(09-13-2019 08:46 AM)Attackcoog Wrote: (09-12-2019 06:03 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (09-12-2019 04:04 PM)EigenEagle Wrote: (09-12-2019 03:50 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: Oh, I see. People that want to maximize their earnings on the free market or, in practical reality, simply want to earn some pocket change for college, are "spoiled brats".
Yes, some of them are sort of like brats. No one is forcing them to take a scholarship.
The NCAA rules about making money exist so you don't have athletes selling abstract crayon drawings to wealthy boosters for $5000 or working $100 an hour as an elevator operator in a one-story building. If you don't like that, don't take an athletic scholarship. It's really not that much different than people working on graduate assistantships agreeing to not have any other work.
I do sympathize that elite high school and college athletes don't have any way to make money until they're old enough for the draft but that is not the responsibility of the NCAA to create a minor league for a tiny percentage of student athletes. Anyone who doesn't like that, take it up with the NBA and NFL or for any other minor leagues that won't take guys right out of high school.
As I noted in my real life personal example, not all athletes receive scholarships (and in fact none of them receive athletic scholarships at the Division III level), yet they’re still subject to same compensation restrictions simply for being a student-athlete.
Regardless, we can go around in circles all day on this, but the people on this forum objecting to this California law and similar proposed laws are really and truly a tiny minority of society. There’s a ton of bipartisan political will behind this effort (unlike the direct payment of players by universities, which got intertwined with the more volatile involvement of labor unions). The NCAA needs to adjust or die - there’s no putting the proverbial genie back in the bottle at this point.
I think this is different simply because we have already seen numerous cheating scandals that indicate that alumni and boosters don’t operate in the same economic system as the Olympic model exists. The reality is this is an open avenue to pay players any amount for most anything under the guise of “name and likeness”. It’s worth noting that abuse of this system would look almost exactly the same as what was happening in the 1980’s at SMU. That SMU conduct resulted in the only death penalty ever levied against a D1 school. Seems fairly unlikely the NCAA will just opt to go along with an Olympic model that can be so easily abused—especially since the NCAA just achieved a hard won court victory that actually says their amateur model, with minor modifications, is legal and reasonable.
California can do what they like and the NCAA can’t prevent them from doing so. However, unlike the Oklahoma vs NCAA case, the NCAA has already prevailed in court defending the reasoning of the amateur model against the pay model. Given the NCAA’s recent court win, I don’t think the California schools are going to be able to blatantly break NCAA rules on pay for play and still compete for national championships. 
That court ruling was dealing with the employee vs. amateur status of student-athletes while playing their sport, though. This is very different - we're talking about individuals being able to capitalize on their likenesses with other enterprises that aren't under NCAA control. It's a totally different realm.
The main argument that I keep seeing against this law is essentially that boosters will abuse it. That is absolutely a valid concern. However, as I've stated earlier, that concern does not prevail over the personal and economic liberty of individual students under the law. The NCAA has a valid interest in ensuring with compliance with the Olympic model, but that shouldn't (and this California law is stating that it doesn't) mean an outright prohibition.
I REALLY think too many people are missing the winds of change here. There are too many old school college sports fans here that aren't looking at the big picture. This is NOT a California issue. This is becoming a bipartisan national issue and it's coming down the pike everywhere.
Maybe even more importantly, which I haven't really discussed up to this point, the third parties have a lot of money wrapped up with the NCAA, particularly the TV networks and corporate sponsors, are absolutely 100% *not* going to be fine with shutting out all of the schools from the largest and wealthiest state in the country for a single second. The peanut gallery on forums like this one can say, "The NCAA can just not let the California schools participate in championships! Ha!" However, do you think California-based Google, Intel and Uber, all of whom are top-level NCAA sponsors and get a disproportionate number of their employees from California universities, are going to accept that? Do you think that CBS, Turner and ESPN, who pay significant rights fees to carry NCAA championship programming, are fine with the state with the most number of TV viewers (and 2 of the top 10 local markets) to be cut off entirely?
It doesn't make sense economically and they're going to get a *ton* of political and public pressure to suspend their ties with the NCAA if the NCAA is dumb enough to actually carry through with not allowing California schools compete in their championships. The last thing Google, Coca-Cola, AT&T and other NCAA sponsors want to see are campus protests against their products everywhere because they're not supporting students' rights. (People on this forum may not care, but rest assured that those companies definitely care.) The NCAA can fight tooth and nail on this in the courts, but when TV networks and corporate sponsors start dropping you, that's when even the most stubborn organizations change.
The NCAA needs to adjust or die. This issue isn't getting reversed when other states and the federal government itself wants the same thing. California is just the start. Worrying about boosters from other schools does NOT trump basic liberty and economic rights of individuals. The NCAA has had decades to try to deal with this issue on their own, but they've done nothing, so now they're going to get a solution forced upon them. I have ZERO sympathy for them whatsoever.
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California challenging NCAA's amateurism rules
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