(09-30-2019 05:42 PM)solohawks Wrote:  

(09-30-2019 05:37 PM)dbackjon Wrote:  

(09-30-2019 05:35 PM)solohawks Wrote:  There is big difference between paying a player versus allowing him/her to make money off their image. Everyone else is making money of the athletes likeness except the athlete.

If Bubba's Buicks in Tuscaloosa wants to pay the Alabama football team to do am autograph signing why should anyone care

And the only real regulation should be going rate for autograph signings.

Yep and the athletes should have to pay taxes on all their earnings

Oh yes - of course they should be paying taxes on it (at least to the extent their income is beyond the point where they need to owe taxes under the law). It’s earned income.

For those that are concerned about rampant abuse by the Bubba’s Buick dealers of the world, note that the fact that taxes are involved act as a natural check and balance on above-free market value transactions, too. If Bubba’s Buick dealership pays $500,000 for a 1-hour autograph session for an obscure offensive lineman and then writes that off as a business expense on its tax return, that’s likely going to get a ton of scrutiny from the IRS. Heck, even if the dealer *doesn’t* write that off on its tax return, it would be scrutinized by the IRS, too, since that starts looking like a gift in excess of the $15,000 tax-free limit and there needs to be taxes assessed on that amount. Even the biggest boosters that have their own businesses can’t shift irrational amounts of that nature through those *businesses* with that type of tax scrutiny. (Whether those boosters choose to do it under the table is a different matter, but that situation is no different than what occurs today and what has occurred for generations.)

Free markets and democracies are inherently messy, but I believe that those are still the best economic and political systems that we have. Totalitarianism and redistributive socialism are cleanly run by comparison with fixed and predictable outcomes, but it comes at the cost of economic and political freedom. The NCAA shouldn’t have the right to suppress a fundamental liberty interest (the right to one’s own likeness) and economic freedom (compensation in accordance with the free market) simply because someone is an athlete (and isn’t applied to any other student, even those on scholarship, in any other field) or they’re worried about overzealous boosters. The NCAA, to the extent that it has any purpose at all, should be figuring out how to deal with such freedom as opposed to closing it off entirely. As I’ve said elsewhere, the NCAA has stuck its head in the sand for far too long and refused to find a solution (outside of just an outright ban that likely violates antitrust laws), so it looks like a solution is finally going to be forced on them.