In what world is making a living a privilige? Now, not everyone can have their desired job, but we all have the right to not live on the streets.
Then let them drop to Division II, and make a concerted effort to ensure that student-athletes are just that, rather than athletes who are required to maintain academic eligibility, but are pressured to make sure that their courses don’t interfere with their sports participation.
I think it was about 25 years ago that I read about a U. of Maryland football player who’d asked for a redshirt year so he could get a handle on his course work, but his coach told him, ‘no, that’s not what you’re here for’ in practically those words.
That made it pretty clear to me just how far it had already gone.
Hopefully this will be upheld on appeal. The whole notion of the student-athlete feels like a scam to force kids to work for little pay
At a handful of schools they are (somewhat ironically, Northwestern players would usually be considered academically legitimate students - my former roommate was a star running back at NU with a 3.4 GPA in electrical engineering). But even those students are recruited more for their football ability than anything else, good students being more plentiful than good running backs.
Do you think that Buffalo, North Texas, and Utah State are competitive with Ohio State and Alabama now?
No, it’s not. But I think it’s probably ideal for the NCAA to maintain pressure on athletic departments to not become gigantic corporations just out to make a buck, which this ruling has the possibility of going towards.
:rolleyes: Universities have very broad missions, one of which is to provide recreational and extra-curricular activities for their students. Team sports is a logical result of that.
“Force”? Who’s being forced? If they want to be paid, why don’t they just enter the draft, play in Canada, or go off on some other worthwhile venture?
Of course not - and they never will. Is it necessary for them to be?
I’m wondering how that would be different from the current NCAA football and basketball situation? In terms of greed and money, about all that would change under this system is that the money might get spread around a little more to some of the people with the actual sporting talent.
The idea that the NCAA, at least for top-level football and basketball, might act as some sort of principled opponent of Mammon is hilarious.
Munch-You need to be ACADEMICALLY eligible to participate in extra-curriculars.
It would be fine if the decision to pay or not pay students was left entirely up to the individual college/university. But instead we have collusion by members of the NCAA to prohibit this.
Why should they? Being paid what the market will bear based on an open market in which there is no collusion between employers and in which there is not a massive power imbalance between the negotiating parties seems pretty reasonable to me. If the employer did not want collective bargaining, it should have changed its ways a long time ago.
First off, this is total nonsense - there are plenty of students who take advantage of extracurricular offerings without being academically eligible. Secondly, this has absolutely nothing to do with the point I responded to you with. Could you make the tiniest of efforts to maybe post a fully formed and coherent post for once?
Absolutely valid - I’m just stating that under the current rules, no one is “forcing” student-athletes to play, as YogSogoth suggested.
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There’s nothing that states that the specific mission of the University that provide(s) recreational and extra-curricular activities" cannot be modified, or even removed.
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Your value in the draft is based upon a number of factors, not the least of which was how you performed in college. Merely saying to an 18yo “well, you can just enter the draft” doesn’t remove the inequality put upon him by the NCAA+NFL collusion. An untested person won’t even be drafted - he will have to make the team as a walk-on. And we know how many times that happens, right? Just enough to make it memorable when it does. And when does that guy become the highest paid player on the team? In the modern world, only when your name is Kurt Warner. Otherwise, forget about it.
A football player, if he wants to maximize his earnings in his chosen profession is compelled to go to school so he will be eligible for the draft. Period.
What is the difference between Division I Football and the various professional sports leagues such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and HNL? High level play? Huge fan base? Huge profits? The primary difference is that the employers via the NCAA have colluded to prevent college football players from being paid at market value.
Colleges AREN’T football teams that just happen to have Chemistry departments! Your attitude makes no sense. If players hate school so much, go to a place that doesn’t care, until you can get into the league of your choice.
So I was just watching Outside the Lines and they had a guy on who said that this ruling only applies to private universities. State universities would fall under the states labor laws. Another guy said that in his opinion, as a labor lawyer, the written opinion of the NLRB judge was very good and hard to poke any holes in. I think one of the points about the players being employees was the fact that their compensation (scholarship) relied on them playing football and doing al the things required to be a football player.
Munch-Most people on say, the debate team, or school newspaper will actually have to be qualified to get a job once they leave. And the job they DO receive won’t allow their grandchildren to be set for life. So YOU need to at least make the effort to make an apples-to-apples comparison!
The logic is compelling. So much so that this ruling, imho, has largely settled the larger debate as to whether or not many student-athletes are, in fact, employees.
Business entities can’t collude to fix wages and then wave a “take it or leave it” banner that makes everything ok. Wage fixing is illegal and done on the widespread level that it is in Division 1 sports is unconscionable. We really should expect better from our institutions of higher learning. I know that’s naive but we really should expect them to act like good citizens. They’re the incubators of our next generations of leaders.
They’re not eligible for the NFL draft until they’ve been out of high school for at least two years, so that’s not an option for a lot of players. The CFL is a very different game from NFL or NCAA football, and there are only nine teams in the first place. The NCAA has a monopoly on NFL hopefuls, and they’re making billions of dollars on it. That system needs a complete overhaul, and that complete overhaul is coming - it’s just a matter of time.
I’d like to see a professional football league (essentially the equivalent of baseball’s AAA leagues) come out of some of the FBS schools. Universities enter into research-based business ventures all the time, providing lab space, development advice and seed money, intellectual property consultation, etc. to researchers trying to capitalize on innovations they’ve made at their jobs. I think there are enough football factory schools to make up a 20 team league by adopting that kind of model, and there are enough NFL hopefuls who have little to no interest in a college education to fill those spots at market rates.
If you create a league like that, then the schools choose to have either an amateur teams (which would have to be scaled back drastically from what they are now) or an associated professional team. I think the product that the remaining amateur teams put on the field would be a lot more entertaining as well. If you don’t have small schools agreeing to suffer a 75-3 whooping in return for a nice payday, the product can only get better.