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Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #21
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 03:48 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

“Dropping down” to a lower level or “giving up” highest level athletics is a misleading term in my opinion.

Many schools including UVa will continue the current model while trying to improve it by adopting the NIL and pay for play as necessary.

But what if the SEC schools decide to professionalize their football programs by 1) exiting the NCAA, 2) paying the players directly without a cap, and 3) requiring the players of no school activities? I guess the SEC programs will have huge advantages over collegiate schools in terms of recruiting. Almost all blue chip recruits would take the SEC programs. Why won’t they? Much more money and no school work. And if some players desire the college education, the SEC teams will be able to offer the free education as a fringe benefit.

I don’t know about VT but I don’t see UVa or Duke would follow that professionalization. So it’s not like UVa is dropping down or giving up. It’s more like UVa is being left out as certain schools are “breaking away”.

This is the only scenario where I see a real “breakaway” can actually happen.

What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).
05-11-2022 04:19 PM
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #22
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 04:17 PM)DFW HOYA Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:14 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  To the extent that they're deemed to be employees under applicable law, yes, absolutely. That's the cost of doing business. Believe me - I have no sympathy for any P5 school on that particular issue with how much they're taking in on football and basketball (along with their creative accounting to attempt to show that they're somehow not making money on those sports). They can pay all of their athletes (whether revenue or non-revenue) a flat rate for hours spent on their respective sports while third parties can step in and pay outsized NIL amounts to the star players in football and basketball (or special cases like Suni Lee at Auburn).

What about swimming, lacrosse, track, etc.? Are they more or less worthy simply because their sports don't make money? Do we expect Davidson College (where one in four students play intercollegiate sports) to all be paid to do so?

Universities should eliminate any mandatory time commitments for sports with the understanding that they are under no obligation to participate; and with that, no additional compensation should be expected.

I'm not understanding the complexity.

What I believe will occur is that every school pays ALL of their athletes a certain hourly rate. Maybe it's minimum wage or $20 per hour or whatever they want to set it at. In any event, it's equal whether you're a football player or swimmer. This eliminates Title VII and/or Title IX issues and having to make any type of distinction between revenue or non-revenue athletes. They're all treated the same. For all of the whining that you're hearing from colleges and fans about this, it would be complete chump change for any school playing in the P5. Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business. I have little sympathy for the concern that non-revenue athletes are getting "overpaid" or would negatively impact schools when there's so much money funneled to coaches and administrators even at non-P5 schools. Once again, this is simply the cost of doing business if you want to participate in big-time sports just as schools have to pay coaches, professors, administrators, etc.

Meanwhile, athletes can get NIL compensation at full market rates, which is where star players in football, basketball and other sports can receive variable compensation.
05-11-2022 04:29 PM
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Wahoowa84 Offline
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Post: #23
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 03:48 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

“Dropping down” to a lower level or “giving up” highest level athletics is a misleading term in my opinion.

Many schools including UVa will continue the current model while trying to improve it by adopting the NIL and pay for play as necessary.

But what if the SEC schools decide to professionalize their football programs by 1) exiting the NCAA, 2) paying the players directly without a cap, and 3) requiring the players of no school activities? I guess the SEC programs will have huge advantages over collegiate schools in terms of recruiting. Almost all blue chip recruits would take the SEC programs. Why won’t they? Much more money and no school work. And if some players desire the college education, the SEC teams will be able to offer the free education as a fringe benefit.

I don’t know about VT but I don’t see UVa or Duke would follow that professionalization. So it’s not like UVa is dropping down or giving up. It’s more like UVa is being left out as certain schools are “breaking away”.

This is the only scenario where I see a real “breakaway” can actually happen.

I’m skeptical that the University of Alabama or the SEC wants this form of “breakaway”. I have a niece attending the University of Alabama, although she was born and raised in Virginia. Disassociating football from the University of Alabama, kills one of the best branding/marketing tools ever created. Without its football brand differentiator, Alabama will be competing against a whole bunch of George Masons and Mercers for students…or it will have to invent an academic discipline that only exists in Tuscaloosa.

Why do you have to eliminate academic activities? Maybe you can just pay student-athletes, you can still reform the NCAA. There are synergies in the student-athlete model that beat the minor leagues. Even in non revenue sports like baseball, lots of kids still choose the university route. Now that SCOTUS is allowing NIL, universities will have even bigger advantages over minor leagues. If pay-for-play occurs, a minor league becomes less enticing to young adults.
(This post was last modified: 05-11-2022 05:12 PM by Wahoowa84.)
05-11-2022 04:56 PM
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georgia_tech_swagger Offline
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Post: #24
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
Georgia Tech would not be for this. Saying that programs like Stanford and Notre Dame and Northwestern and North Carolina and Duke would be "left behind" would make the decision a lot easier. I'm A OK competing for Nattys against the Academic P5.
05-11-2022 05:07 PM
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random asian guy Offline
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Post: #25
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 04:56 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 03:48 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

“Dropping down” to a lower level or “giving up” highest level athletics is a misleading term in my opinion.

