(09-12-2013 09:30 AM)NYCTUFan Wrote:  

(09-12-2013 09:08 AM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(09-12-2013 08:42 AM)john01992 Wrote:  i love the component of amateurism. keeps the concept of the student athlete intact and prevents this game from becoming a glorified minor league

What amateurism? They're already receiving money for their services. It's already a minor league.

Please note my sarcasm while reading.

If this is the case why not just do it right? Create a D4 of 32 universities. Each one aligned with an NFL team and they become the minor league affiliate for the NFL team. Temple for the Eagles, Rutgers for the Giants, Syracuse for the Bills ect. The NFL GM’s can make the coaching decisions and hold a player draft for high school students to fill the rosters. The players will only need to attend class on a minimal basis to cover only the basic educational skills (13th grade) and can be called to an NFL team any time Jr or Sr year. Because they are only attending the basic skills classes they are free to practice and study film 10 months out of the year 6 to 8 hours per day. After 4 years of eligibility if the kid hasn’t made an NFL roster he's kicked out to the real world to make a living.

The universities provide room and board to the kids along with a predetermined salary, say $30,000 per year (enough for bling and tats), and facilities for the teams to practice and for games, and in return they get part of the monster revenue that comes from the TV deal the NFL negotiates on their behalf. Every school not in the D4 will be downgraded to FCS and because there will no longer be TV coverage or demand for the product will be reduced to basically a club sport.

This is essentially what I was trying to depict. I wasn't sure that we could find 32 places to put minor league football franchises, though.

(09-12-2013 08:36 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf--late...22795.html

Quote:This detestable idea was later co-opted by the NCAA and the modern Olympic Games (the ancient Greek athletes were actually paid). The public was then repeatedly sold the idea of the innocence of amateurism and sold it well. This conveniently allowed the powerful administrators to control all the revenue produced.

Amateurism is a sham in practice, too, one that simply isn't being followed or respected, as story after story after story proves. So many of the athletes, players and administrators don't believe in it. That's the value of the coverage. It's made denying the extent of the violations laughable.

Enforcing amateurism became so impossible and ridiculous that even the International Olympic Committee – still in favor of kickbacks and bribes, mind you – gave up on it … nearly three decades ago. The Olympics didn't collapse because Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps can appear in TV commercials. It actually got more popular. It'd be no different in the college game.

Quote:The real scandals don't involve money; they involve academics or drug-test fixing or other real-world issues. Systematic academic fraud – one that keeps borderline students uneducated – is what should generate the harshest penalties, the loudest condemnations and the most aggressive NCAA investigations. These are, after all, supposed to be institutions of higher learning. And the schools are very capable of looking into this stuff themselves.

That isn't how the system is set up though.

College sports wants to protect its money – making sure every dollar Manziel or Fluker or whoever can generate comes through them and only them. No side deals directly to the players. That's the motivation to stop middlemen.

I don't necessarily disagree with the spirit, but unfortunately Title IX has a large role to play in the process as well. Simply put, you cannot pay a football player without also paying a women's tennis player, or rower, or some other non-revenue sports participant. The Title IX lawsuits of the '80's and '90's have regulated as such - there must be proportional opportunity for both sexes and that includes scholarships and participation in athletics. Never mind the simple fact of life that women don't particiapte in sports at the same level of interest as men do, or the fact that by and large, women's sports (as well as many men's sports outside of football and basketball) don't generate any revenue. It's all about gender equality, which is a noble goal, but it is truly what is holding back athletes in revenue sports from getting paid.

Athletes get tons of preferential treatment within the current system as well. Many get into colleges that they could not otherwise attend (and many get into college period when they would normally be unable to qualify) simply because they are good at a sport. That's a huge benefit right off the bat. They get free tutoring, free training, preferential scheduling, all on top of their free tuition, room & board, and books. Sure they need a few more dollars to make it fully complete and to cover such things as laundry, transportation, and other soft costs, but they also have the ability now to have sponsored entertainment provided by the schools. The "slave" mentality that Wetzel and others in the media try to portray for these athletes is way off base. Yes, these athletes make millions for the schools, but they also get more than their fair share when you compare the benefits graduate students, or even faculty get for also making the schools millions in research grants. And because the revenue sports' revenue really covers the athletic department budget at only a handful of schools, most of the time the school itself is having to cover some of those costs - and most schools have the rest of the student body paying a decent chunk of that in the form of student fees. Again, I don't have a problem paying players, but if another student has to contribute even a dime unwillingly to do it, then I do. That's not what universities are supposed to be about.

