Paying college athletes

BrntOrngStmpeDe

BrntOrngStmpeDe

1,000+ Posts
debated about whether this should go here or 'on the field' but I think this is more about policy than sports, so....

Paying student athletes is the dumbest thing ever. College sports are already too "professional". if a kid wants to only play sports then let them go join a minor league.

If anything we need to de-escalate the arms race with respect to college athletics. It should remain focused on STUDENT-athletes. If we need to scale back on allowed practice, etc. then so be it.

I don't want the teams representing my university to be filled with just-jocks who's only reason for being here is to play a sport.
 
I trust that you have never been involved in playing or recruiting. A few of us from various schools did an analysis several years ago of the major educational institutions playing D-1 ball. There was a direct correlation between football games won and donations for both academic and athletic areas of everyone of these schools.
It is about far more than a few bucks to some players.

FWIW, the schools involved were UW, USC, UCLA, Berzerkley, Stanford, Colorado, Nebraska, OU, Kansas, K-State, Oklahoma State. A&M, Arkansas, Mizzou, LSU, Bama, Ole Miss, Georgia, GT, FSU, Florida, the convicts, UNC, UVA, VT, State Penn, ND, Michigan, Ohio State, and Illinois.

We also visited with powers that be in the Ivy League, where they don't give scholarships. Try to find a football player at Harvard, Yale or Penn paying tuition.

Aside from the donations, we also found that the average football player spends about 55 hours a week on school activities including class. Why don't we consider making all undergrads have a 40 hr/week job in order to level "playing field"?

Some of these kids can't even take a date to Dirty's. Provide them a few hundred dollars a month so they can have a life.
 
I will say that I think that players should get paid but if we go to this kind of system then we need to create a new college division. This new division would make up only the schools that can afford to pay their players...sort of like a big 5A division.

On a seperate note, I don't think it is fair that players cannot take advantage of their fame by doing endorsements and autographs/engagements. I think the only stipulation is that they cannot be representing their school in any form or fashion.
 
It's been debated for a long time now and I can see the valid arguments on both sides of the issue. A lot of these kids come from very poor back grounds and have no discretionary income in school, however a lot of them are getting a chance to change their futures drastically once they are done with college and even sports.
 
Yes to amateurism. I can't really say those who say "pay the student athletes" don't have a case. I would just say the NFL and NBA need to do what MLB does...have a minor league.

It just makes too much sense for the NFL. If anything it would be a money maker for them. Can you imagine a 10 week/8 game developmental NFL schedule from March to May on the NFL Network? I'd schedule those games on Wednesday to deconflict with March Madness. Make it a 16 team league, an AFC conference and an NFC conference, 2 teams per NFL division. Each minor league team is shared by two NFL teams. e.g. the Texans and Colts could share one team for development in a minor league AFC team.

If a kid wants to get paid to play right out of high-school, he can go to this minor league. I'm sick of the attitude players, coaches, AND FANS have that football and basketball programs are simply stepping stones to these kids' professional sports careers. The fact is, the vast majority of these athletes will never play in a professional league. They leave with an education. That's worth a hell of lot. At a school like Texas that's worth at least a million dollars over a community college or no school. At D1 schools like Rice, Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford...a student athlete could get a job at a hedge fund and make 8 figures over their life.

Amateurism is a good thing and should be applauded. There are too many Johnny Manziels and not enough Roger Bannisters. I watch college football because these are kids who supposedly chose the same institution I chose for the education, because college is meant for thinkers and gentlemen and ladies (the Acho brothers come to mind), and because they love playing football and see athletics as part of being a complete person and a lab to practice worthy values of leadership, sportsmanship, loyalty, and discipline.

I do have a problem with the NCAA and their hypocrisy. There's nothing wrong with compensating your executives well. If you're a non-profit, you're going to have to pay well to get top flight leadership and have a successful organization. See the American Red Cross, Metropolitan Museum of Art, etc. I don't even have a problem with TV money...that's money that goes to the school and the school's educational mission...that's one of the major reasons of having a football program. There's nothing wrong with NCAA making money, however, the hypocrisy of marketing players personalities and likenesses is ridiculous. EA Sports NCAA Football and jersey sales with player likenesses are just too much in the gray area.