Many schools including UVa will continue the current model while trying to improve it by adopting the NIL and pay for play as necessary.

But what if the SEC schools decide to professionalize their football programs by 1) exiting the NCAA, 2) paying the players directly without a cap, and 3) requiring the players of no school activities? I guess the SEC programs will have huge advantages over collegiate schools in terms of recruiting. Almost all blue chip recruits would take the SEC programs. Why won’t they? Much more money and no school work. And if some players desire the college education, the SEC teams will be able to offer the free education as a fringe benefit.

I don’t know about VT but I don’t see UVa or Duke would follow that professionalization. So it’s not like UVa is dropping down or giving up. It’s more like UVa is being left out as certain schools are “breaking away”.

This is the only scenario where I see a real “breakaway” can actually happen.

I’m skeptical that the University of Alabama or the SEC wants this form of “breakaway”. I have a niece attending the University of Alabama, although she was born and raised in Virginia. Disassociating football from the University of Alabama, kills one of the best branding/marketing tools ever created. Without its football brand differentiator, Alabama will be competing against a whole bunch of George Masons and Mercers for students…or it will have to invent an academic discipline that only exists in Tuscaloosa.

Why do you have to eliminate academic activities? Maybe you can just pay student-athletes, you can still reform the NCAA. There are synergies in the student-athlete model that beat the minor leagues. Even in non revenue sports like baseball, lots of kids still choose the university route. Now that SCOTUS is allowing NIL, universities will have even bigger advantages over minor leagues. If pay-for-play occurs, a minor league becomes less enticing to young adults.

I am not sure why you think the professionalizaion would disassociate the football from University of Alabama.

There would be still University of Alabama football team. The kids would still practice at the same fitness facility and play at the same staidum. But these kids are not the students and will not take classes and will get paid as professional players. As a professional team Alabama team will crush all of the non pro teams really easily (well maybe no change here too).

At some point (or from the get go), these pro teams wouldn’t play any non pro teams and the separation would be complete.

And why do you have to force academic activities on these young kids? I suspect a lot of blue chip recruits would rather focus on football.

I am not saying this will definitely happen. But this is a certainly feasible breakaway scenario in my opinion.
05-11-2022 06:07 PM
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random asian guy Offline
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Post: #26
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 03:48 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

“Dropping down” to a lower level or “giving up” highest level athletics is a misleading term in my opinion.

Many schools including UVa will continue the current model while trying to improve it by adopting the NIL and pay for play as necessary.

But what if the SEC schools decide to professionalize their football programs by 1) exiting the NCAA, 2) paying the players directly without a cap, and 3) requiring the players of no school activities? I guess the SEC programs will have huge advantages over collegiate schools in terms of recruiting. Almost all blue chip recruits would take the SEC programs. Why won’t they? Much more money and no school work. And if some players desire the college education, the SEC teams will be able to offer the free education as a fringe benefit.

I don’t know about VT but I don’t see UVa or Duke would follow that professionalization. So it’s not like UVa is dropping down or giving up. It’s more like UVa is being left out as certain schools are “breaking away”.

This is the only scenario where I see a real “breakaway” can actually happen.

What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Yes they are not college sports teams but professional teams. And that’s the point. Look at the thread title.

I don’t know how many fans will care about whether the players are actually students or not. We certainly don’t care much about their admission stats or GPA.

There are many college sports fans who actually didn’t go to particular colleges that they root for. If my understanding is correct, there are many of these fans in South. For them, University of Alabama, LSU, or WVU are not just schools, they are the teams that represent their states. In some sense, that’s similar to pro teams like NFL. If this NFL lite actually happens, the SEC will lead.
05-11-2022 06:18 PM
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ken d Offline
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Post: #27
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 04:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business.

Out of curiosity, I looked up info about Davidson's reported cost of attendance and number of athletes. It was eye-opening for me in many ways.

The average Davidson undergrad (including athletes) receives about $54K a year in grants and scholarships, lowering their cost of attendance to about $19K per year (tuition is $55K a year). At $20 an hour for all students participating on athletic teams (including student managers, band members, cheerleaders, etc.), that would cost the school about $7K per student (not just per athlete) per year. The athletes wouldn't net the roughly $10K a year they would earn, as this would increase their household income and reduce their financial aid.

