New AP story has tons of info on this latest development:
If those documents are made public before the tournament selection, the NCAA either has to ignore it’s own rules or suspend the players and/or programs, which could prove financially disastrous.
Countdown clock is on and ticking…
I find this story to be an antidote to claims that paying “student athletes” will end massive corruption involving NCAA Division I schools.
Why would college players be satisfied with a few thousand bucks when money like that is available?
I don’t understand what you mean here. Why wouldn’t the players just be able to be paid $100,000 dollars or whatever their market value is, like anyone else in any profession?
Yeah, I’ve been grappling with your chain of logic here, too.
The olympics were a joke for a long time with their rules against pro athletes. The US went along because we still won a lot of medals. When USA basketball failed to win the gold the rules were changed to allow pros in all sports.
Eventually college football and basketball will be forced to follow the olympics model.
Tennis and English football were two other notable sports which were late to professionalize at the highest levels and the popularity of both only increased afterwards. The lingering need that college athletes must have their earnings restricted, even if doing so violates American commercial custom and law, is a concept that escapes me.
Two words: Title IX. There would be an immediate demand that either (a) a team pay its women’s players the same that it pays its men’s players, or (b) have the same number of paid women as men on the men’s team (not that the women would actually have to play, mind you - just get paid, and paid the same as the men.)
“But the men should get paid more because, by far, they’re the better players!” Congratulations; you have just confirmed the continued need for both Title IX and sex-based Affirmative Action.
There may be one way around all of this, and it may be how this ends up; get rid of rules concerning what athletes receive from outside sources, as long as there is no link between the persons paying the money and the school. A talent agent wants to pay a player $100,000? Not a problem (especially with one-and-dones after their first semester, as you know they’re dropping out of school after their last game anyway). A coach wants to pay an agent $100,000 to have him steer a kid to his school? Very large problem.
It is because schools were afraid that other schools would bring in “ringers” that did not actually attend the school to play football.
And going back to the Title IX problem, remember that Wimbledon paid the men 25% more than the women until relatively recently.
The school’s shakiest legal grounds are indeed their restrictions against athletes’incomes. And that’s also probably the most potentially lucrative part of the equation for them. But if schools wanted to chip in on their own they could abide by Title IV rules and pay something to all of their scholarship athletes.
The NCAA is a joke and a fraud and this is nothing new. Personally, I would abolish it and maybe even eliminate athletic scholarships. Make all college sports “club” sports. Leave it up to professional leagues to create their own developmental programs.
Or maybe you just pull football and basketball out of the NCAA and leave the rest of the sports alone. I don’t know, but you’ve got an organization making billions of dollars whose talent pool becomes ineligible if they get paid. What could go wrong?
You can’t pay student athletes. Who do you pay and how much? What about the women’s lacrosse team? Why shouldn’t they be paid as much as the star QB? Oh yeah the football team makes more money? Then lets take it to court to make sure its not sex discrimination.
What about other revenue generating extra curricular activities? I was in drama club in college I would have loved to collect a percentage of the gate when I was the lead in the Spring play. Hey, we generated revenue, just like the football team. How do YOU know some of the crowd wasn’t there just to see the marching band at halftime? Why are they travelling around the money making football team all over the pace and not getting paid salary?
The bottom line is this anyway: no matter how good a plan you come up with for paying college athletes, the colleges will NEVER go for it or allow it to happen, anyway.
Isn’t a college scholarship payment enough? Or if a one and done the year learning from great college coaches like John Calipari to better prepare yourself for the NBA, or three years under Nick Saban for the NFL? Student athletes DO get something for their time served.
As for alumni money laundering to give athletes under-the-table cars, jobs and apartments, you’ll NEVER stop that from happening. And I have a bulletin for you: even if athletes get paid, that is STILL going to happen, maybe at an even bigger scale because if you can make $35,000 a year at Kentucky, well maybe Mr. Big Time Donor here at Louisville can hook you up with a BMW to go with your $35,000 salary-----it could get even WORSE.
All the NCAA can do is suspend programs, vacate titles etc etc its really not the NCAA’s fault. There will always be corruption in college athletics and the only way to get rid of it is to abolish it all together, and there’s too much money in it for that. Its like steroids in baseball and corruption in Mexican politics—you can rail against it, try to penalize it, but if you lose sleep thinking you’ll eliminate it, you are wasting your time.
Just sit back, relax and enjoy.
There’s no plan needed. All that’s needed is for the courts to strike the schools’ restrictions on income by scholarship athletes.
Even if you say athletes can make income on endorsements and non-university related activities, it doesn’t address coaches paying recruits to go to their school.
It sounds like Adam Silver may actually be thinking about using the NBA’s G League properly, which is as a developmental league for players not-quite-ready for the NBA. Not just a league for has-beens or guys who never had a shot. Get rid of one and done NCAA players who don’t care about college in the first place and put 'em in the G League. There’s no reason the NBA couldn’t have tiers of developmental leagues like MLB. Hell, they could have the G League here and another developmental league in Europe and it would probably do well.
I don’t understand the issue of “coaches paying recruits to go to their school.” It doesn’t seem like the most efficient way of recruiting talented athletes but what would be the problem? (I understand why it’s an issue under current rules)
I thought by restrictions on income you meant income from outside the university, such as endorsements, outside jobs and so forth. That seems the only reasonable way to proceed without almost certainly violating Title IX.
If indeed you mean universities and coaches should be able to pay money directly to players or recruits, then I misunderstood. Of course, in that case, it becomes professional sports.
If the restrictions on income are stricken, then schools would also be free to compensate athletes within the framework of Title IX. The federal laws may make it difficult for the schools to pay players lavish amounts but not more modest sums (because equal amounts may have to be paid women’s golf).
It’s been awhile since this thread was active, but there’s some news: California closer to letting college athletes make money!
I whole-heartedly endorse this bill and hope it gets signed into law ASAP.
College athletics are interstate commerce. Im not sure whether California could enforce it. Involving agents will only increase corruption and likely indebt players to them before their pro careers. This is another poorly thought out emotional bill which wont help the athletes much and will only enrich agents and lawyers.
An “emotional bill”? Would you care to clarify what that is?
And why you don’t think it will help athletes much?
The NCAA doesn’t like this bill.
:rolleyes:
A threat is a threat, even when couched in fancy formal language. Own it, you weasel, or give it up.