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I think one thing that gets forgotten sometimes is the amount of time and effort that goes into being an athlete at the college level. Practices, Strength and Conditioning, Meetings, Media/Public Appearances, etc. Being a college athlete is essentially a full time job, in addition to being a full time student. Also, while its not the majority of cases, you do run into situations like Daren Evans' where the Student-Athlete is also working as much as they can outside of football and school to help support their family. I think that at least providing some form of living expenses would be ok.
Considering they already get a per diem and/or stipend, I see this being the most logical. Most don't use all their money on road trips so they end up using it for personal expenses. They could put it on the scholarships or call it a grant and it would be refunded to them just like a regular student would get from financial aid.
Which way is which? Is "over" equivalent to "better", or "bigger number"?
Found it best to play this in the background while looking over the strip
but the argument there is that you would be discriminating against other sports. The swimmer trains and competes just as hard however because football is more lucrative for the school so they get more.
Congrats! I just celebrated mine not too long ago.
Also my 2nd Anniversary
Paying the athletes would only have negative affects across the board. 18 year-olds do not need double or triple digit incomes on top of a full ride scholarship.
Most of it was just on his Twitter. It was a while ago and I can't find his Twitter right now.
Are there other comments/examples you can give for this? I'm just curious as I hadn't heard this.
Does it look like this?
BWAAAA!?
A lot of thoughts ahead...(sorry)
I'm going to skip the issue of whether a player/all players in a sport/all sports should be paid and suggest that no one outside the university can use the players' likenesses. So the school can still sell jerseys but EA can't use their likenesses. Kinda sucks for the consumer like any of us, who may want to call scramble drill with Tyrod in NCAA '11 or Logandozer with LT3 in NCAA '13. Plus, part of the fun of playing the game is to play with your favorite players. Would suck for us, but would be fair to the student athletes. If EA can use their likenesses, then pay the kids.
All in all, I think the best free market perspective is to keep all the television and ticket sales for the school but to split somehow the merchandise that can be directly tied to an athlete. Tebow jerseys make the university money, but Tebow should get a cut because people wouldn't be buying his jersey unless it was for his effort/personality (they'd buy another, or no jersey at all). If paying some student athletes is a big problem, stick the money in a trust fund for the kid to get access to after graduation. Or provide a match to the kid if he/she is willing to donate it to the general scholarship fund (or some other university-funded initiative, like new buildings or departments). At least give the student athlete some say in how the university will use the revenue they generate.
For non-revenue sports, it would be harder for the athletes to get enough notoriety to generate any sales unless they were superstars. I could argue that some of the more popular wrestlers and women's volleyball players up here at Penn State could generate a little revenue for themselves. But in those cases, I think it would be easier for the university to offer wrestling and/or volleyball gear with the Penn State brand where you can customize it with current players' names, as opposed to trying to market the student athletes images and keep their jerseys in stock (as UF could have easily done, or did, with Tebow).
I also think that players should be able to get sponsors while they are in school, and appear in ads for their sponsors. If not for their primary sport (as in RGIII sponsored by Adidas, for track or football), but in other sports. For example, former Colorado player Jeremy Bloom was an Olympic-caliber skier, so I think he should have been able to accept all of those sponsorships/endorsement deals because it wasn't related to his football playing.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, there is a South Park episode (Crack Baby Athletic Association) does a pretty neat job of poking holes in the NCAA.
Again, the team with the larger fan base pays thier players more (above the table). Alabama doesn't have a pro team. I know this may seem unreal to Redskin and Raven's fans in VA, but they don't buy pro jerseys in Bama. Everybody out here either has bama gear or they went to Auburn or some other school (like me ;-). I kid you not, the majority of Alabama fans did not go to Alabama. In Virginia, if you didn't go to VT or some other college in VA you pull for a pro team. UAT is there pro team here. They don't pull for pro teams in SEC country, they pull for college teams. That is why ESPN sells them so much. We don't need this, it will totally screw up college football's recruiting demographic more than it already is.
"If you guys have spare time, do a little digging on Trent Richardson. There is visual evidence of him receiving impermissible benefits and the NCAA still looked the other way."
Lemme go put on my shocked face.
That's essentially how I feel about him.
This is the key point IMO. The players freely choose to play as amateurs in College, knowing that they'll never see the money that they produce for their schools. No one got tricked or lied to, the kids knew the deal when they signed their LOI.
You remind me of this:
I think they just add $5000 to their scholarships and call it "living expenses" instead of paying them. That would allow them to pay for gas, groceries, laundry, and whatever else they want. Then, it's an across the board thing. If you make it too high, small colleges can't pay them and it's unfair to those guys.
I believe that athletes should get paid. The problem is, how in the hell do you establish a fair system that rewards players like they should? Generally speaking, football makes a school money so logically, those players should get paid. But then there is the problem of compensating a player like Johnny Manziel who has already made A&M millions of dollars versus some of the scrubs who will never see the field. Would they all get paid the same amount? If so, how is that fair if they as individuals are making the school nothing when an all-american in lacrosse might actually be bringing the school something.
The only way that a fair system can be established is if player's make money when their likeness is used (jerseys, merchandise, video games, etc.). Anything else would ruin college sports.
If they don't like the idea of not being allowed to be paid then there are some semi-professional leagues they can join. These are the rules of the NCAA. You are not being forced into being a NCAA athlete, you chose to be one.
I have to speak form my own interests. May it never be. It would take college football as an amature sport and make it professional. Bama, LSU, Georgia, would have high school players lined up hoping to get a piece of that big ESPN cheese. Where schools like VPI, with its good coaches, wouldn't have a chance. We just don't have that kind of green. Let all that SEC money stay in the dark. I see this mans issue, but if he has his way, it would change college football more than ESPN, and its favoritism, has already. We would be left on the outside looking in more than we feel like we are now.
Football players do make more than swimmers when the make it to the NFL as professionals.
A full ride, some already get paid, the perks of being a college athlete (girls, fame, and girls), the free gear, the business trips, opportunity to play pro, networking opportunities, etc etc... IMO that's compensation enough
That video's pretty badass. I would say that technically that might be close to a violation, but if he stands to gain NOTHING from the video, is it really that bad? It would be absolutely ridiculous if the NCAA made a fuss over this when the SEC essentially paid their way to football dominance.
If you guys have spare time, do a little digging on Trent Richardson. There is visual evidence of him receiving impermissible benefits and the NCAA still looked the other way.
Well, if you're going to pay players, you certainly would have to give some more than others - no way a member on the swim team gets anything close to what a football player does...
It's certainly something to keep an eye on. I'm curious to see what happens, because this could be a big deal.
As with any capitalist enterprise, pay should be based on output, not input. Both athletes put in the same amount of work, but only one is really profitable. That's why I'm against paying any athletes. They all work hard, and are rewarded equally: with an education. That should be enough. Furthermore, it should be a contract that requires them to either get a degree or pay back the scholarship if they leave early to go pro.