If the payment of scholarship players is such a hot button, and so hard to set up on so many levels, what about this...

Have the university set up a system where the student gets a little extra money to spend via a loan system from the university. Give them a semester max, say $500. Once the kid leaves school, and whether he graduates or not, he repays the loan back to the university. That works out to $8000-$10,000 over the four or five college years. If the student never uses it, fine. This is not "paying" players", and takes away their excuses for looking elsewhere. Thoughts?

Loans are a dangerous road to go down. The individuals that take the loans out and do NOT go pro are at serious risk for default. I don't think we want to see what that actually turns into.

The other thing that might happen is that boosters could start co-signing the collegiate loans with the players and paying them off early. This effectively makes such loans become "no-strings attached cash payments" - and that's a serious no-no.

You could classify varsity sports as a work-study job and pay athletes the same hourly rate as other work-study jobs. If you pay them for 20 hours a week at $10/hour, for an athlete whose sport is about a four-month season, it works out to about $4,000 a year, which is what Spurrier thinks players should be paid.

(09-23-2013 12:58 PM)Wedge Wrote:  You could classify varsity sports as a work-study job and pay athletes the same hourly rate as other work-study jobs. If you pay them for 20 hours a week at $10/hour, for an athlete whose sport is about a four-month season, it works out to about $4,000 a year, which is what Spurrier thinks players should be paid.

Something like this is fine. It won't stop boosters - programs from
offering the blue chip players $100,000 or in the case of Seals-Jones
$600,000.

(09-23-2013 02:04 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  

(09-23-2013 12:58 PM)Wedge Wrote:  You could classify varsity sports as a work-study job and pay athletes the same hourly rate as other work-study jobs. If you pay them for 20 hours a week at $10/hour, for an athlete whose sport is about a four-month season, it works out to about $4,000 a year, which is what Spurrier thinks players should be paid.

Something like this is fine. It won't stop boosters - programs from
offering the blue chip players $100,000 or in the case of Seals-Jones
$600,000.

I didn't say it would stop kids from cheating, but it would take away their excuses for not having money to take a girl to the movies... It also might just dampen down the temptation for the majority. Some of these kids really do come to college with one pair of jeans and good intentions.