players get paid stupid money, and some don't get paid anything.

[The_Admiral]

That makes the education they're getting all the more valuable.

This is the point. Most NCAA athletes are going to college for an education.

But we're not talking about "most NCAA athletes" and we never were. To go on about the NCAA's badminton players and waterpolo players and even hockey players is just another misdirection ploy by people trying to enforce football's exploitative status quo. No one's suggesting that we pay the aforementioned a dime because

1) they're not being brought in as illiterate ringers who make a mockery of higher education, and

2) selling the rights to badminton/waterpolo/hockey telecasts makes little to no money for anyone to which they should feel entitled, vis-a-vis the highly lucrative football and men's basketball.

3) most NCAA students and athletes are not engaged in an uncompensated activity that incurs grievous and sometimes lifelong physical harm.

College football players are not students. They often don't want to be students. Their schedules often don't allow them to be earnest students. They're basically there as kind of a Campus Life entertainment corps, who put on the school colors and run headfirst into kids wearing the other school's colors so that students, alumni, and people who just sorta live in the area can safely sublimate their bloodlust into eating and drinking and yelling and stranger-hugging, and rejoice not only in a sense of belonging, but belonging to something superior to what other people belong to. (Hi, I'm a student at a Big Ten school. If my team won, it's because my school--and in interconference play, the schools associated with it as well--is athletically superior to yours! In the event that we lost, it is because our comparative reverence for academic standards precludes us from fielding teams of illiterate black kids natural athletes that your southeastern school has no reservations about. We, in one sense or another, win!) This whole sociological ziggurat also happens to make lots and lots of money. Are we losing this in the shuffle here? LOTS OF MONEY! The school makes money. The coaches make money, some more than their NFL peers do. Why not drop the charade and just pay them instead of dressing them up as students? I mean, let them sign up for classes if they want to, but it shouldn't be a condition of their existence any more than we should force them to, say, work for restaurants. Why won't people just accept the place that restaurant football has in the fabric of America?

[DCDuck]

Because if we start paying the D-1 football and men's basketball players (and let's be honest, folks. When we talk about "college athletics" that's who we are talking about), then sooner or later someone will raise the argument for paying the second-string left fielder on the softball team, the backup goalie on the field hockey team or the third alternate on the bowling team.

And nobody, NOBODY wants that to happen. Ever.

[The_Admiral]

Slippery slope fallacy. And then if you give a moose a muffin, pretty soon people will wanna marry their dogs!

The bowling team will have no claims heard till CBS pays $55 million a year to show bowling.

[Lights Out]

Slippery slope fallacy. And then if you give a moose a muffin, pretty soon people will wanna marry their dogs!

Except the slippery-slope argument is backed up by concrete law (Title IX). Why do you think most schools keep their women's basketball programs around even though getting people to remember their existence is a Sisyphean task, let alone winning?

[The_Admiral]

By divorcing revenue-generators from interscholastic sports, wouldn't Title IX be out of play? If they're not on scholarships, and indeed aren't even students, what sort of equal time can you enforce?

[pmoehrin]

By divorcing revenue-generators from interscholastic sports, wouldn't Title IX be out of play? If they're not on scholarships, and indeed aren't even students, what sort of equal time can you enforce?

It would also mean the end of NCAA and institutional control over the sport, something they aren't going to give up willingly.

Like I said earlier in order for the system to be fixed, somebody is going to have to make less money and nobody is going to volunteer themselves to be it. If you could come up with a way for the players to be treated more failry and have everyone involved make the same amount of money, that system would be put in place starting tomorrow. There just isn't one that exists.

I'm of the firm that belief that the only your going to see any change is if the NCAA's hand is forced. Either you no longer consider Division 1A football and basketball to be part of the NCAA family of sports, or you scale the amount spent on these sports back drastically. There is no way the NCAA is going to do either of those things on their own and the way I see it one or both of those options have to be done in order to get a fair system in place.

[Gothamite]

Guarantee the scholarships, and the players will be treated more than fairly.

On the whole, they're making out pretty good on the deal. Let's not pretend that scholar-athletes are toiling away in a system that provides them zero beneft. The superstar athletes are getting a ton of publicity that will help them secure their next job (and increase the payday that brings), and the majority of athletes who don't turn pro still get the opportunity for a great education either free or at a drastically reduced rate.

[The_Admiral]

It would also mean the end of NCAA and institutional control over the sport, something they aren't going to give up willingly.

No one said it'd be easy. That O'Bannon case will be one to watch.

More reading material on how the NCAA is a corrupt and disgusting cartel that subsists on status quo inertia in a world where this crap would be otherwise unthinkable:

http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/the_scandal_beat.php?page=all

http://www.mrdestructo.com/2011/09/scholarships-and-compensation.html

Read both

[Saintsfan]

Slippery slope fallacy. And then if you give a moose a muffin, pretty soon people will wanna marry their dogs!

The bowling team will have no claims heard till CBS pays $55 million a year to show bowling.

