(11-04-2014 12:23 PM)tnzazz Wrote:  None of this would change the SEC dominance. The best players are in the South, the climate is a plus for Northern recruits, the passion for football can't be matched, and the exposure is huge. SEC is the king if college football and that won't be changing anytime soon. People can hate the SEC, but facts say otherwise.

...and people like lots of free money more than they like no money.

The SEC may be the king of CFB...but that doesn't mean we need to ascribe some fairy tale version of things, a Cinderella story about poor backwoods people who decided to get good at the old foot ball game and now just can't be stopped by anyone anywhere. How did they get there? Was it fair how they got there? Is it fair how they are staying there?

"A football team covering up child rape for 15 years..." This false narrative brought to you by Louis Freeh and a PSU Board of Trustees/ex-governor who hated Paterno.

The current system is incredibly outdated in my opinion. The system has been continuously altered to provide the schools/athletic departments more revenue/national attention. This has included major realignment to appease television dollars, additional games to the season, adjustment to rules for television (clock doesn't stop quite as much), the addition of conference championship games, the possibility of playing 15 games now if you are in the national title game (16 if you played at Hawaii), massive stadium increases, athletic departments upping requirements to get alumni tickets, gone on a price war for the best coaches as they bring the most success and effect the value of your product, enplaned facilities at great expense for the purpose of attracting the best athletes, etc.

I'm not saying the schools have done absolutely everything to maximize revenue, but they've done a lot and it's time to recognize that student-athletes, from the school's perspective are only half students. Yes that's part of it, but the major athletics are a business to them too. In keeping with that, the rules should be half and half as well. No direct extra payments to students, but allow them to sign endorsement deals, sign autographs for money, and accept things from boosters. This can be regulated by the NCAA and can even be made so payment needs to be put in a trust fund with most money only available after 4 years if that's they way they want to do it.

(11-04-2014 02:50 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-04-2014 02:09 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  I'm actually hearing many voices from SEC land stumping for players to be able to profit (like Gurley and Manziel have done) from their autographs and name/likeness/image stuff. This might be the ultimate example of hubris from SEC land.

Profiting from NLI would destroy the bagman system of general payment of players that has boomed in the SEC the past decade. This is not the "only" reason the SEC has boomed, but it is certainly the main one. The "better weather" and "more die-hard fans" and "more serious about football" lines are only very marginally influential.

If NLI profiting were available, fan bases in the northeast (like my PSU team) would gladly pay for autographs and such from their favorite players. Bring Mike Hull and Deion Barnes to a mall...and hundreds of PSU fans would pay $10 each to get them to sign some stuff. Long term, PSU players would start making the kind of money that SEC schools' players get for "free" through the bagman system. Now, a top Maryland recruit is enticed by Ole Miss with a few thousand dollars of cash and it doesn't look so good to him to spend his college career in Timbuktu...because he can go to a nearby program, get a great education, and make a few thousand dollars every year off of his NLI. The advantage of the SEC would be gone.

I don't know what would become of the "bagman" system if NLI became profitable. Would these secret boosters really want to keep giving money away, when at least other boosters can give money to these players FOR something, like memorabilia or photo ops or advertising for their businesses???

Big Ten fans (and Pac-12 fans and Bob Bowlsby, apparently) are ready for a level playing field in this sport again.

I was in a position to check into this stuff for 20 years plus in my younger days. The bag men exist just as much in the Big 10 as they do in the South, or East, or West. Get over it. They are all guilty. ESPN had the guts to do a special on Ohio State a few years ago and touched on the perks, but also on what amounted to the exploitation of willing coeds to provide favors to recruits. Your world view is so laced with envy that you don't see the hypocrisy in your own position. What I would love to see is a total clean up of the college sports scene. But to ask for that we have to first clean up the corruption in our government, at all levels, in our churches (all denominations), in our corporate business structure (where it is pervasive), and in our entertainment (where the corruption is glorified). What we see in the college world is just an extension of the corruption everywhere else. And that my friend is why it remains. If your whole house is dirty it is virtually impossible to keep one corner of it clean.

