Interesting article, though I disagree with the author's central point, if not his conclusions. For my part, I hope he is wrong but suspect he is right in the long run. Once you break the principle of amateurism, it becomes a slippery slope and $2000 will soon be thousands or millions, and all that that entails (contracts, holdouts, strikes, agents, etc). Once that happens, many people will stop being college fans. The thing that makes college different -- and to many people, better -- than professional sports is that they are not greedy mercenaries that play only for money, but in an old fashioned sense are playing for their school, their teammates, their fans and for the love of the game. While cynical types like the writer chalk such sentiments up to British classism, it is also true that there is a purity of competition than cannot be matched in professional sports. Colt McCoy's victory lap around DKR in his last game was not spurred by money or fame, and the range of emotion that college players and fans get from their trials and tribulations is much fuller and more heart-felt than anyone that plays primarily for a paycheck. Indeed, most college players love their fans and what they do; most professional players hate their fans and treat their game like a job (because it is). Ask yourself this: has anything in the modern "professional" Olympics surpassed the Miracle on Ice, where a bunch of amateur college kids that were the longest of long shots knocked off the mighty Soviet Arny team? (Yes, I know the Soviets were "sort of" professional, in the communist sense, but it was the Cold War and not much could be done about that). The first Dream Team is a case in point -- the biggest story about them was their covering of their Reebok logos on their warmups during the medal ceremony so the "Nike" players wouldn't be seen with a competing logo. The games were boring, there was no patriotism involved, and the overall impression was greed and marketing. Here are additional problems with encrouching professionalism, which the advocates for paying players have no answers to: 1. Will all players be paid the same, or will the VY's make "market" vlaue (i.e. millions) while the backup tackles make a pittance? If you are not going to pay market values, in what sense is that any more "fair" than paying everyone the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, room and board as they do now? 2. If you are going to be truly "fair" and pay market values, how will that be assessed? Will that be negitiated up front with recruits (i.e. rich schools buy all the talent and competition is destroyed), or later on in their careers? Will there be salary caps and agents? 3. Title IX requires that all student athletes be paid the same -- i.e. its ILLEGAL to pay VY more than the backup setter on the women's volleyball team. How are you going to get Congress to repeal that? More than 90% of Division I atheltic programs lose money already -- are you going to burden these universities with further millions in costs they can't afford just because the football team makes money and a few players are arguably being "exploited"? How can you justify THAT in an era of rising tuitions, massive budget shortfalls, and economic malaise? Who is going to pay for that? My taxes need to go up and my kid's tuition goes even higher so some rower can get paid? WTF? Moreover, most FOOTBALL teams lose money -- do they have to pay their players too, or will we end up with a league that has about 20 teams in it that can make a profit and still afford to pay their atheletes (i.e. Texas, Ohio State, etc), while everyone else is relegated to Div II? Ever heard of the parable of the Golden Goose? because that is what will happen. 4. Its a free country. No one forced anyone to become a college athlete. They are free to do something else, like get a job. In every sport other than football, they can even get a job playing that sport professionally right out of high school if they want to. And if the complaint is football players can't jump directly to the pros, sue the NFL, not the NCAA. MLB has a minor league -- why can't the NFL? 5. In what sense is the current deal "unfair"? Here is the bargain for college atheltes: we will give you (1) a full 4-5 year scholarship, room, board and certain other expesnes, valued at $120,000 for a public school and $250,000+ at a private school in exchange for (2) letting you continue to play a sport you (supposedly) love, and for which you will receive tremedous admiration, popularity, status, enhanced dating prospects, etc. Oh, and you also get valuable training for the next level if you are good enough, and if not, a free education to prepare you to do something else should you choose to take advantage of it. Do you know how I know that deal is fair? Because everyone takes it!!! If for some bizarre reason you think its unfair, DON"T TAKE IT. But don't force colleges to change the amateurism system they have had in place for 130 years just because you want to have your cake and get paid for it to. (FWIW, I'd make it illegal for the schools and NCAA to sell players likenesses to EA Sports for video games, but that is about it).. We already have professional leagues. If the college system becomes corrupted by more professionalism, there will be nothing separating it -- elevating it -- above professional sports. They will simply be a lesser version of the same thing. At that point the fans that followed college sports for the "purity" of it will stop, and the fans that prefer professional sports will just watch the real thing. For my part, I wish there were minor leagues for football and basketball, and that all scholarships were binding 4 year commitments. That way the kids that have no interest in college and no desire to play for any school could just go straight into the pros without "faking" it as a student for 1-3 years in college. It would also open up opportunities for a lot of kids that really want to be student-athletes and value the college experience. It would also be more honest all the way around. Further corrupting college sports with more professionalism is not the answer IMO.
