quo vadis
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RE: UCLA signs record breaking apparel deal...15 Years for $280 Million from UA
(05-26-2016 09:47 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (05-26-2016 09:10 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (05-25-2016 08:09 PM)Strut Wrote: Way past time to pay the players, it's now just a question of how much!
I can think of 280 million reasons why that probably makes some sense!
Disagree. College football fans support the uniform, not the "players". Sure, every once in a while a school has a true stand-out, a Manziel or a Jameis or a Clowney, who actually moves the needle, brings more fans into the stands and eyeballs to TV. So maybe in those cases, the player deserves a cut.
But at any given moment 99% of all football players - even at the Alabamas and Notre Dames and USCs- are just uniform-fillers. You could replace them with someone else and the fans would still show up, watch, etc.
The flaw in this argument (which I've seen before) is that the value of the uniform is still intrinsically tied to the talent in that uniform. They go hand in hand. Sure, the fans support the uniform, but the reason why the uniform has value is because it has a reputation/perception of having the best talent at that level wearing that uniform. That's why fans turn out for big-time P5 schools, don't turn out as much for G5 schools, and don't turn out at all at Division III schools. Having that talent is also why football and basketball make a ton of revenue at the college level, while a sport like baseball makes little to no revenue since the best talent at that level is disproportionately playing the minor leagues instead. While it's true that any single individual player on Alabama and Ohio State might not put spur a fan to watch a game, those fans are still paying money and watching games on TV with the expectation that the players overall are at a certain talent level (or else they wouldn't watch). Alabama and Ohio State can't just trot out Division III players and expect to maintain the same level of revenue, which means that they DO need top level talent (and in any other industry in America, you have to pay a premium for that top level talent).
Plus, why does this all magically change when you get to the pro sports level? You could argue the exact same thing about the NFL, MLB or NBA as you are saying about college sports. If those league platforms didn't exist with their TV contracts, exposure and preexisting fan bases, then the players wouldn't receive any attention, money or fame, too. So, by your logic, the 6th man bench player on the Grizzlies (someone that isn't a LeBron-type) wouldn't have any other option if the platform of the NBA didn't exist, which means that such player shouldn't be paid anything at all. Heck, let's apply this to any industry - unless you create your own company like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, you're basically namelessly interchangeable for any other person at the company that you work for, so you should be paid zero dollars. Should that really be the case?
The problem with that argument is that those players do get paid, so obviously the owners of the NBA/NFL/MLB do think the players add value, and since they have the greatest stake in that value, their views should prevail. Would NBA or MLB or NFL players play for "free", like their college brethren do? I don't think so, so there must be a fundamental difference between the two.
As one other poster noted, "anti-trust" laws are actually anti- free market. In a truly free market, everyone in the market can act as they wish, including acting in concert with each other: Employees can "collude" and form unions, managers can "collude" and form monopolistic trusts, etc. Freedom to collude is a fundamental aspect of a free market. Government intervening to prevent "collusion" is interference in the market.
In the case of college athletics, the universities have colluded to deny athletes salaries, via the NCAA "amateur" rules. There's nothing anti- free market about this. 18 year olds coming out of high school are free to refuse to play under those conditions, and market forces, namely, who is made better or worse off and the incentives that results from that, should determine which side gets their way.
The fact that a large majority of high school football and basketball athletes* do agree to play for no direct salary would seem to indicate that your statement about being more than uniform-fillers is not correct.
* Not all do, of course, e.g. Kobe, LeBron, and kids who go to play professionally overseas rather than play in college, and many top baseball talents go directly to professional via the minor leagues.
(This post was last modified: 05-26-2016 12:44 PM by quo vadis.)
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