It's hard for PSU fans to conduct conversations in neutral forums like this...because as soon as we site our "clean program," everyone grabs a soapbox and says "But Sandusky! Sandusky! Cover up! Pedophiles!" But I hope you aren't so narrow-minded, JRSEC.

Paterno's program was clean from stuff like this. No sanctions in history (only we and Stanford could boast of that...now I guess it's just Stanford) We lost recruit after recruit to various schools (often Ohio State) because the lines were murkier at OSU than at PSU. Terrelle Pryor is the prime example. His family all wanted him at PSU...they knew what kind of influence PSU's culture could have on him. But Pryor got a car in HS (and cars in college) from OSU boosters...and it eventually caught up with him (and OSU got a slap on the wrist).

The whole Big Ten acknowledges OSU's "SEC-like" behavior. Is every starter on OSU's roster getting hundreds of dollars a month? No. Nor do I think every starter on Alabama's team is getting hundreds of dollars month. But this is happening at CERTAIN schools, and your carte blanche statement that "EVERYBODY DOES IT" is bogus. Completely bogus. It's a nice way to ignore inherent inequalities that go on in this sport. Call me jealous or "laced with envy" or whatever...but players at Cal and Vandy and Iowa State and NCSt. are not making the same kind of illegal paydays that most SEC schools and OSU and FSU are making.

ESPN will not expose the SEC because it is one of their biggest cash cows. Period. They did an expose on Ohio State, you say? Really? I'm sure that has NOTHING to do with the BTN and Delany's belligerence towards ESPN...

(11-05-2014 01:47 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  

(11-04-2014 12:23 PM)tnzazz Wrote:  None of this would change the SEC dominance. The best players are in the South, the climate is a plus for Northern recruits, the passion for football can't be matched, and the exposure is huge. SEC is the king if college football and that won't be changing anytime soon. People can hate the SEC, but facts say otherwise.

...and people like lots of free money more than they like no money.

The SEC may be the king of CFB...but that doesn't mean we need to ascribe some fairy tale version of things, a Cinderella story about poor backwoods people who decided to get good at the old foot ball game and now just can't be stopped by anyone anywhere. How did they get there? Was it fair how they got there? Is it fair how they are staying there?

"A football team covering up child rape for 15 years..." This false narrative brought to you by Louis Freeh and a PSU Board of Trustees/ex-governor who hated Paterno.

The mantra in the SEC is "If you ain't cheating, then you ain't trying." Do you think all the other conferences aren't living by this mantra also?

(11-05-2014 09:25 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  

(11-04-2014 02:50 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(11-04-2014 02:09 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  I'm actually hearing many voices from SEC land stumping for players to be able to profit (like Gurley and Manziel have done) from their autographs and name/likeness/image stuff. This might be the ultimate example of hubris from SEC land.

Profiting from NLI would destroy the bagman system of general payment of players that has boomed in the SEC the past decade. This is not the "only" reason the SEC has boomed, but it is certainly the main one. The "better weather" and "more die-hard fans" and "more serious about football" lines are only very marginally influential.

If NLI profiting were available, fan bases in the northeast (like my PSU team) would gladly pay for autographs and such from their favorite players. Bring Mike Hull and Deion Barnes to a mall...and hundreds of PSU fans would pay $10 each to get them to sign some stuff. Long term, PSU players would start making the kind of money that SEC schools' players get for "free" through the bagman system. Now, a top Maryland recruit is enticed by Ole Miss with a few thousand dollars of cash and it doesn't look so good to him to spend his college career in Timbuktu...because he can go to a nearby program, get a great education, and make a few thousand dollars every year off of his NLI. The advantage of the SEC would be gone.

I don't know what would become of the "bagman" system if NLI became profitable. Would these secret boosters really want to keep giving money away, when at least other boosters can give money to these players FOR something, like memorabilia or photo ops or advertising for their businesses???

Big Ten fans (and Pac-12 fans and Bob Bowlsby, apparently) are ready for a level playing field in this sport again.

