:eek:
But but but… that’s almost $13 million dollars they won’t have available to pay coaches!
One of the most interesting questions that will be answered if we can ever get these stupid NCAA regulations put to pasture is how schools will allocate budgets between coaches, facilities and athletes. Which general formula will lead to maximum success? The difficulty in answering this question might be the basis of so many arguments along the lines of “we can’t do this because we won’t know how to pay everybody!”
The smaller question being answered by the NY legislation is that any school with sports revenues greater than (takes off shoes and socks) $21 million can afford to pay $500 (picking a number) monthly stipends to 800 athletes. There appear to be 133 schools nationwide able to meet this criteria.
Not that I know of - nor is there anything that prevents, say, Nike from trying to funnel the best athletes it can get to a particular school; perhaps Oregon can be a real “Team Nike.” Well, one thing sort of prevents it; Nike would still have to make sure it’s not getting any sort of benefit from the school in question.
In case anybody just asked, “Then why bother doing it?”, simple; Nike has a team of athletes it can use (out of uniform, if necessary) in its ads. There is no need to associate directly with the school.
How do you afford paying every athlete $6000/year? To start, you cut every athletic scholarship by, oh, I don’t know, let me pull a number out of thin air, say, how about, $6000/year?
That could be the real problem with playing players; there would be no more need for athletic scholarships, which makes it much easier to form “superteams” since the schools no longer have to limit how to divide up the scholarships it is allowed. This especially affects football, which currently has a limit on how many “first year of scholarship” players a team can have (25, in FBS; 30, in FCS) - “the version I heard was,” some team (Pitt?) won a national championship three years after giving pretty much all of its scholarships to incoming freshmen.
Yeah, if those rules are in place at all schools who offer athletic scholarships, schools will have some difficult decisions to make. OTOH, if all the schools are playing under those rules - no guarantee of that - then they all have the same tough decisions to make. They’ll do what’s best both financially and competitively, just like now.
Incidentally, if the legislation was enacted in Michigan, UM athletes would receive about $29,000 a year.
A bill is now being prepared for introduction in the Florida House.
Thanks for the heads-up; my old morning newspaper has the story:
Tim Tebow doesn’t like it, but he’s a fucking idiot and a failure. Don’t listen to him, Florida legislature! Cover your ears, Governor Newsom!
Was just coming to post that news, which Newsom took some pains to make loudly and forcefully. It’s my understanding that both Ed O’Bannon and LeBron James were present at the signing.
History will judge our institutions of higher learning poorly for this period now coming to a conclusion.
The Florida bill was formally introduced yesterday as well. Unlike California’s bill, it proposes to take effect July 1, 2020 (2023 for Cal.).
This issue really brings out the worst arguments on twitter. Looking at you, Darren Rovell. Dan Dakich and Doug Gottlieb, come on down!
A couple of Pennsylvania state reps are now looking for a few bi-partisan co-sponsors before formally introducing their own California-type bill, per Time Magazine.
I haven’t read everyone, but Rovell is not wrong.
Completely true. The NCAA should have seen the writing on the wall a LONG time ago. They could have implemented changes step by step. College athletes were trying to unionize, what, 5 years ago? And the NCAA has done exactly nothing about it. Most college sports are fine as-is. But there needs to be a major, major change in college football and basketball. They’re raking in WAY too much money to not pay player and on the biggest stage are only very loosely tied to academics.
They actually did do something about it. They allowed full cost of attendance stipends in 2015. The Power 5 conferences, where most of the actual money is, were free to set their own conference level rules. That actual creates some market forces indirectly since how much they are paying their athletes can be talked about during recruiting. It’s not a huge amount. Still, the schools making money are literally paying their players now.
In 2014 they also significantly relaxed the rules about training table meals and snacks. Universities can now provide unlimited snacks and meals to athletes. That even applies to walk-on/non-scholarship athletes. That can do quite a bit to reduce costs that formerly were out of pocket for the student. I can’t find it but ISTR that being an area where the money making schools shell out for quite a bit more expensive meals. Most other schools, where they don’t turn a profit on their athletic departments, have to get by with measures like simply paying for the normal student meal plan.
One could still argue about whether it’s enough. The NCAA doing nothing isn’t fact though.
Rovell was making some laughably bad arguments earlier today on twitter, including some gobbledygook about “sham endorsements” (apparently this is when a booster would pay a player $1 million when the gig was only worth $50k) and a logic-free observation that relaxing the rules would somehow increase “cheating.” I have no patience for this guy’s unwillingness to understand new realities.
Yes, the schools have redefined amateurism for decades, usually in better terms for the players. But they still refuse to relinquish the power to restrict an athlete’s commercial liberties in order to meet that always-vague definition and that’s the part that has to go. I don’t believe they have the right to do that.
Noted radical Mike Krzyzewski came out in support of NIL rights for athletes this week. And on the political side of things, presidential candidate Corey Booker advocated for federal legislation guaranteeing student athletes their full commercial rights.
Mary Hardin-Baker has to hand back its 2016 Division III football championship after it was discovered that the head coach had lent one of the players his car.
Apparently, UMHB’s 2018 championship is unaffected, even though the same car was lent to another player in early 2018 - and broke down one hour later.
This isn’t an issue I’m particularly interested in, but you might find it interesting to see how it’s being reported in the U.K.
The NCAA is now rushing to try and stop the flood, even tho we can all see the holes in the dam.
You’re too late, folks; they’re not gonna let you control how this works. You’ll have to spend time and money on lobbying efforts, and you’re gonna be hampered there by the kids knowing their own value. You’re behind the curve this time, NCAA.
From the AP a short while ago:
I’m not sure what exactly “clear the way” means.
It means not just saying “no” which is what they’ve been doing for decades.