The issue I have really is that the pay student athletes argument seems to assume universities are businesses. They are not, at least primarily. Yes strong football and basketball programs are cash cows for universities. But who much of that money is paid out in wages? How much of it is paid back into the university system?

But it isn't the badminton program that concerns me, it's half the football program. Are you really going to want to pay back up tight ends or even starting kickers? Do individual players bring in that money to the Colleges, or is it rather the name of the university and the strength of the program that brings in/develops players?

[The_Admiral]

The issue I have really is that the pay student athletes argument seems to assume universities are businesses. They are not, at least primarily.

oh-ho-ho really. Without even getting into the academic side of universities, the bread-and-circus side we're talking about here is absolutely a business. Big business. Again, national television networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to televise these games, universities pay coaches millions of dollars to coach. In what universe is this anything but big business? What do you call it?

But it isn't the badminton program that concerns me, it's half the football program. Are you really going to want to pay back up tight ends or even starting kickers? Do individual players bring in that money to the Colleges, or is it rather the name of the university and the strength of the program that brings in/develops players?

Backup tight ends and placekickers in and of themselves don't make money for the Dallas Cowboys; the state of being the Dallas Cowboys makes money for the Dallas Cowboys. This, of course, doesn't exempt the Cowboys from paying their employees, nor should it for any sports team that maintains its brand equity across generations as its players come and go. By destroying their bodies to elicit tribalist pride in live and television audiences, football players are rendering a service for which they should be fairly compensated, irrespective of their individual star power. Yes, Notre Dame gets millions of dollars a year from NBC (for now) not for who specifically plays for them but because it is Notre Dame. So too does the NFL, and their individuals are often just as fleeting as college's.

People buy Ford cars for the name, not for the individual lineworkers; shall we only pay them in health insurance (because we're giving them something far more important than money:[sanctimony]their health[/sanctimony]), or free used cars, or FunBuxx that can only be redeemed on the premises? No, because that's retarded and inhumane. It baffles me how so many otherwise liberal, progressive, pro-labor folks circle the wagons on the college sports status quo when it's challenged, whether out of misplaced sentimentality for the alma mater, or poor arguments in good faith, or outright willful ignorance. Billions of dollars are made on the backs of these kids, backs which in the case of football tend to get pretty screwed up. Don't give them "educations" that they don't want or can't use in lieu of a teensy little cut of those billions. Just pay them for the work they do--because playing is indeed work just as much as coaching is, and God knows they get their share--and abandon the charade of the football/basketball "student-athlete."

[Saintsfan]

I guess it comes down to this- there isn't an easy way out of this. No simple solution. The 'just pay student athletes' argument is over simplified. The media isn't going to allow the NCAA to continue to turn a blind eye to all but the worst transgressions.

I think the real pity is that college sport is one of the few major sporting institutions were players are genuinely representing a community that they are genuinely a part of. Yes colleges have national recruiting policies, but it's not impossible to take a class at, say, Auburn, at be sat next to a future NFL player. I think the unhitching idea has some legs, but at the same time something like that isn't going to happen without a deal of pain!

[Gothamite]

The issue I have really is that the pay student athletes argument seems to assume universities are businesses. They are not, at least primarily.

oh-ho-ho really. Without even getting into the academic side of universities, the bread-and-circus side we're talking about here is absolutely a business. Big business. Again, national television networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to televise these games, universities pay coaches millions of dollars to coach. In what universe is this anything but big business? What do you call it?

"Lots of money coming in" does not necessarily mean a traditional business in the way he was thinking.

There are plenty of non-profits that take in millions of dollars without losing sight of their un-businesslike mission.

[dfwabel]

Yesterday, Taylor Branch, the author of The Atlantic Monthly article was on the PBS NewsHour last night. A transcript is provided with the video.

[dfwabel]

Slippery slope fallacy. And then if you give a moose a muffin, pretty soon people will wanna marry their dogs!

The bowling team will have no claims heard till CBS pays $55 million a year to show bowling.

The issue I have really is that the pay student athletes argument seems to assume universities are businesses. They are not, at least primarily. Yes strong football and basketball programs are cash cows for universities. But who much of that money is paid out in wages? How much of it is paid back into the university system?

But it isn't the badminton program that concerns me, it's half the football program. Are you really going to want to pay back up tight ends or even starting kickers? Do individual players bring in that money to the Colleges, or is it rather the name of the university and the strength of the program that brings in/develops players?

The issue is that most public school athletic departments are attempting to be passed off as auxiliaries, like housing and dining services on campus. By definition, the auxiliary is to be self-sustaining yet the majority of athletic departments do not even have revenues meet expenses.

[DCDuck]

The bowling team will have no claims heard till CBS pays $55 million a year to show bowling.

By that argument, should we even bother paying players who choose to attend non-AQ schools in the MAC, Sun Belt and C-USA? What about players at schools like Washington State, Wake Forest and Indiana, schools that barely get any national airtime even though they're part of the BCS AQ conferences?