I was in a position to check into this stuff for 20 years plus in my younger days. The bag men exist just as much in the Big 10 as they do in the South, or East, or West. Get over it. They are all guilty. ESPN had the guts to do a special on Ohio State a few years ago and touched on the perks, but also on what amounted to the exploitation of willing coeds to provide favors to recruits. Your world view is so laced with envy that you don't see the hypocrisy in your own position. What I would love to see is a total clean up of the college sports scene. But to ask for that we have to first clean up the corruption in our government, at all levels, in our churches (all denominations), in our corporate business structure (where it is pervasive), and in our entertainment (where the corruption is glorified). What we see in the college world is just an extension of the corruption everywhere else. And that my friend is why it remains. If your whole house is dirty it is virtually impossible to keep one corner of it clean.

It's hard for PSU fans to conduct conversations in neutral forums like this...because as soon as we site our "clean program," everyone grabs a soapbox and says "But Sandusky! Sandusky! Cover up! Pedophiles!" But I hope you aren't so narrow-minded, JRSEC.

Paterno's program was clean from stuff like this. No sanctions in history (only we and Stanford could boast of that...now I guess it's just Stanford) We lost recruit after recruit to various schools (often Ohio State) because the lines were murkier at OSU than at PSU. Terrelle Pryor is the prime example. His family all wanted him at PSU...they knew what kind of influence PSU's culture could have on him. But Pryor got a car in HS (and cars in college) from OSU boosters...and it eventually caught up with him (and OSU got a slap on the wrist).

The whole Big Ten acknowledges OSU's "SEC-like" behavior. Is every starter on OSU's roster getting hundreds of dollars a month? No. Nor do I think every starter on Alabama's team is getting hundreds of dollars month. But this is happening at CERTAIN schools, and your carte blanche statement that "EVERYBODY DOES IT" is bogus. Completely bogus. It's a nice way to ignore inherent inequalities that go on in this sport. Call me jealous or "laced with envy" or whatever...but players at Cal and Vandy and Iowa State and NCSt. are not making the same kind of illegal paydays that most SEC schools and OSU and FSU are making.

ESPN will not expose the SEC because it is one of their biggest cash cows. Period. They did an expose on Ohio State, you say? Really? I'm sure that has NOTHING to do with the BTN and Delany's belligerence towards ESPN...

I wouldn't call you jealous or "laced with envy," but I would call you misinformed. In the last 20 years, only PSU and Northwestern haven't been cited for major violations among the 14 Big 10 schools, though Indiana's and Iowa's did not involve financial inducements, improper payments, unethical behavior or extra benefits. By comparison, in the last 20 years, Florida, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and A&M have no violations, though if you go back 21-22 years, you pick up the rest minus Florida. Plus Auburn's lone violation in 2004 was pretty much like Indiana's and Iowa's.

I do not believe that every school administration and coaching staff is guilty, however there are boosters around almost every program that are willing to skirt the rules in the pursuit of winning. I believe that a good deal of it goes on without the knowledge or approval of the school or coaches, but I am sure that some proceed with a nod and a wink.

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that the SEC is the Great Satan while other programs, particularly those in the Big 10, are saintly, but it just ain't so. Improper judgments can cloud perceptions. Sort of the way you talk of southerners as "backwoods people." I have lived all over the country and there are fine and highly intelligent people in all parts of the country. Some of the most backwoods people I have encountered was when I lived in northern Pennsylvania, though many were very intelligent and all were good folks. I would caution against generalizations based on prejudice.

I appreciate your response, zombie. I'm from Pennsyltucky originally, so I'm not throwing stones. :) But I'm also a little touchy about talking about "football culture" since ours at PSU was attacked viciously, while we had the best graduation rate for African-American athletes for decades. Mark Emmert, our chief accuser, was president at LSU, whose A-A grad rate was about 30%. Culture problem?

Your thoughts on this article, zombie? http://www.sbnation.com/college-football...-interview I'm not calling the SEC "Satan"...but I do get tired of the SEC's "dominance" claim when I think the playing field is NOT level right now.