If the NCAA goes away, who writes and enforces the rules? AS for the athletes, they get free room and board, free books, tuition and fees. Many of them would not even be in a college if they were not being paid to do so. So why do they get paid and the rest of us largely are not? Why does UT get to pay its athletes and Rice, which is already running a deficit on athletics has to pay the same or similar in order to recruit? The whole idea of having student athletes becomes ridiculous at some point. That point was reached in about 1955 and has only gotten worse. How is this? Let the people who want to go to school and play football pay their own way. All of them. A lot of good athletes would go directly to work in their future careers as car detailers, drug dealers, insurance salesmen and truck drivers. The Ramonce Taylors of the world could go straight to prison. Cedric Benson would be driving a farm truck in Midland county. The quality of play would decline remarkably; back to what it was in the 1940s maybe. no big loss; football is a great game and would survive.
^^^ Agree. I will stop watching when they start paying. If they agree to pay each athlete 2 grand, the ou's and aggy of the world will interpret that as 20,000. I know tons of people that would kill for the chance for a free education and not have to pay student loans for 20 years after graduation.
Did some of you even read this article? It's nothing abt $2K a month, which has been proposed by the NCAA, not the athletes, as their CYA solution. Huisache, you in particular point your finger at the kids, as if they've all unionized and demanded this "stipend", not to mention how you denigrate some former Horns and others with your assumption that if they didn't have a scholly to play ball they're probably not qualified to go to college and just need to get a damn job. From the article: "You can say that the university is entitled to the gate receipts from its games based on the value of the scholarships it grants to its players....But the ancillary income — television revenues, the sale of jerseys and other gear, the use of a player's "likeness" in video games, and on and on — completely overwhelms the equation and makes the relationship inequitable. The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million. These people may have a moral right to their ticket sales based on the scholarships they provide, but they don't have a moral right to every last nickel they can squeeze out of their labor force. That's absurd. It's un-American. And it cannot last." THIS is the story. And aggsuck, you better start looking for another sport; the "stipend" is coming, like it or not.
Texas has what 500 student Athletes. That is $100,000/month or $1.2M per year 5 year scholarships are worth what $250K or $50K/year. So we will be paying 18-23 year kids $74K/year. That is absurd. I wouldn't want 18-23 year old kids walking around with $2,000/month in spending money, that is nothing but trouble. I If anything, give them $100/month or $25/week.
Mesohorny -- Do you know what it costs in the SEC to run the 25+ sports teams at 12 schools for a year in terms of salaries, facilities, scholarships, room and board, etc? Each team has an average of 3 coaches, so that is nearly 1000 coaches in the SEC. If you assume conservatively that they make $150,000 each, that is $150,000,000 right there. Each school has roughly 500 scholarships at a cost of $50,000 per year in tuition, room, and board (conservatively), so that is another $300,000,000 just in scholarships. Do you know what it costs to build and maintain a football stadium or a volleyball arena? What about maintenance crews and athletic department staff and tutors, not to mention equipment and insurance and lawyers to negotiate all of these deals? Pretty soon that "billion" that the SEC makes isn't enough to keep you in the black, and that is for the RICHEST conference in the country. What about C-USA or the WAC or the MAC? Their revenues are perhaps 1/5 of the SEC but I guarantee you their costs are similar, so they all lose money hand over fist. Is it "immoral" to try to maximize your football dollars so that you can afford to field 25 other teams and provide those opportunites to baseball players and volleyball players and soccer players, not so mention field the number of women's teams you have to have to off-set 85 scholarship football players and thereby satisfy the federal legal requirements of Title IX? Sure, at the most successful schools its a little unseemly that the Mack Browns make $4M per year coaching an "amateur" sport. But at MOST schools the atheletic departments lose money, and most of the coaches make a fraction of that, and the football money (if there is any left over -- there usually ins't) is used to provide opportunites for other athletes in non-revenue sports to get an education and continue playing a sport they love. I don't find that "immoral" at all, especially since no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Ed O'Bannon is upset that EA sports still has a game where you can play with his old Ucla team and use a player with his number that sort of looked like him. He wants money for that. I guess I can see his point. But the idea that he was "exploited" was a joke. He got an education worth $300,000 from a Top 25 school, was worshipped on campus for four years (with all of the fringe benefits that brings), and was well-trained for a job in professional sports. The reason he is upset is he wasn't good enough to play in the NBA. But if it wasn't for college sports, he never would have gotten a free education, much less 4 years of fame and glory. He probably wouldn't even have gone to college. Its not like putting a ball in a hoop is a skill that translates to the work force (outside of the NBA, where he washed out).
