Recent Comments

I'm going to get downvotes and yelled at for this, but as a Duke fan, I'd like to see Johnny Dawkins come back and coach at Duke. While he hasn't had major success at Stanford, he also has not had major talent. Great coach, great person.

If Shaka went to Duke eventually, I'd embrace that as well.

Then don't work at one of those that is unpaid.
I worked in the summer once as an unarmed security guard and 2 other summers as a member of the mobile turbine gang rebuilding steam turbines for nuclear power plants. Paid pretty decent too. Think I didn't learn anything those summers?

Apprentice to the Browns is pretty cool and probably a heck of an experience. That's your pay.
You picks and you chooses, yer pay varies with it. There are always trade offs.

The universities, Congress, and the NCAA have allowed any number of things to fall through the cracks. There is usually a reason why this happens when it happens. But lets look at some of these fall through the crack issues. Take Logan as a recent example.

So who had Logan's back when he was targeted by the UCLA LB? The network certainly did not. Nor were they aligned to. They want to see controversy. Blood. A former first round prospect taken down and knocked out. Nothing sells better to the waifish and ignorant masses in our country. Did VT bring this up to a league? Did they bring this up to the NCAA? What was the reply? Was there a reprimand, a clarification of what constitutes legal hit? Who specifically is in charge of ensuring these kids can walk in 20 years? Can talk and chew gum in 20 years, remember their name, don't develop ALS, etc., etc. What kind of protocol was followed regarding the concussion? Was a baseline MRI taken? There have been recent lawsuits filed regarding concussions, specific abuses, etc. Likely these will be settled with a silence commitment, but a more honest and accountable system would attempt to ensure the athlete's safety is looked after by someone who has a pocketbook and is accountable.

Some complain about media rights taken from our school if we leave the ACC. I believe these kids have their media rights sold to EA and other companies as a part of playing for the NCAA. How much does the NCAA and member institutions get for those media rights? If they aren't capturing the full value, then why not? If they did who gets that revenue.

Some numbers for you. Football players bring in $280k a year by their pro rata association with the football team. The university has expenses of about $180k a year, including scholarships. These are round numbers and there are some offsetting streams not accounted for that might be about $14k or so. The scholarship funds appear to be 5% of revenues. Maybe as much as 15% as it is apportioned and hard to tell if football is pro rata or skewed higher or lower. Call it what you will but when your most critical element is 5% to maybe 15% of costs, they are being taken advantage of. Unions will be able to mass size in order to stand up to the universities and the NCAA and allow these kids to capture a much higher % of the spend. Additionally there will be far more transparency about how much academic assistance and all the other stuff these kids actually get. These numbers are for VT and the ACC, so I didn't cherry pick some extraordinary figure.

I hate to say it because I'm associated with more conservative positions than democrat, but at the end of the day I'm philosophically a libertarian, and the universities and NCAA with Congress's assistance have been f-ing over these kids. Not a fan of unions but these kids need representation by a group that is comparable in size and scope to the NCAA and its member institutions.

I'm not so much worried about the "rich" student athletes or the ones that become rich in the NFL as I am about the average student athlete or the one with a hard scrabble existence, who has a hard time getting living expenses, getting a ride to school, getting that degree finished if his talent doesn't cut it, etc., etc.

IMHO, way past time these kids had someone representing their interests.

I think part of the issue that most people see with this is that the people who are making the most fuss that athletes should be paid are either media types (former players, etc, now on ESPN sort of thing), or the top-level players whose names are being used by the NCAA to make money for the NCAA. Except those players are the ones who deserve the least amount of support, because they are the ones who will be making hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, every year once they go into the professional leagues.

The ones who do deserve larger stipends/better health benefits, are the ones who the NCAA is not benefiting from use of their names/likeness.

So when people hear the argument "Oh, Johnny Football should be paid to play in college..." etc., they're upset because a guy like him will be a millionaire in a few months. So it turns them off completely to any sort of increase in benefits provided to any student athlete, not just the top few with professional aspirations.

I am on board for all of this. I actually have no issue with players being allowed by the NCAA to have a job if they actually need it to support/survive if that were to change. Right now though, the Northwestern filing only includes Scholarship Athletes in football and Men's basketball for membership in the proposed Union so it does nothing to help non-scholarship players at least initially. I actually think this is a big mistake on the part of the players filing this motion, as including the non-scholarship kids would benefit them in front of the courts IMO.

more stipend! more stipend! more stipend!

yes, I agree. A larger stipend would solve a lot of issues.

He is currently making $1.6 mil a season at Wichita State where has reached almost Beamer like status for how his teams do there. Going to need to be a really nice offer to get him to leave there. I happen to like a few other candidates better for Tech anyway but I think it would probably take $2.5 mil a year with full control over the basketball program to bring him to Tech.

Because you guys are saying scholarship athletes are getting compensated with free education. Well not every athlete is on a full ride, just because schools can give out full ride's doesn't mean every athlete has one. CFB can give out 85 scholarships, with a max of 125 players on the team. So 68% of Football players on a roster has some $. The other 32% are just normal student's who participate in athletics.

But those 32% can't have jobs during the season, why can't the NCAA help those 32% since they're technically employed by the NCAA and have to follow rules the NCAA puts forth or else eligibility is stripped

Plugged it before, plugging it again. My blog on college athletes being compensated:

http://wetalkinboutblogging.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/moneymen/

If you can pull this one, I would probably move back to Blacksburg for the winters.

Ok well if we h...a...v....e to I guess we can go with that but could it at least be

1) Money
2) MONEY
3) running clean programs and developing our kids for post college life

But they will be in three years or less.

Nevertheless, no reason to downvote.