Again, not gonna happen because except for the upper crust of powerhouse universities, it would be too expensive. The athletes are being paid in education, experience and development. They are not forced to go to college. And paying some male athletes would likely violate Title IX.
Not once in that rant did you ever connect highly valued athletes earning income with the destruction of every other program at a school. I have so many questions about your chain of logic that I don’t hardly know where to start.
Graph 1 – Yes, some athletes will command more fees than others. This happens in every field.
Graph 2 – How do we go from athletes earning endorsement money to schools being unable to afford other sports? Bridge that gap for us, please.
Graph 3 – Why would schools stop offering scholarships if offering scholarships are affordable and help to entice good athletes?
This claim also ignores reality. Students know, without a shadow of a doubt, that people with higher skills make higher incomes in the US. The better physics student gets the better research job than the average student, the prettiest girl makes bigger tips at the strip club than the plainer girl, the coach makes more money than the assistant coach. None of these are groundbreaking theories with which our nation’s students are unaware.
There’s a unilateral salary cap in effect now, which is why they’re getting sued because those arrangements are otherwise known as wage-fixing. I think it would be very difficult to negotiate such an animal with such a transient talent pool having to organize and agree to it but I don’t really much care as long as they stay within the framework of federal labor law.
Mostly, though, there’s very little parity now and, I suspect, little interest in giving anything more than lip service to fans who believe in it despite all evidence to the contrary.
Athletes aren’t employees. No wage fixing involved.
Scholarships are, and will continue to be, a nice low cost way for schools to compete for players. Even if a school has few well-heeled boosters who are willing to pony up for athletic talent, it can always offer a scholly to stay competitive with others in the same financial tier.
Now let’s examine the two bolded sentences. The fact that they receive some compensation and are not “forced” into the agreement (we can argue that point as the thread continues) does not mean that the schools can make an unfair and illegal offer that prevents a natural market from functioning. We have actual laws about this kind of stuff. If you’d like to make a case for why schools’ athletic departments should be exempt from commercial laws binding everyone else, then do that. You won’t be alone in doing so – The ADs lobby is wandering around the halls of congress as we speak, telling legislators that “we’re special.”
There is nothing illegal nor unfair going on here. College athletics exist to make money for the university and in a majority of cases the states that operate them. It would likely be illegal to pay some (male) athletes and not others. What you are trying to describe is the academy system that operates in the other football and is controlled by the individual professional clubs. College athletics are amateur. The athletes know it going in.
If some pro leagues want to develop an academy system for their sports they are free to do so.
Awwwww.
Actually, they have been ruled to be employees and that ruling has not, to my knowledge, been overturned in the ensuing two years. Cite:
However, in February, the NLRB’s general counsel did clarify that athletes are employees:
This lawyer said that only athletes from private universities are employees.
In not sure his opinion carries the weight of law
If they are private employees, are they paying taxes on the benefits they receive and do they contribute to SSDI?
When has “Well, life’s not fair!” ever worked as an argument to an 18 year old? That’s essentially what you’re saying to them. Are you correct? Absolutely! Will it matter? Nope. Right from the getgo you’re going to sour half of your team.
Because schools won’t be able to afford to keep scholarships for the smaller sports. The system will be an all-or-nothing system. Either everyone is on scholarship and can’t be paid, or no one is on scholarship and can be paid. When it comes to that choice, the schools are obviously going to choose to pay the players because the ones getting the money are going to be the major sports which make the university money. Will all the money being pumped into the major sports, the minor sports won’t be able to afford to continue and will go away.
I inadvertently covered this in point 2. Basically I don’t believe the schools will keep both systems in place at the same time. And given the choice between scholarships or marketing the main sports, they’ll choose the sports.
See, you say that, but it’s again giving A LOT of maturity credit to kids who, frankly, aren’t. Endorsements and money within the realm of professional sports is entirely different than it would be in a college environment. The apparel companies have preferences in pro sports, but every athlete is a pro and has some kind of market value. This just isn’t there in college. Only a handful of players actually mean anything to Nike and the like, and they’re going to be the only ones getting the money.
You can give the O-lineman a UA contract when he plays for the Ravens because he’s still an NFL player, UA isn’t giving anything to the college O-lineman just because he’s just a college player that 90% of the nation doesn’t know or give a shit about. And when that O-lineman is putting in just as many hard-earned hours on the practice field, getting just as (if not more) injured and beat up, and doing everything equal to the star qb, but has to watch said QB cash $5,000 checks every month…it’s not going to be good. He’s not going to simply shrug and say “Wellp, that’s the market value!” he’s going to say “This is bullshit, I work 100x harder and get jack shit! Fuck this guy, it’s not fair.”
Because the NLRB does not regulate public employees (it’s mentioned in the article; you read the article, right?)
, of course the memo had no reference to public universities. Why would you attempt to infer the mention of only private universities was somehow indicative of anything?
As I mentioned, athletes at private universities have already been ruled to be employees. This memo was clarifying that this ruling is still, rightly, in effect.
I don’t know; why don’t you find out and tell us? Wait: are you speculating that the athletes have committed tax fraud and other related crimes?
Why are these kids not mature enough, in your opinion, to understand the concept of higher rewards for better abilities (a concept they’ve seen all around them in the form of trophies and awards for winners) but are mature enough to legally sign away their right to freely negotiate for compensation for their services?
Yes, we see this all the time in paid sports league, don’t we? :dubious:
Why, the NFL is on the verge of collapse because no one will play for any less than the quarterback is making!
It was the councils opinion and does not carry the weight of an NLRB ruling. Athletes from the 17 private unis are free to file complaints but there are no guarantees they will be successful.and there have to actually be unfair labor practices which I do not see.
You understand the difference between amateur and professional, right?
You miss his point. Why should unpaid OL go all out to protect the paid QB. You don’t seem to understand that onlybpaying a few of the athletes can be problematic and is probably a Title IX violation.
The CoA ruled that while it is illegal for the NCAA to ban payments to athletes, any compensation must not exceed the cost of their scholorship. Seems like this would only help more affluent athletes.
The short answer to this is that the people who aren’t the QB are still being paid. In the college environment this will not be the case
In a completely different way than you do, apparently. That’s why we’re having this discussion; if we agreed we’d have stopped long ago.
In the context of the NCAA, “amateur sports”, like the term “student-athlete” is a misnomer, meant to convey an image that isn’t met in reality.
The law about who is and isn’t an employee does not contain complicated or archaic language. Players are clearly receiving compensation for their services as athletes. That makes them employees. Any refutation of that begins with “but” and then arbitrarily declares in some way that young people with athletic talent are not deserving of the same rights as every other human being in the country with regard to being able to freely negotiate compensation for their services (which their NCAA employers make billions of dollars using).
In pro sports, everyone is just open about the money and players can freely negotiate for compensation.
So I do see the differences, I just understand them differently than you do.
The same reason the guy at the drive-thru window doesn’t spit in your food: he needs the money.
Are you seriously asking “why would anyone being paid less than the top earner do a good job?” 
ETA: Arguing Title IX is like arguing that we’ll never have solar power because there aren’t enough 9V batteries to hold all the electricity, IMO. If we change the model of scholarships and compensation to a more market aligned one, why couldn’t we also change Title IX? :dubious: