(05-20-2015 11:53 AM)Attackcoog Wrote: (05-20-2015 11:33 AM)TerryD Wrote: (05-20-2015 11:26 AM)Wedge Wrote: (05-20-2015 11:02 AM)TerryD Wrote: (05-20-2015 10:53 AM)Wedge Wrote: It does sound like a bluff when you consider that Notre Dame is paying Brian Kelly $4 million/year, one of 63 teams paying their head football coaches at least $2 million/year per that link. Given what coordinators and other top assistants make at the biggest programs, ND is likely paying out at least $2 million/year more for the combined salaries of Kelly's assistants. If college football players now on scholarship were paid an average of, say, $25,000 a year, the combined pay for 85 football players would still only be $2.125 million. The notion that Notre Dame can't afford that is ludicrous. It's also ludicrous that "principle" somehow would keep them from paying those relatively low wages to athletes who generate 10 to 50 times that much in revenue for the university.
Why? If they decide that they want to switch to a true student-athlete model (not the fiction we have now), then why is it "ludicrous"?
Don't they get to decide what model they follow? I would suspect that the salaries for coaches would fall greatly under this model.
Look, this all might be a bluff. I thought so originally. I am not so sure now. Maybe so. But, if not, then ND gets to decide its athletic model, even at the cost of revenues and prestige.
Sure, they get to decide for themselves. But I think they are bluffing. I don't believe that big-name programs like Notre Dame are going to walk away from the revenue, publicity, and goodwill amongst alumni and fans that they would lose by deciding to effectively play Division III athletics.
The bluff might be a good tactic. If it scares judges and other politicians into caving in and letting these schools continue with exactly the athletic model they have now, then it will turn out to be an excellent tactic (for the schools, not the athletes).
It may be bluff. It may not. I don't know.
People always make the mistake in thinking that ND thinks like other schools do, that is all.
It may not be a mistake. If people view Notre Dame and perhaps the Big-10 and Pac-12 as "real" college football---and the rest as "semi-pro football"---it could work out just fine for them.
What I meant was, that fans of other schools make the mistake of thinking that ND decides things just like other schools would.
That is not always the case. For instance, many thought that with the BTN, it was a foregone conclusion that ND would end up in the Big Ten.
The conventional wisdom in 2010 was that these things were too appealing for ND to say no:
---Most TV money;
---Regional and historic rivalries
---Less travel costs
---Geographic sense
--Exposure for other sports on BTN
ND said no.
This model talk is going on at ND, but not in a vacuum. It is part of ND figuring out how it wants its athletes to be in the current environment.
For instance, there was an article about ND in SI:
"Notre Dame has long prided itself on executing a tricky balancing act: running a successful athletic department within an elite academic institution. In 2014 the university’s graduation success rate ranked fourth among FBS programs, while the entire athletic department ranked No. 1. But Notre Dame has endured three major academic scandals in a two-year span. In the spring of 2013 quarterback Everett Golson, who led the Irish to an undefeated 2012 regular season, was dismissed for the upcoming season for something he termed “poor judgment” on a test. That winter point guard Jerian Grant left the men’s basketball team for a semester for what he called an “academic mistake.”
The school charged Russell and his four teammates with receiving illicit academic help from a former student trainer. Russell admits to getting “lazy” and “taking the easy way out,” but beyond that only says, “I didn’t cheat on a test. I didn’t pay people to do my homework.”
Russell’s involvement means that three prominent athletes on Notre Dame’s campus have been suspended over academics in the past two years. “When we recruit student-athletes, we have an obligation to provide them with the resources necessary,” Kelly says. “And if we don’t, then we have fallen short. And I think that in these instances, there’s culpability for everyone.”
Kelly wants the school to consider rethinking its approach. He says that, on average, his incoming freshman football class has a 2.8 GPA and a 24 on the ACT, while the median score for the rest of Notre Dame’s freshman class is 33. (The school does not track average GPA.) None of his newest recruits could have been admitted to the school on academic merit alone. Why then, he wonders, are most players on a path to graduate in 3 1⁄2 years—thanks to summer school requirements—when most Notre Dame students do so in four?
There’s a “church and state” separation between athletics and academics, but Kelly has reached out to athletic director Jack Swarbrick and president the Rev. John I. Jenkins about potential changes. He says “transformative conversations” are occurring on the academic side. “Are there other ways to do it?” Kelly asks. “Can we cut back on credit hours? Instead of taking 15 [the current practice to start a semester], can we take 12 and make it up in the summer? Are there other course offerings that could come about and be offered in lieu of a specific class? Those are conversations that had never taken place.”
Swarbrick is on board—to an extent. He acknowledges that the “gap issue” is more significant than when he attended Notre Dame in the mid-1970s,
but he says it’s the “wrong narrative” to suggest that the recent high-profile suspensions are due to this gap. “These aren’t the only kids that had honor code violations at Notre Dame,” he says. “You’ll never know about the other ones. They tell their roommate they got mono, and they go home.”
In the spring of 2014, Swarbrick co-chaired a 17-member task force created to examine effective ways to support “at-risk student-athletes.” The takeaways proved more evolutionary than revolutionary, focusing on intensive individualized attention, a stronger summer bridge program, expansion of a writing and rhetoric tutorial, and faculty mentors. Faculty athletic representative Patricia Bellia, a law professor who was the task force’s other chair, says the process made the school realize it needs to take a “case management” approach to each student, with information pooled from trainers, assistant coaches, nutritionists and anyone close to them. “We’ve determined they can succeed [by admitting them],” she said. “How can we make that happen on an individual level? What kind of support and resources does that individual need?”
As the five players suspended last fall waited for the investigation and appeal to end, there was speculation that Kelly was so frustrated, he would leave for the NFL. Kelly claims the opposite, saying he and Swarbrick grew closer sorting through the suspensions. “We’ve done so many things here to put Notre Dame back in a position to compete nationally, and I kind of look at this as that last piece in making sure we’re taking care of our student-athletes,” he says. “It strengthened my resolve in, We’re going to get this right.”
http://www.si.com/college-football/2015/...pe=default
How many schools would have really suspended its starting QB and its All American point guard for an in house, academic issue?
I think not many.
Again, I think that ND operates and thinks internally in a somewhat different manner than a lot of other places.
ND has a history with this.
It has de-emphaized football before in favor of academics. That pendulum swings back and forth over time.
It might be swinging again, I don't know.
That is neither good nor bad, it just is.
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AD: If athletes are considered employees, Notre Dame will seek new model
