TerryD
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I Root For: Notre Dame
Location: Grayson Highlands
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RE: Wetzel: Amatuerism needs to go
(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.
Me too. I think that there should be a 16 team minor league football entity with franchises in Las Vegas, Portland, Los Angeles, Memphis, Columbus, Ohio, Baton Rouge, Orlando, Florida, Tucson, AZ, Albuquerque, NM, Sacramento, CA, Birmingham, AL and a few other non-NFL cities.
I think that there should be a draft of high school players for this league. These guys should get $100,000/year or so and these franchises should be tied to two specific NFL teams.
Those teams would get to call up players from the minor league franchise they are tied to, perhaps by some sort of free agent signing or rotating selection system.
The universities would continue to play college football. NCAA football would exist separate and apart from this minor league system.
NCAA football would have stronger, higher academic standards than exist currently.
The players would have to meet academic requirements that are higher than exist now, lower to what non-athlete student admissions require, but closer to the latter than now exists.
The players that play college football and are recruited by those schools would get a full, four year scholarship ( cannot be run off for non-disciplinary/non-academic reasons) and are paid a $5,000/year stipend.
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