I also think there's no problem with giving all athletes a universal NCAA spending stipend of a few thousand dollars a semester. Do it.
 
They are already getting paid. They also have more perks than the average students ( intangibles such as fame, glory, and post college opportunities like coaching and turning pro ).
 
They shouldn't be paid but also should have all the same rights as other students not playing sports. Let them make money on their own however they can just like any other kid at the school.
 
It's simple...scale back the requirements for sports participation. Make a choice...play football (or whatever) and live with the situation, ie make the financial sacrifice...or don't.

What is the 'life' that you speak of? Last time I looked the kids that are balking the most (football and basketball) are treated very well. paid for rm and board, paid meals, paid clothing, provided tutors, and worshipped to boot.

BTW, that's the reason most of the other kids have jobs...to buy food, clothing, tuition, etc. The field is more than level. These athletes get OVER compensated relative to the kid holding down a job at Dirty's. That kid is probably taking out a loan, sharing a beat up apt, eating ramen, trying to struggle thru Calc on his own.

I do think that EA sports and the rest should have to pay into the general college fund in some fashion. perhaps another mechanism to support the sports not built around profit.
 
I worked four part time jobs at once and took a full load and this went on for a summer and fall semester. Most of the time I just had two part time jobs.

The jocks get tutors as well. Screw 'em. Most are not serious students anyway. THey get lionized because they are good at sports and I envy the athletic ability, but most schools lose money on athletics already. Make them pay a few thousand extra per student athlete and they get another million a year in the hole.

College athleitcs needs to be tamped down, not revved up.
 
Football players already get a stipend. At least they did when I was a student at UW. They'd get a few hundred a month for laundry, food and other assorted necessities. Will it pay for a plain trip home? No, but they are already allowed Summer jobs.

The issue as I see it as this is a money grab. The players see that the schools and administrators are making fists of dollars based on their on-field performance. They simply want a cut.

I see a simple solution. Put money into a fund that can be accessed by students post-graduation based on needs. This gives incentives for the athletes to graduate. For those that "hit the jackpot" they've already received their compensation in terms of coaching and celebrity exposure through college. The money should be for those that may need help either because they were injured or simply to pay back their student loans. Remember, most sports don't receive full scholarships.
 
Since autograph stuff is in the news, ill say this. I can't wait for the NCAA to allow players to sells autographs and schools like bama to set up nights where 500 donors pay 1k per autograph. They will be making more money than the league minimum in the nfl. If you let them sell anything, you might as well let boosters just write them checks because that is exactly what will happen.
 
I don't know how much they get but when they travel, the football players get some money for incidentals as well. This is on top of the fine dining at the swanky hotels that they stay at on the road.

So how do we know that they have it pretty good...Almost everyone one of us would have traded positions with them when we were in college.
 
I have two degrees. I wish I could have played a sport to pay for it. College football will be ruined when they start paying players.
 
A lot of people said that college football would be ruined when they started limiting the amount of scholarships, particularly at Texas. I think what they were actually worried about was how parity would ruin the tradition-laden aspects of the sport, and to an extent, they were probably correct.

I'm having trouble finding an equivalent scenario that would be deemed "illegal" or improper for a college student. If there's some 18-year-old physics whiz who is deemed the next Stephen Hawking, and Fortune 500 companies are vying for him by providing scholarships and spending cash to the universities of their choosing, I doubt anyone would find harm in steering him whichever direction the money flowed from. Maybe he'll go on to boost a corporation's image, or get someone out of the red, or whatever. No one's going to complain that his "amateurism" was tainted by taking huge sums of money. And I think that's why the NCAA is eventually going to lose all of these suits and there really won't be such a thing as amateurism any longer.

I've always said that these kids (particularly football players, since the NFL only uses 53 active players and not 85) are getting everything they need for free. But I'm not so sure any longer. The commitment to excellence is bigger than any college job that I ever had to help pay for tuition. And the universities are reaping in the $107 million in benefits.
 
I always laugh when people say that schools are making so much money off of athletic sports, usually these people have not taken a basic Accounting class discussing Revenue, Expenses, and Net Income.
 