People tend to forget that football players are already getting paid big $$$. Some people actually had to work to put themselves through college (not saying that some player don't also). Others with better academic credentials couldn't go to college because they couldn't afford it. Scholarship players are getting a FREE EDUCATION! They ARE getting paid. And there are many athletes that would not have been accepted by any other merit other than athleticism. So anyone that tells me they aren't getting their fair share I think has forgotten the value of a FREE EDUCATION. I am against a $2,000 monthly payment. They are already receiving that in their scholarship. A small weekly stipend I can go along with though.
I think the $2000 stipend being considered is annual, not monthly. That said, what we are talking about is spending money. Everything else -- tuition, lodging (including off-campus rent), food (3 meals a day at the food table), books, athletic gear, etc is all already paid for. This would basically be beer money. I'd prefer they get their beer money the same way the rest of us did: from their parents or a job. They are allowed to get jobs, and have 9 months a year outside the season in which to do so. They ought to be able to save enough money to buy their own beer. I played for a Div II school and most of us had jobs, many of which were through the atheltic department where we did things like check ID's at the student center. In other words, pretty cushy jobs -- which every student was elegible for --where we earned minimum wage but actually had to punch in and punch out (i.e. not Bomar/Big Red situations). And lets be clear -- there ARE a lot of players and players' advocates who are pushing for this. All they see is the 100,000 people that show up for some of the bigger schools and wonder why they are not getting paid too. They could care less that they are getting a free education worth $300,000+ (or that most of the players on the team are not stars), much less that that money goes to fund the women's soccer team or that the atheletic departments at 90% of Div 1 schools lose money. They just want "theirs." Period. My view is, if you think a free education and all of the fame and benefits that go along with being a college football player are not worth it, DON"T PLAY. But don't take the deal and then ***** about it 3 years later when you have become a star player and end up subsidizing the rest of the athletic department. That was the deal you signed, and you could have done anything else you wanted to (i.e. be a "regular" student, played minor league sports, gotten a "real job", etc).
My mistake. I meant $2K a yr walking-around money, not per month. If it requires the hard work and dedication of football players - practice time, travel, gameday, all in addition to classwork - to fund so many non-rev sports w/ so many coaches, maybe there is an excess of those beyond what has been mandated by law.
Back when, kids went to college as athletes and excelled so that when they graduated they had the opportunity to turn professional - they worked toward that goal, and some achieved it, some did not. The key - IMHO - is for the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, etc. to somehow be forced to lay off until a kid finishes college. I know this is pipe dreaming, but to me it's the only way you'll get rid of the 'problem'. If a kid excels while in school, pay him for the use of his likeness, records, etc., after he graduates. If he wants the reward, he'll be incentivized to excel in college so he can cash in after he graduates.
I worked during college for my spending money. Athletes are not allowed to work during the school year, only during the summer. For many of the kids, parents can provide spending money. Not true for some of the kids, and it would be hard to even go on a nice date for $25 a week. I think $2000 a year (divided between the months they are actually in school, which would be about $140 a month) would give them some spending money without giving them so much they could get in trouble.
Dr. Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile, USA beating the Soviets at Lake Placid...those are some of the greatest athletic moments of the 20th Century. Those guys believed in the sporting honor of amateurism. Do we live in a different world now? Yes...but the different world ain't necessarily better. Does the NCAA and governing bodies need to adapt? Sure...but dismissing the value of amateur athletics in favor of a minor league system misses the point completely. In my opinion, the NCAA should adapt to going back to more traditional and pure amateur rules. Schools should field teams to win games...barnstorming bowl games against conference champions from across the country to promote the values of the school and the quality of their students. They should not be making money off their player by licensing the team to EA Sports or Nike....they should not be joining conferences two time zones away for BCS money. If kids want to play pro football...then go to Canada or some enterprising investor should start his own minor football league.
The licensing issue that allows video game companies to claim that a 6'5", 225 lb black male who plays quarterback for the University of Texas in the 2003, 2004, and 2005 seasons wearing jersey #10 and has exceptional scrambling abilities is not Vince Young just because the back of his jersey says "QB10" and not "Young" is pretty ridiculous.
Stat -- EA sports based "QB10" on me, not VY. Weird, I know, but its the truth. I told them it was totally ok.
