Come to 'Bama, son and we’ll make sure you get an off-season job for 250k per summer. What do you have to do? Well, son, it’s a very important job - you’ll be sitting at a desk studying game film in between workout sessions with your personal trainer and position coach. Roll Fucking Tide!!!
All you guys are talking about is making the big-money college sports into pro sports. That may be what you want, but be clear that it’s what you’d be doing.
ETA: While Alabama was used in the above example, they are FAR from the only school that would be doing this.
If somebody wants to pay a kid to work out all summer, then he must have a pretty marketable skill. It’s not the way I’d spend my money but there’s a willing buyer meeting up with a willing seller. It’s not an illegal transaction and colleges should have no right to interfere.
Define “legitimate”. Why would my proposed job fail the definition? Maybe all of this will take place in view of the public and the businessman is hoping to bring traffic in. Maybe the business is a gym.
I’m not buying that there are enough wealthy boosters out there to “employ” a football team’s worth of players every single year for big money. I also don’t care whether a job is “legit” or not. I suspect that boosters would be more likely to “hire” the player for a PR campaign than they are to hire them to do nothing. Pro teams can hire for big money because the player generates income for the team. A booster doesn’t earn 2 cents when Alabama wins, so every dollar he spends on players is money out of his pocket.
My plan would be to setup two classes of athlete, Scholarship and Non-Scholarship. Once you go “Non” you don’t get to go back, and you are still bound by the onerous transfer rules.
Scholarship athletes are treated like they are today, with strict earnings regulations, perhaps loosen it enough for them to bank their name into 5-10 grand per year of pocket money/gifts. Non’s get to have any job they want, but everything is above board, documented and reported. Any player who accepts a gift over $100 without reporting it, is banned. You report who is paying you, for what job, and how much money you get. Non’s, of course, pay full price for their education, they are permanently ineligible for any type of scholarship, until their athletic eligibility runs out.
It wouldn’t take all of them. Just 5-10 at the highest level, another 10-15 at a lower level, and say 20-25 at a still lower level. Most Freshman would come in a the low level and work their way up.
In other words, you want to implement a CBA (probably with a player’s union) and turn college ball into pro ball-lite with a two-tier system and restricted free agency. That’s fine. I disagree that’s the desirable solution, but at least you’re clear that’s what you want to do.
Colleges don’t regulate the earnings of music majors. Why should they have the right to regulate those of athletes just because the athletes have higher earnings potential (in some cases)? The schools screwed up big time in building this massive cash cow – that they’ve become horribly dependent on – on the requirement that the performers in the show maintain some facade of amateurism. Sorry, doesn’t wash.
Upsetting the competitive balance applecart is a weak argument in light of what happens from year to year in college football under the current system. Money rules, there are no top programs without huge donations from supporters. Phil Knight didn’t build a $30 million locker room so Oregon could go 2-10 (like the days of not too long ago; things really can change – if somebody gives you a lot of money).
Keep repeating it to yourself: there are no amateurs in college. There are no amateurs in college. That’s ok, too, that’s not what college is for.
I agree. Also consider that for some athletes, their moment of highest earnings potential is when they’re in college. Look at Jason White, who won the Heisman trophy as QB of Oklahoma. He wasn’t good enough to be drafted by the NFL, so he wasn’t making money off of his QBing skills after college. But during his four years as OU’s quarterback, he surely could have made a nice bit of money off of local endorsements. I don’t see why he shouldn’t have been able to do so.
That’s actually not always true. Some scholarships do come with restrictions (that the recipient agrees to a term of service of some sort - teacher, etc) after graduation. In what way is that not a regulation of earnings? I knew a guy at FSU that was on a full-ride scholarship that had to live in a specific dorm and was forbidden from outside work - he was supposed to be focused on school - in fairness to your point though, he did actually receive a stipend above and beyond his tuition, books, and room-and-board. This is far from common though. Many music (indeed almost all performing arts) majors also have regular events at which they must appear and for which they are not compensated.
You seem to think I’m arguing for the status quo or that college athletes in major sports are “amateurs” and don’t deserve some additional compensation above and beyond their scholarships. I’m not, I’m just saying that we need to be careful before making changes to the system. That’s all.
See above. I’m not saying he couldn’t/shouldn’t. I’m just saying that the implications of changing the system need to be thought out carefully. Big time college athletics is a HUGE part of many local economies and changes could have multi-tiered and varied impacts.
Not so much a CBA, but a set of rules around participating in competitive athletics. If you want to compete at all, you have to disclose all of your income, and may not accept valuable gifts without disclosing them as income. This is to reduce the influence of outsiders on the outcome of games. If you get a scholarship, you have additional rules regarding your income opportunities.
If I’m Johnny Manziel, why shouldn’t I be allowed to sell my autograph, or appear in a commercial? The way I see it, it isn’t pro ball if you’re not being paid by a football team to play football.
Does the USGA run multi billion dollar amateur leagues that draw rabid nationwide attention? Is a person who wishes to be a PGA professional basically required to participate in that amateur league for multiple years before becoming a pro?
Anyway, the whole idea of NCAA Football amateurism is a sham to begin with, since the players already receive direct payment for their services. Their raison d’etre at the school is to play ball, and they get a free ride at the school in order to put on the school uniform. They’re being given something worth tens of thousands of dollars in direct exchange for playing football, and we claim that they aren’t pros. However, if booster pays for a kids tattoo, with the expectation of absolutely nothing in return, that’s a violation of the concept of amateurism.
They already make them sign such contracts. One of the issues is whether they should be allowed to.
That’s the way it should be. Collegiate sports will truly be amateur then and the good players will go to what essentially is a minor league. Ideally those teams will be organizationally separated from the universities. There’s zero reason why schools should be so intertwined with what are essentially professional sports teams. The best teams with split off and go pro and the schools will license them the use of their names and mascots, etc.
Why do you think that? I believe Zakalwe’s point is that the top schools will BE that minor league, funded by boosters. How does that jibe with “truly be[ing] amateur”?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. What i hope will happen is that the top football school teams will form a fully professional league and that’s where those who have a shot at the big leagues will go.
The football programs will be organizationally separated from the universities and eventually the only connection between the teams and schools will be the ownership and the licensing of the trademarks.
But whether or not that final spinoff happens, that will leave actual collegiate sports to be fully amateur, because those athletes who actually have the talent to generate revenue will be playing for the professional teams.
Whatever happens, the current NCAA football model is already dead. Amateurism has been a joke for decades, and the five major conferences are on the verge of opting out for football purposes anyway.
It’s not the NCAA’s fault; they didn’t set out to be the NFL’s feeder league. It just happened that way. IMHO, the only way to fix the system is to dump the antiquated player pay rules. Keep the scholarships and the tiny stipends, and let the boosters decide who they want to give their money to.
If somebody wants to give Reggie Bush an Escalade, why the hell should the NCAA care?