First real step to paying College Football players

[Hawkeye0202]

Kudos to the state of California

 

[ghst187]

Have to say for the first time in modern history I agree with California on this one.
How is it the ncaa can monopolize a persons ability to monetize their likeness?
I don’t agree with straight up paying players but I agree something needs to change and athletes should be able to monetize themselves in some way. The ncaa is making a killing off the athletes as are the big schools and they just hate a fair market competition.

 

[uvaballa]

NCAA is looking at ways to fairly compensate players. They’re just being very careful about going about it.

 

[Ghost12]

NCAA is looking at ways to fairly compensate players. They’re just being very careful about going about it.

The problem with the NCAA is they have to pretend all college athletes are equal, which is ridiculous. For example, they'd certainly have to give women as much money as men, even though no one gives two turds about women's college sports.

They should just allow athletes to earn their own money, either via endorsements, autograph signings, or whatever. That way they don't have to pay a darn thing.

 

[csirl]

If the NFL wants a feeder league it should set up minor league football ala baseball and pay players a modest salary. College football is exploitation.

 

[jimmy40]

there sure are some damn nice vehicles in college football players parking lots for them to not be getting paid.

 

[yimyammer]

NCAA is looking at ways to fairly compensate players

What I don't understand is how people can continually say the players don't get paid when they get free college. Kids these days are graduating with thousands of dollars in debt but If a student athlete graduates with no debt by getting his tuition, etc covered, he/she is getting paid quite handsomely, are they not?

Sure, the very best athletes are getting shortchanged (& they'll leave early) but it appears to me the vast majority of athletes who will never go pro are in great shape provided they don't squander the opportunity for a free education.

Am I missing something?

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Congrats to everybody who thinks this is a good idea. I am not one of them but hey, maybe this leads to College Athletes getting paid. Now lets see how long it takes for Universities to start cutting sports. This is going to be very harmful IMO but, it's what you wanted right?

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

What I don't understand is how people can continually say the players don't get paid when they get free college. Kids these days are graduating with thousands of dollars in debt but If a student athlete graduates with no debt by getting his tuition, etc covered, he/she is getting paid quite handsomely, are they not?

Sure, the very best athletes are getting shortchanged (& they'll leave early) but it appears to me the vast majority of athletes who will never go pro are in great shape provided they don't squander the opportunity for a free education.

Am I missing something?

This is the other thing your going to see happen. You are going to see the NCAA force athletes to stick to contracts. If you sign, you sign for 4 years with no early entries. I mean, if they are paying for you to play, then it's no longer for sport, it's a business and I guarantee they are not going to like that, these Athletes.

 

[erod]

Since many of them couldn't give a rat's behind about actually attending a class, this is what they think is fair, I guess.

What they should do is apply the same academic admittance standards to football and basketball athletes as they do the general student population. Or at least the same as the swim team. That would eliminate half the football team at many of these schools, if not more than half.

The lack of education among many of these players is astounding. Couldn't pass a 5th-grade math test with a hundred tries. They have no business being in college to begin with.

I hired a guy once to work in our warehouse that had a 4-year degree from Texas. He literally couldn't read or operate a computer. Johnny Manziel never even registered for a class his final year at Texas A&M.

College football and basketball is such a ridiculous scam.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Since many of them couldn't give a rat's behind about actually attending a class, this is what they think is fair, I guess.

What they should do is apply the same academic admittance standards to football and basketball athletes as they do the general student population. Or at least the same as the swim team. That would eliminate half the football team at many of these schools, if not more than half.

The lack of education among many of these players is astounding. Couldn't pass a 5th-grade math test with a hundred tries. They have no business being in college to begin with.

I hired a guy once to work in our warehouse that had a 4-year degree from Texas. He literally couldn't read or operate a computer. Johnny Manziel never even registered for a class his final year at Texas A&M.

College football and basketball is such a ridiculous scam.

I'll tell you erod, I can see this entire thing blowing up in every bodies face. I think this is a very, very bad idea. The problem is that there are really only a handful of sports that actually generate revenue. You start paying one sport, you gotta pay them all. Who gets hurt here, it's the athletes who aren't in it for the Pro Career. Those folks are just trying to use their abilities to get an education. Those will be the first casualties. The only way to keep those sports is to raise tuition and guess who pays for that? I feel bad for any parent who has kids who have not yet completed their educations. This is going to get expensive fast.

 

[JD_KaPow]

NCAA is looking at ways to fairly compensate players. They’re just being very careful about going about it.

Tee hee.
The NCAA exists entirely to allow colleges to maximize the money they make off of sports. They will fight paying players tooth and nail until that position is no longer tenable, and then they'll fight to have the players make as little as possible.

 

[uvaballa]

What I don't understand is how people can continually say the players don't get paid when they get free college. Kids these days are graduating with thousands of dollars in debt but If a student athlete graduates with no debt by getting his tuition, etc covered, he/she is getting paid quite handsomely, are they not?

Sure, the very best athletes are getting shortchanged (& they'll leave early) but it appears to me the vast majority of athletes who will never go pro are in great shape provided they don't squander the opportunity for a free education.

Am I missing something?

Free education is nice but it’s no where close to what football and basketball is making some of these colleges. It would be like Google paying all of their top programmers $50k.

What’s not fair is the kids playing football and basketball and that money going to fund sports like golf, soccer, tennis, etc. If those sports can’t generate enough revenue schools should be forced to cut them. Sounds like socialism which many on here seem to hate.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Tee hee.
The NCAA exists entirely to allow colleges to maximize the money they make off of sports. They will fight paying players tooth and nail until that position is no longer tenable, and then they'll fight to have the players make as little as possible.