I find the idea of amateurism amateur and unnedded. If you are a computer science student there is no rule that says you can't make money on a contract for software programming. There is nothing that says your standing at the school is in jeopardy if you build computers in your dorm room and sell them. In the engineering school there is actually a program that (at least when I was there) that actively placed students in jobs with companies to do engineering work while students. I even missed whole semesters of school (shriek!) to go work and make money. It is extremely hypocritical to allow and even encourage that and then disallow athletes from making money off there athletic skills.
 
Full disclosure, I'm not a big college sports fan. Furthermore, I consider the assumption that college athletes aren't paid to be a little like the assumption that people don't smoke pot because it's illegal. It's somewhat of a crock of ****. However, I'll say following.

First, athletic ability should not be relevant to one's admission to college. I don't mind if scholarships are given out based on it like they are for other extracurricular areas, but all students should have to meet the minimum academic standards for admission. When I hear a guy interviewed on TV who claims to have gone to UT or Berkeley but who makes Snoop Dogg sound like William F. Buckley (or Noam Chomsky if you're so blinded by liberalism that you can't admit that Buckley was smart), I get a bit skeptical about his SAT scores and grades.

Second, since I want to end the academic fraud element of college sports, I would give the homie on the corner who can run really fast but can't read another shot to make it big by creating a minor league system for the NFL. It doesn't have to be as expansive and as deep as baseball's, but it should exist. Let the NFL draft players out of high school, college, or independent leagues and let them get paid right away in the minor leagues rather than making them fake being college students.

Third, as for the issue of whether or not college athletes should get paid, I lean toward them getting paid, because it's honest and would be universal and equitable. Theoretically none of them get paid. However, somebody's paying for the booze, strippers, and cocaine for the top players at the top schools. It's either coming from the school or jock sniffers, but somebody's paying for it.

Let them make a little money just like any other student with a job at the school. There's nothing wrong with that, and it doesn't make the sport more money-driven than it already is. It's already all about the money. Paying the players would just let the players reap a little bit of the benefit. After all, if a UT football player that the program has made millions on blows out his knee, the program keeps making money and marches on. However, he's ****** and left with nothing - can't play, won't go pro, and suddenly, the coke, booze, and strippers are gone. That ain't right.
 
This thread reminded me of a conversation I had with b-school buddy of mine from France. The higher education system in France is no joke. One's life is essentially singularly determined by how well you do on the entrance exam, the Baccalauréat. If you do well you can either go to their polytechnique schools (equivalent to our Cal Tech/MIT) for engineering or if you want to study humanities and science, their prestigious universities. French colleges look at these scores as if they are gospel. If you don't do well in high-school and on the Bac, you're shipped off to a trade school. Now, don't get me wrong. Their trade schools are top notch, but you're in a trade school and there's no way you will ever get to University. Like Eminem says, you have one shot...one opportunity.

It's very different from the US. You know how you might meet some SHSU "college" girl on 6th Street who's "majoring" in something like fashion marketing? Yeah, they don't have anything like that. If you meet someone from France that went to University, they are always sharp. England is a little like this too, but I think there's a bit more leeway in their system.

But in France and England, they don't have collegiate athletics like we do. They have serious intramurals and club sports in sports like track and soccer. They even have famous events like the Oxford Cambridge boat race that the students train their butts off for. But serious young athletes, soccer players, their route in life is that of an apprentice, a professional in their youth leagues.

This is where my friend told me how much better the NCAA and the US system is. If that young soccer player gets injured, or just doesn't cut it, he's SOL...as in SOL in Life. He has no education, nothing to fall back on. There's no older student thing. He's working on the docks...a character in a Bon Jovi song.

It make me wonder a little about if the NFL started a minor league and the opportunity lost for a lot of kids who would never had gone to college.
 
Great points made by all.

I think there are about 30-40 schools who would love the idea of paying athletes. I think there are about 10 schools who would REALY love the idea (UT included in those 10).

However, the majority of the NCAA can barely afford to fund their collegiate sports programs now, and since they all have an equal vote, I don’t see this ever happening.

Athletes coming out of high school are not prevented from getting professional careers by the NCAA. They can make all the money they want, they just can’t take an ATHLETIC scholarship. They can still get the other scholarships all the rest of us can get. Cedric Benson did this. Also, the NFL has restrictions on who they will hire. This has nothing to do with the NCAA and everything to do with protecting NFL teams from wasting money on talent that hasn’t fully matured. NBA decided to do something similar a few years ago.
 
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