quo vadis
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RE: 'A nightmare for college athletics'
(02-13-2020 06:05 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (02-13-2020 04:05 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (02-13-2020 12:04 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: (02-13-2020 11:47 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (02-12-2020 10:20 PM)quo vadis Wrote: That's a good point. What the NCAA and Coog seem to want is a very strange kind of anti-trust exemption, allowing one party to unilaterally set a cap.
Basically, it would be as if the NBA or NFL could unilaterally impose a salary cap on both coaches and players, without having to negotiate it with the union, and could impose it on them even if there was no union.
That would be a pretty remarkable anti-trust exemption that I'm not sure there is any precedent for?
For example, labor unions themselves are an example of an anti-trust exemption. Originally, labor unions were regarded as violating anti-trust laws, because they were viewed as collusion among workers to force higher wages on employers - price fixing and restraint of trade by the workers. So congress passed laws that basically said labor unions were exempt from anti-trust laws.
But, that exemption doesn't empower unions to unilaterally impose wages and benefits on employers, it only gives them the right to bargain for them, with no guarantees that they will get what they want.
What Coog and the NCAA seem to want is for colleges to not only be allowed to collude but also unilaterally impose their caps on coaches and players without having to bargain. That would be an amazingly powerful exemption.
Excellent points made here.
An antitrust exemption for the NCAA on their side would mean that student-athletes would need the right to collectively bargain on the other side... which inherently means that student-athletes *have* to be considered paid employees. The NCAA can't have their proverbial cake and eat it, too.
We're not a very representative slice of society here. Most of us here (including me) often defend the decisions and revenue seeking objectives of schools and conferences a fair amount. As a result, we often find ways to justify their actions in our own minds if they benefit our favorite school(s) even if we would be appalled if we applied the economic system of college sports to any other industry in America.
I don't believe that this is the case for most of the "real world." The students are *absolutely* winning the narrative on this issue and, while people might like watching college sports on television, they generally don't like the NCAA as an institution at all. We're way past the point of debating whether student-athletes should be compensated as an overarching issue: that debate is OVER. The public supports the players MUCH more than they support the schools and the NCAA on this matter. The only realistic outcome here is that the NCAA is going to have much LESS power going forward. There's just no way that the federal government is going to actually hand the NCAA more power with some type of absolute trump card like an antitrust exemption. It doesn't make sense politically and it frankly doesn't make sense economically (as you can't grant an antitrust exemption to the NCAA unless you also grant the student-athletes the right to collectively bargain as employees, which the NCAA certainly wouldn't want to occur).
Im not sure Im following. I think Ive been clear in saying the NCAA would walk away with much LESS power if they were granted an anti-trust exemption. Any anti-trust exemption would have to be part of an agreement that allows the NCAA to be regulated and overseen by the Federal government. In other words, just as a utility might be granted a monopoly by a jurisdiction---that jurisdiction only grants that right in exchange for the right of the jurisdiction to exercise complete regulatory control over that monopoly (to the point that any rate hikes must be approved by the government). That's the sort of model Im suggesting---where some sort of revenue sharing caps that allow the sport to function without being a drain on public taxpayers. In such a model coaches and players can share in the revenue while preserving the vast majority of scholarship opportunities currently available to athletes (including title 9 opportunities). If you can create that kind of model without an anti-trust exemption---then great. Im just not sure that it could be done without granting an actual anti-trust exemption.
So this is about protecting taxpayers? Giving the NCAA an anti-trust exemption and creating a Federal Bureau of Intercollegiate Athletics to monitor them?
In Louisiana, the athletic budgets of all the FBS and FCS schools (excluding LSU, because their athletics isn't paid for through the university budget) is around $160 million.
That's out of a state budget of around $32 Billion. Even if we assume athletics is bringing in zero revenue, which it isn't of course, that's about 4/10 of 1 percent of the state budget. And of that $160 million, not all of it is being spent on coaching salaries. For example, in 2018, at SLU, an FCS school, their athletic budget was $14m and of that, $3m was coaching salaries. At ULL, an FBS school, the budget was $33m, of which $7m was for coaching salaries. All coaches across all sports.
And Louisiana is a poor state that is crazy about football so probably spends more on athletics per capita than most other states. This is probably one of the *worst* examples of taxpayers being on the hook nationally.
So the Feds are supposed to get involved over that trivial sum of money?
When taxpayers themselves have the power, via their legislators, to cut the athletic budget of any state schools they want to?
I can't wrap my mind around this.
No. Its about finding a reasonable solution that works for everyone. As for the Feds--they already are involved as the proposed legislation and hearings indicate. Everyone has reached the conclusion that there is an issue that deserves their time---why not work spend the time to fashion a long lasting solution rather than a bandage?
I just explained how coaching expenses can't seriously be regarded as any kind of societal problem, heck even entire athletic budgets, so how will paying players impact a state budget? The states are totally in control of the budgets for their schools, and as we've discussed, if a state finds paying players to be unaffordable they just won't pay or not pay very much and attract kids willing to play for that amount. Problem solved.
The only ones who think this is a problem requiring a federal solution are the honchos at the NCAA and conferences, who say they don't want players to get paid because they don't think it is "amateurism", an idea the the Olympics abandoned 25 years ago, and "competitive balance" when of course there is and never has been any such thing.
Of course the real issue is if the players get a cut there might be less for these clowns. The NCAA loves keeping that $1 Billion hoops check all to itself and paying for its big bureaucracy of administrators. And, pay for play could also mean there could be a loss of control over the players, because they will no longer be totally at the mercy of the schools as they are now, just as many college coaches who try the NFL or NBA find out that they can't boss around and lord over those players the way they can college kids.
It's a big Nothingburger promoted by the NCAA and other big athletic honchos to protect their power and money. Zero need for federal involvement.
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2020 09:59 AM by quo vadis.)
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