I don't think they'll need to put up much of a fight. There is something like 450 thousand Athletes participating in College Athletics annually (http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes). I believe that, according to a recent audit (2017), the NCAA brought in a little over a billion dollars in Athletics revenue (USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...-revenues-more-than-1-billion-2017/402486002/). Divide a billion by 450k and 2,444.00 per Athlete and that's before all costs associated with actually supporting all of these sports. That's not a lot of money to go around and in today's society, you are not going to be able to say, pay these Athletes but not these other Athletes. That's not going to fly. I don't believe you are going to be able to differentiate by gender or sports on a scale and I don't believe you can limit it to just Division 1 either. Keep in mind, the NCAA is not the NFL and they don't have the same kinds of protection built in to any sort of financial situation in terms of leagues. There are so many things this kind of precedence involves, I don't know if people have really stopped to think about what this could mean.

I mean, imagine just for a second what College Athletics looks like if there is no NCAA. I know it seems a bit far fetched but why would the NCAA continue to stay in place if there is no money to be made? The answer is that I don't think it would.

 

[JD_KaPow]

I don't think they'll need to put up much of a fight. There is something like 450 thousand Athletes participating in College Athletics annually (http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes). I believe that, according to a recent audit (2017), the NCAA brought in a little over a billion dollars in Athletics revenue (USA Today https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...-revenues-more-than-1-billion-2017/402486002/). Divide a billion by 450k and 2,444.00 per Athlete and that's before all costs associated with actually supporting all of these sports. That's not a lot of money to go around and in today's society, you are not going to be able to say, pay these Athletes but not these other Athletes. That's not going to fly. I don't believe you are going to be able to differentiate by gender or sports on a scale and I don't believe you can limit it to just Division 1 either. Keep in mind, the NCAA is not the NFL and they don't have the same kinds of protection built in to any sort of financial situation in terms of leagues. There are so many things this kind of precedence involves, I don't know if people have really stopped to think about what this could mean.

I mean, imagine just for a second what College Athletics looks like if there is no NCAA. I know it seems a bit far fetched but why would the NCAA continue to stay in place if there is no money to be made? The answer is that I don't think it would.

Of course you're going to pay some athletes and not others. And some schools would pay athletes and others wouldn't. I think your entire premise is wrong. And yes, if college sports were to become a free market, the NCAA would not exist in the way it does today.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Of course you're going to pay some athletes and not others. And some schools would pay athletes and others wouldn't. I think your entire premise is wrong. And yes, if college sports were to become a free market, the NCAA would not exist in the way it does today.

How are you going to do that, legally?

 

[JD_KaPow]

How are you going to do that, legally?

Huh? You remove the restraint of trade that currently exists and make it a free market. The real question is how the colleges in the NCAA are legally allowed to collude to not pay players.

 

[erod]

I'll tell you erod, I can see this entire thing blowing up in every bodies face. I think this is a very, very bad idea. The problem is that there are really only a handful of sports that actually generate revenue. You start paying one sport, you gotta pay them all. Who gets hurt here, it's the athletes who aren't in it for the Pro Career. Those folks are just trying to use their abilities to get an education. Those will be the first casualties. The only way to keep those sports is to raise tuition and guess who pays for that? I feel bad for any parent who has kids who have not yet completed their educations. This is going to get expensive fast.

You nailed it.

I do think they should provide a stipend for athletes that allows them to be a part of the university. Be it clothing or money to go out with friends and grab a pizza....athletes shouldn't be made to feel like outsiders. But that will just get abused to no end. Serious money will change hands, and it'll be easy to hide.

Problem is, you have to do that for EVERYBODY, and Title IX will make sure this gets really expensive. And many of these athletes don't really want to be students anyway. It's just a means to pro sports.

I think a lot of schools are just looking for a reason to drop athletics altogether. A school like Bowling Green, for instance. It's already a cost, not a revenue driver for them. This will tip that over.

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Huh? You remove the restraint of trade that currently exists and make it a free market. The real question is how the colleges in the NCAA are legally allowed to collude to not pay players.

That may be the real question for you but it's not the "real question" in terms of what happens if College's actually have to pay players because that's the real question right? Legally, how are you going to say that you are paying certain players in certain sports but not other players? When that gets challenged legally, how is that going to hold up? You want to make it a free market correct? OK, there are rules that govern the free market and more to the point, there are rules that exist in society and those rules are becoming more and more liberal by the day. How are you going to sell paying certain players, most of which will be men, and not pay other players made up by a lot of women who do not generate a lot of revenue? How are you going to make that work and exactly how will you be able to avoid getting sued by organizations such as the AFL CIO? Opening it up to the "Free Market" doesn't really answer the question I asked. How exactly are you going to protect yourself if you don't pay all the athletes becomes that law suit is coming if you try and go down that path IMO. To say nothing of the fact that it would become a public relations nightmare. You are going to try and sell this as some kind of abuse by the NCAA for not paying players who they profit from and then turn around and say that only certain Athletes will get paid because why? Because they play a certain sport but not another? That's a losing position on many fronts IMO. I don't think that will fly.

 

[erod]

Of course you're going to pay some athletes and not others. And some schools would pay athletes and others wouldn't. I think your entire premise is wrong. And yes, if college sports were to become a free market, the NCAA would not exist in the way it does today.

The US is the only country that even has college athletics. Europe laughs at us for this, along with the whole sorority and fraternity nonsense.

The real answer (which I would hate) is to drop athletics in college altogether, and let clubs handle development like they do everywhere else. College is a place for higher learning, not a place for 3rd-grade educated morons to play football on Saturday and take made-up classes a slug could pass.