(05-26-2016 10:35 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(05-26-2016 09:51 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Terry (post #21), they aren't working for the school. Clearly, as they aren't employed.

Nor would students who play pick-up basketball, and the school decided to build stands around the court and charge people to watch.

Playing a game does not allow you to artificially deem the players as employees.


There are plenty of students who also do actual jobs for the school, and get paid as employees. Student-athletes aren't those.



Frank (post #25),

If you actually believe in a "pure" free market, that means you're an anarcho-capitalist. There can not, by definition, be a free market so long as government exists to enforce laws, regulations, etc.

So, make the players employees of the school and pay them. Issue solved.

Exactly. The only reason why athletes aren't defined as employees is because the universities are refusing to define them as such. There isn't some legal definition that states that athletes can't be defined as employees while cafeteria food services workers can be defined as employees - it's something that is completely and unilaterally made up by the universities themselves. That's why there's court scrutiny on this issue in the first place - universities can claim that athletes aren't employees all that they want, but if they're requiring athletes to do things (such as attend practices and workouts at specific times) in order to retain benefits (such as their scholarships) or suffer consequences because they don't do those things (such as losing their scholarships), then it starts looking like a deemed employment relationship from a legal perspective regardless of how universities want to classify them. It's the old "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it's a duck" scenario when it comes to whether there's an employment relationship from a legal standpoint.

Ultimately, the choice for colleges in the long-term is to figure out a way to compensate their athletes or else the courts are going to eventually force a standard upon them. It's inevitable.

Frank & Terry,

You just keep repeating (over and over...) that you think players should be employees. That's your opinion. It's not an invalid or illogical opinion. But the people in power disagree with your opinion, and their opinion is just as valid and logical. I happen to agree with them.

So put forth an actual argument, to convince us that your opinion is right. Thus far, you haven't put forth an argument. You just keep saying that they should be.



BTW, Frank ... didn't the state of Ohio pass a law saying college-athletes can't be employees? I seem to recall something like that, back in the wake of the Northwestern player's union effort and vote. So actually, yes, there is a legal definition, in that case.

(05-26-2016 10:35 AM)TerryD Wrote:  So, make the players employees of the school and pay them. Issue solved.

Schools could pay players but I don't think many of the entrenched interests would like the results. Because once you can use money as an incentive then the NCAA dream of trying to achieve parity is blown out of the window.

Athletic Departments would run up against trying to keep pace and the costs associated with trying to maintain Title IX.

Title IX is solely concerned with equal opportunities to participate. Not about scholarships or paychecks.

But in fact ... that could be used as a solid legal argument against paying football players!

Watch this: "Your honor, if my client is forced to pay football players and men's basketball players, it will have no choice but to stop sponsoring all other varsity sports because of costs. This would unfairly eliminate opportunities for females on campus to participate in varsity athletics, which is against Title IX. Therefore, you cannot compel my clients to do this."


Boom. Done.

(05-26-2016 11:23 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Title IX is solely concerned with equal opportunities to participate. Not about scholarships or paychecks.

But in fact ... that could be used as a solid legal argument against paying football players!

Watch this: "Your honor, if my client is forced to pay football players and men's basketball players, it will have no choice but to stop sponsoring all other varsity sports because of costs. This would unfairly eliminate opportunities for females on campus to participate in varsity athletics, which is against Title IX. Therefore, you cannot compel my clients to do this."


Boom. Done.

But as you stated, creating those equal opportunities aren't cheap. While there are male sports that don't make any money either, if you go down the road of paying student athletes, I don't see how you could legally limit it to just the revenue generating parts of the athletic department.

Try reading the rest of the post.

They'd have to kill every other sport, to pay for it. That violates Title IX: can't do it.

(05-26-2016 11:40 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Try reading the rest of the post.

They'd have to kill every other sport, to pay for it. That violates Title IX: can't do it.

No, they would have to have crazy student fees or crave our other parts of the budgets. Or shut down the FB program.

(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.

van,

Fine then, every school whose football program met the minimum standard that requires football players to be paid would kill football.

It's either that or kill every other sport (except men's basketball, in some cases). Money doesn't grow on trees.

quo,

To add to what you're saying:

As I noted before, if all the top high school players got together and said "We refuse to submit ourselves to the defacto NFL development league, that doesn't pay us" then the NFL would have to listen.

But the players aren't doing that. They're happy to get free university education and free training/coaching, etc. for their chance at the NFL. The value of what a P5 football player receives these days is far, far, FAR more vast than the simple dollar amount of his scholarship.

(05-26-2016 11:19 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  

(05-26-2016 10:35 AM)TerryD Wrote:  So, make the players employees of the school and pay them. Issue solved.

Schools could pay players but I don't think many of the entrenched interests would like the results. Because once you can use money as an incentive then the NCAA dream of trying to achieve parity is blown out of the window.

Athletic Departments would run up against trying to keep pace and the costs associated with trying to maintain Title IX.

What parity is there now? I mean this may sound funny coming from an Alabama and Southern Cal fan. But how often is Colorado or Miss State winning national championships? How often is Iowa State winning national championships are actually recruiting top 25 recruiting classes?

If money were involved things would be no different at the top. Schools like Alabama, USC, UT, Oregon, etc would still be getting the same top 25 talent they get now. The only difference would be G5 teams would have a fair chance which is where the real issue is.

People don't want a system that permits someone like SMU from being able to compete with someone like Texas Tech.

Trojan,

So you'd have no problem at all if they said that players could be paid, but the total annual amount was capped at the dollar value of a full scholarship (including a nationally standardized FCOA)?

How about students have a choice to accept scholarship from school or refuse scholarship and pay their own way; but keep all of their earnings from endorsements, video games, etc.

If scholarships are so valuable let the schools keep them and the students keep their true earning power and pay their own full cost of attendance.