And as Wetzel alluded to, the academic fraud should be the biggest scandals of them all. If an agent wants to make a bad investment by shoveling some money to Tyler Bray in hopes that he'll sign with him after graduation, by all means let him make that mistake. The NCAA's concern is that agents would go crazy and give loans to these kids and saddle them with debt they may not be able to pay off with a professional career - and that's noble for the NCAA to do - but there are other ways to prevent that from happening. The primary mission of the NCAA should be to make sure these kids get an education and anything that violates that primary mission should be seen as much more heinous than a kid getting a few extra dollars. I know the NCAA is also trying to fight off corruption and influence, but it is seemingly doing so at the expense of education. Have half your football team enrolled in a no-work class? The NCAA looks the other way and says that's an academic issue. But have a guy get $500 from a long-time family friend and he has to sit out half a season. That's messed up. The former is literally cheating these kids out of receiving the primary benefit of going to college, whereas the latter isn't a crime at all. Yet what gets punished?

In that regard, I agree with Wetzel.

The NCAA seems to get all bent out of shape about agents (see the Ohio St. and Georgia Tech penalties last year and what they slammed UNC for), but doesn't seem to care about academic fraud (UNC) and figures out a loophole for recruiting violations (Cam Newton). Agents affect amateurism, but don't give a school a competitive advantage. The priorities are strange.

(09-12-2013 11:36 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  

(09-12-2013 11:11 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(09-12-2013 08:36 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  Athletes get tons of preferential treatment within the current system as well. Many get into colleges that they could not otherwise attend (and many get into college period when they would normally be unable to qualify) simply because they are good at a sport. That's a huge benefit right off the bat. They get free tutoring, free training, preferential scheduling, all on top of their free tuition, room & board, and books.

That argument has never worked for me.

The reason it doesn't work is that, with a few rare exceptions, the athletes for whom those things are real benefits -- i.e., the athletes who go to college to get a good degree and not just as a waystation to their pro sports career -- are not the athletes whom "the marketplace" would pay money to play college sports.

And, conversely, John Wall, Johnny Manziel, Terrelle Pryor, Andrew Wiggins, etc. are not going to college to get a degree. College for them is just a stage in their planned lucrative professional sports career. For them, taking and passing classes is just a charade that they have to put up with until they can start their pro-sports career.

Which is perfectly ok for them, because they're going to make big bucks in their chosen career. But it's silly to pretend that a one-and-done or two-and-done athlete who doesn't want a degree is "benefitting" from tuition-and-books freebies.

Fair enough. But just like internships in other real-world professions, there are steps everyone must take that don't lead to mainline success immediately. Plus, nobody forced those guys into college. Granted, it's the best choice for them, but it's certainly not the only route into the NBA.

Basketball players benefit hugely from the colleges and their coaching and exposure even if not the academics. They have other routes to the pros. Football is the only sport where it is an issue. And much of that is because almost no 18 year olds are physically ready to play in the NFL.

(09-12-2013 01:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(09-12-2013 01:27 PM)nuftw Wrote:  "(a) *only* the most overwhelmingly and stunningly exceptional athletes entered the draft out of high school and/or (b) the pro teams would *only* draft the most overwhelmingly and stunningly exception athletes that entered the draft out of high school."

From the college perspective, these are exactly the athletes that shouldn't be in college. They're the ones that could be considered "harmed" or "underpaid". In my dream world, all these athletes go to the pros or a minor league or wherever, and the only ones that go to college are the ones that genuinely want to go to college.

Oh, I agree. LeBron James spending any time in college would have been pointless. It's just that high school players that aren't anywhere near as good as LeBron and are too cocky enter the draft to their detriment while NBA GMs also feel that they have to draft high school players that aren't as good as Lebron. Think of the very basic roots of financial crisis back in 2008 - consumers couldn't help themselves when banks offered so much loose credit, and in turn the banks couldn't help themselves providing even more credit to keep more consumers coming in (which created a vicious circle). That's essentially what happened in the NBA context when high school players could enter into the draft directly. The draft is inherently NOT a free market situation, so there aren't any natural checks and balances to keep both high school players and NBA GMs for overreaching. The NBA age limit is to protect everyone involved from themselves.

I just wish the "these athletes are forced to go to college because NBA and NFL gms lack self control" narrative would get more visibility.

So we make college football like AAA in baseball. Then high school can be Double A. Junior High Football can be Single-A.

While we're at it.