So in the wake of the Fair Pay to Play Act along with copycat legislation popping up in other states like Nevada and Illinois, the NCAA appears to have finally relented.
It’s currently unclear exactly how this will be implemented and what the restrictions might be, but it certainly looks like Ed O’Bannon will get to take his place next to Curt Flood in sports history. Whether this is just the first step towards colleges directly paying players remains to be seen.
This topic was discussed over in the old The SDMB NCAA thread but I think this probably deserves it’s own thread, so here we have it.
Personally, I’m split on this. Intuitively this feels like the right thing to do. It doesn’t seem fair that the NCAA and it’s partners should be able to profit exclusively from these kids’ popularity, but I also think it’s likely that this is the beginning of the end of big-time college sports. This will completely and totally break the system and there will be a massive fracturing of the top divisions. Fans aren’t gonna like the unintended consequences of this.
Yup, the real solution is an end to college sports, at least as they exist now. Create real minor leagues, for the players who are going pro. And if schools want to have sports teams just for fun, they should have exactly the same status as any other extracurricular club on campus.
This is so reductive. Sure, let’s just have groups of 50+ random students buy the gear and hire the refs and take on the liability of playing tackle football. Want to play inter-collegiately, best hire the bus drivers and get hotel rooms too. To hell with any college kid who happens to like the part of the college experience that is going to games, participating in booster squads and pep rallies, and having a cultural touchstone to rally around. Get back in the fucking library!
I again point to baseball. College baseball exists but it isn’t the industry that football and basketball are. The minor leagues deflate the importance of college baseball.
Chronos didn’t suggest completely ending college athletics, just “as they exist now”. In other words, as a huge money-making endeavor that cuts out those putting in the effort and risk of athletic performance.
That’s not what he said or implied. He said if students want to play “for fun”, it should be treated like a club sport or intramural. Essentially eliminating intercollegiate events and removing any school sponsorship. That suggestion has no relationship to NCAA baseball, it’s what Frat league flag football is like.
NCAA Baseball is EXACTLY like NCAA Football and Basketball with the sole exception of there being a economically viable competing minor league option. The NBA has even introduced a new rule for the G League to give kids a non-college option in the wake of the 19 year old age restriction in the NBA. Saying the NFL and NBA should be like MLB makes no sense, they are by rule exactly the same already in the NCAA’s eyes. The only difference is economics and tradition. The NCAA’s rules aren’t the problem.
Oh, and I should add…this new rule could destroy minor league baseball too. If schools are able to pay players, why would any talented 18 year old sign up to ride the fucking bus from Tupelo to Lexington and stay in a shitty Motel 6 when you can get an education and hang out on campus with coeds and stay in a dorm for the same money?
This could potentially benefit EA Sports, which hasn’t put out an NCAA football game since 2013, due to issues over using the names and images of college athletes. Now that athletes can cash in on their names and likenesses, EA can put out a licensed NCAA product once again. Of course details have to be worked out with the NCAA and the players. Will they be paid individually, or work out a collective bargaining agreement through their schools? But the demand for a videogame with NCAA licensing is out there.
It will be interesting. Keep in mind that the rule doesn’t say that the players can exclusively profit from their name and likeness, only that they can accept money when offered. I suspect every contract that the student-athletes sign with the school, if they don’t already, will start including a non-exclusive license to their name and likeness. EA stopped including the names out of fear of the pending lawsuits, not because they were explicitly prohibited by anything.
But the schools aren’t paying, it’s just use of names and likenesses. The big money is going to be in Football and Basketball. I can’t imagine many college baseball players making any decent money.
If they’re happy to enjoy all this on the backs of athletes, then absolutely yes to hell with them. I have no sympathy with someone lamenting the loss of a system based on servitude, injustice, and oppression.
Mark my word! (Mark it. Are you marking? I don’t see you marking.) Somebody is going to find a way to make a lot of money off of this, and it ain’t going to be the athletes.
It’s the first shoe to drop. We’ll see, but once players can profit from their fame the lines between what is a marketing deal and what is a player salary will get blurry super fast. Can the school pay the player for the use of their likeness on merchandise and TV and not call it a player salary? Can a booster sign the next Tua to a $5M sponsorship deal to his car dealership that just happens to operate exclusively in northern Alabama? Can the University then choose that dealership when purchasing any staff or service vehicles?
Look at the payrolls in the MLB. Do you seriously think that there wouldn’t be any demand for big money in college baseball? Top MLB draft picks routinely sign for $4-5M per year, why wouldn’t a college spend that in order to try and become the next NCAA super team and sell $100M worth of hats and TV rights?
Why don’t you just go all in an call them slave owners? That usually is the next ad hominem to come up in these debates.
I acknowledge that this might ultimately be the more “fair” way to do things. But fair ain’t always fair. A pure free market economy is “fair” but that also led us to all the pre-labor movement suffering.
Let’s suppose that I’m right and everything implodes as a result of this. All college sport dissolves into club sports with no administration and no support from any governing body. All professional leagues ramp up their own farm systems totally separate from the NCAA.
What does that mean, here’s some possibilities:
College campuses become a little more exclusive and a little more white.
There’s one fewer way for a underprivileged kid to get an education.
Scholarship kids end up taking out more loans.
There’s no funding for non-revenue sports. Women’s team sports totally and completely dry up.
Those kids playing unsanctioned and unregulated sports start getting injured on bad fields with no medical support.
Unregulated sports become socially exclusive limiting access to certain groups. Maybe private companies fill the void and introduce their own profit-driven injustices.
Lots of kids skip school and never get an education chasing the dream of going pro.
Minor league sports operate in the shadows on smaller budgets leading to a different form of exploitation without the protections, as they are, of the NCAA.
We’ll see. Everyone said Saddam was the worst person in the world, but then when he was gone what replaced him? Perhaps a bad analogy, but if you think the alternative to the NCAA is automatically more just you haven’t been a very good student of history.
Or another possibility: Minorities stop buying the myth that sports are a realistic way, or even the only way, to get ahead in the world, and start applying for the scholarship-based scholarships, and campuses become less white and exclusive.
It may be hyperbole for people to refer to collegiate athletics as the modern plantation, but hyperbole just mean that a fundamental truth is being exaggerated.
I don’t have to call them slave owners but don’t expect me to have sympathy for someone crying about a loss of entertainment because an injustice is being corrected.
If you’re going to make an argument for giving kids from historically oppressed backgrounds opportunities for education, you’ll have to do better than to suggest that the only or best way to do it is to subject student athletes to a ridiculously oppressive system.
If a post-NCAA collegiate athletics regime is worse than than what we have now then I’m happy to tear that down too. This is athletic entertainment, not literal anarchy like in post-Saddam Iraq.
The NCAA has had decades to reconsider its regime and take progressive steps towards fairness. They didn’t. Now they can go fuck themselves. And anyone crying about losing their fun can go jump in the lake.
The NCAA should be more concerned about the number of FBS football players that are on a free ride in major institutions who couldn’t qualify for JuCo if they couldn’t play ball.
The NCAA is bloated, corrupt, and doesn’t fairly apply whatever standards it claims to have. As far as I’m concerned if it implodes as a result of this, all the better.
