What would really happen if college athletes were allowed to make whatever income they could command? (like every other college student) That’s the question I really want schools, and supporters of the status quo, to answer honestly. We can’t have an honest discussion about all this if the schools continue to simply make shit up.
FWIW I added PastTense’s article to the omnibus thread I mentioned in post #315.
Excuse me?
“Compensation may be paid to a student-athlete (a) Only for work actually performed; and (b) At a rate commensurate with the going rate in that locality for similar services.” This is a direct quote from the NCAA Bylaws.
If the athlete makes the same that a non-athlete would, then the NCAA doesn’t have a problem with it.
The problem is when (a) the athlete is overpaid, (b) is paid for not actually doing any work (this pretty much destroyed San Francisco’s basketball program), or (c) the employer is profiting from the fact that the athlete works there. For example, if a lot of people suddenly start shopping somewhere where a star athlete is working, and the owner raises prices as a result, this could be a violation.
What would probably happen is, boosters would get together and start paying players to attend their school - in other words, it would become a professional league. Why even bother making the athletes attend class, if the whole reason they are there is to play football?
Note that the schools themselves couldn’t do it, mainly because of Title IX.
“Of course we pay the men more - they bring in more money!”
“Er, you are aware that Title IX exists because of statements like that, right?”
Frankly, we really should have a professional football minor league, and separate it from universities. What’s the point of tying education and sports together in the first place?
IMO, what we should have is a minor league football and men’s basketball system where the teams are in college towns, but the only link to the schools would be that the teams would play in on-campus arenas. Why not have the Ann Arbor Wolverines play the Columbus Buckeyes? The universities could even charge enough “rent” on the teams to cover their other sports programs.
I remember watching a movie where a school was said to be “a football team with a university attached to it.” Actually, I shouldn’t have said “said,” as the movie predates sound movies by a few years - it was the 1925 Harold Lloyd silent film The Freshman; this goes to show how old this problem is.
But why should the campus even have an arena at all, and why should they have other sports programs to be supported?
You’re also too optimistic about the money. At most schools, all of the sports, including football and basketball, are money-losers. Oh, they’ll tell you that sports are so important because they bring in so much money for the school… and that’s why all students should be expected to pay an athletic fee, because sports are so important that they deserve the money.
Why would college sports (some colleges) becoming a “professional league” be a detriment? That’s fairly vague, when you think hard about it. People earning money for their skills is generally a good thing.
Also, it may be a really good thing for the athletes if the academic requirements were relaxed to such an extent that more of them succeeded in earning degrees. Keep the four years of eligibility but give them X number of years to use a full degree’s worth of academic credits. I’d even make them transferable in case the athlete would rather gift them to a friend or family member (or even sell them) who could make better use of them.
And while we’re engaged on the general subject, this might be a good time to introduce sports economist Andy Schwarz’s proposal to the nation’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). He is advising them to drop out of the NCAA and begin paying the players on their basketball teams. His reasoning is that they don’t have much to lose – they are increasingly noncompetitive in most sports and the potential television money they could earn by cornering the nation’s top basketball talent would surpass whatever dribs and drabs come their way from March Madness and their conference packages now.
Why target the HBCUs specifically for that? It’d make sense for any school.
I can see where the ROI for that would take a while tho. The NCAA wouldn’t just sit on their hands and let it happen. There’d be all kinds of lawsuits and a PR campaign about how these schools were robbing the students of their chance to experience college like a regular student, how being paid so much money at such a young age was destructive to their character, etc.
And I think we all know by now just how stupid and gullible the American public can be, how susceptible they are to repressive ideas that only affect vague “others”. Or do I need to offer some examples? :dubious:
I’m just saying that while might be a good idea, it wouldn’t be an easy transition.
Just speculation but maybe because those schools are struggling financially and might find it generally easier to recruit great players willing to risk a plan outside the traditional boundaries. If it worked, it would definitely catch on with other schools around the nation, maybe even all of them, and the HBCUs would be right back where they started from.
But I don’t know this for sure. I will ask. Mr. Schwarz has been pretty good about responding to my questions in the past.
I think in order to do it, tho, you’d need to find 10-12 schools that would go all in at the same time so you could present a league to the public. The amount of surreptitious organizing it would take beforehand would be tremendous and you’d have to do everything knowing that the NCAA was going to throw millions and millions of dollars worth of preventative PR and lawsuits your way.
It’d be a tough row to hoe, but the harvest would not only be one of the biggest cash crops ever, it would fundamentally alter the college and sports landscapes. And that much change is gonna scare the crap outta people, so add that in as something else to overcome.
Still, I like the idea. It certainly seems more egalitarian than the current situation.
I can’t think of any legal recourse the NCAA would have towards schools leaving its membership. And the NCAA’s PR dilemma would be massively fun to watch.
The unanswerable question is if the best talent choosing to attend HBCUs would be enough to offset the popularity of the traditional college powers. The HBCUs wouldn’t have to equal or surpass the NCAA tv ratings – they would just need to cover their player costs. A $30,000 per year stipend for a 12-man basketball roster only costs $324k annually and they could pretty much get that by dropping their money-losing football programs.
I confess that I have no idea how Title IX fits into all this.
In a short series of tweets to me, Andy Schwarz attempted to answer the questions posed above (why the HBCUs in particular?).
I’ll add another, perhaps unrelated, thought to those of Mr. Schwarz. If letting college athletes make money truly is the disaster on so many levels that opponents have predicted, then better to contain and easier to reverse the problem at Alcorn State than in all the ACC schools (for example). However, I think those arguments are total bullshit and that the only result will be all of the D1 schools capitulating after losing the best basketball talent to the likes of Bethune-Cookman year after year.
For the same reason “big-time” college football and men’s basketball still exist in the first place - tradition. Also, if a school wants to let its athletes attend college and get a degree, it can.
I don’t think paying players is really a problem outside of the “power schools,” and considering how much money they get from their conference’s football TV contracts and the CFP football and NCAA men’s basketball tournament payouts, money isn’t really a problem for them.
According to the 2015 NCAA Division I Revenues and Expenses Report, page 28, half of the 128 FBS football schools made a profit from football, and half made a profit from men’s basketball. (Note that this “profit” does not include money given to the athletic department by the school.)
In the vast majority of cases - and I can’t think of a single instance where someone attends a Division II or III school solely to prepare for a career as a professional athlete - college athletes are students first and athletes second. This is what the NCAA is claiming that it is trying to protect.
Of what use is a watered-down degree?
IMO, the main reason the big sports schools haven’t broken off from the NCAA and formed their own organization is, most of them have decent programs in sports besides football and men’s basketball, but there are enough schools in pretty much every sport that are also championship-capable in those sports but don’t have the football or basketball programs good enough to be part of the “outlaw” organization, in which case, you start the arguments over which school is the true “national champion” in that sport. Baseball. Ice hockey. Lacrosse. Wrestling…
If this is true, the NCAA is full of shit with this argument. Making money is not necessarily a hindrance to academic achievement.
You misunderstood me. I think. Is a player using six years to obtain the necessary credits for graduation obtaining a “watered-down” degree? I think less and less so as traditional education evolves.
Could you restate this section, please? I’m lost reading it as is. TYIA.
Finally! Cartel describes my thoughts on the NCAA perfectly.
SURPRISE! The NCAA is full of shit, especially when it comes to “preserving the integrity of the education for athletes”.
I believe his argument is that most big-sport college athletes are being funneled to majors and classes that exist, at least in part, to maintain their eligibility. Even if they do graduate, many “student-athletes” didn’t learn anything useful, and everyone knows it.
A university or college leaving the NCAA all by itself is taking a tremendous risk. Even if a dozen or more leave at once, collectively they are minnows trying to compete in a media ocean dominated by the NCAA whale.
I think an argument ensued about this subject earlier in this thread (or maybe another one, not sure). Yes, schools are not helping athletes by (a) funneling them into low-value courses and (b) making huge demands on their time while insisting the players carry a full load (of useless courses).
I think schools should insist on a minimal load of courses carried while the players are athletically eligible but give them time to complete them after their eligibility expires. Or alternatively, to keep them (the credits) from being wasted, simply award the athlete 120 credits (or whatever the degree equivalent is now) to use or sell as he pleases.
Ah, thanks. Yes, of course it’s a risky maneuver, which is why it’s being pitched to HBCUs and not the ACC schools. Some of the HBCUs are currently operating in the $5 million athletic revenue ranges, or about half of what Duke pays Coach K. How much worse can it get for them?
By leaving the confines of the NCAA they will have the freedom to recruit the best basketball players in the country. How long before that translates into greater revenues than produced by their current involvement with the NCAA? There may be people who watch college sports mainly because of the schools involved but there are also significant numbers who will choose to watch the best young players, regardless of school affiliation. IMO, of course.
That’s already provided for by the NCAA. Division I schools are measured by their GSR, which is determined by how many student-athletes graduate within 6 years. Schools are already encouraged to ensure their students graduate, which lead to bird courses in the first place.
This is interesting because there are significant numbers of people ‘working’ and being compensated at a pretty high ‘rate’ for doing things like promoting shoes, acting in commercials, doing TV and Radio appearances, etc. Yet all of these jobs are restricted. I’m going to bet this You Tube Kicker isn’t getting paid at a rate any different than anyone else on the service, he’s just more successful at it than the NCAA thinks he deserves to be.