The athletic department would run a deficit of about $10 million a year, with $23 million expenses against $13 million in revenue. That "cost of doing business" may be enough to put them out of the athletics business.

No doubt for a school like Alabama an extra $10 million in wages plus the anticipated reduction in donations to the athletic department due to NIL payments made by former donors is easily absorbed. That's true for many P5 schools and maybe a few G5 schools as well. But for most schools, somebody -- whether it's students or taxpayers -- will have to pay more than they do now. That's the cost of entertainment, which is the business college sports are in.
05-11-2022 07:50 PM
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SoCalBobcat78 Offline
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Post: #28
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 06:18 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Yes they are not college sports teams but professional teams. And that’s the point. Look at the thread title.

I don’t know how many fans will care about whether the players are actually students or not. We certainly don’t care much about their admission stats or GPA.

There are many college sports fans who actually didn’t go to particular colleges that they root for. If my understanding is correct, there are many of these fans in South. For them, University of Alabama, LSU, or WVU are not just schools, they are the teams that represent their states. In some sense, that’s similar to pro teams like NFL. If this NFL lite actually happens, the SEC will lead.

Who wants this? The NFL does not want it. The Alumni is not going to like it. Most of the players want and need the degree. If the fans want to watch professional football, they can watch the NFL. I don't see the attraction. I don't see the point.
05-11-2022 08:58 PM
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #29
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 07:50 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business.

Out of curiosity, I looked up info about Davidson's reported cost of attendance and number of athletes. It was eye-opening for me in many ways.

The average Davidson undergrad (including athletes) receives about $54K a year in grants and scholarships, lowering their cost of attendance to about $19K per year (tuition is $55K a year). At $20 an hour for all students participating on athletic teams (including student managers, band members, cheerleaders, etc.), that would cost the school about $7K per student (not just per athlete) per year. The athletes wouldn't net the roughly $10K a year they would earn, as this would increase their household income and reduce their financial aid.

The athletic department would run a deficit of about $10 million a year, with $23 million expenses against $13 million in revenue. That "cost of doing business" may be enough to put them out of the athletics business.

No doubt for a school like Alabama an extra $10 million in wages plus the anticipated reduction in donations to the athletic department due to NIL payments made by former donors is easily absorbed. That's true for many P5 schools and maybe a few G5 schools as well. But for most schools, somebody -- whether it's students or taxpayers -- will have to pay more than they do now. That's the cost of entertainment, which is the business college sports are in.

I don’t think that it would be correct to start assuming band members, cheerleaders and other non-athletes would start getting paid as employees. They aren’t the ones where schools are legally in danger of having them being deemed as employees because the control over the schedules of athletes and the negative repercussions if they don’t fulfill their athletic obligations are on a completely different level that’s employee-like in a way that isn’t the case for other activities. Even if those activities take a lot of time (and I know all about it since I’m married to a Marching Illini alum), they don’t hand over their schedules to coaches/directors or lose scholarships if they leave the group.

In any event, Davidson has 547 student-athletes. If they were paid $7000 per year, that would be $3,829,000 total. That’s not chump change, but it’s also not some type of outlandish figure for a high major basketball conference member like Davidson. I don’t find that to be a cost prohibitive amount that would make me think any critical mass of Division I schools are going to suddenly downgrade their sports programs.

That figure is honestly a speed bump for a P5 or even Big East school. Even a larger athletic department would be in the $5 million per year range for total direct pay-for-play for athletes, which certainly wouldn’t be an amount that would make schools like ND and Stanford (or even Wake Forest) to start shuddering about student-athlete payments. Heck - lots of schools are paying more than that amount to *fired* coaches to *not* coach, much less the people that are still their employees.

The potential amounts involved for direct student payments from schools are total red herrings. The sanctimonious people like Jack Swarbrick are still trying to prey on the minority of sports fans that still have a warped view that these athletes are still amateurs. Once everyone gets all of that sanctimonious crap out of their systems, they’ll sober up and realize that paying all of their athletes would effectively be the same cost as a few assistant coaches or a month of having Nick Saban on the sidelines (in which case it would be asinine that anyone at the top level of college sports would unilaterally disengage).
05-11-2022 11:16 PM
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DawgNBama Offline
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Post: #30
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-10-2022 03:13 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 12:33 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  According to Forde, the examples of the schools that will not professionalize include:

ND, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, USC, UCLA, Cal, Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Michigan.

I wouldn't put Michigan in that group.

Purdue, Northwestern, and Wisconsin have long been considered to be on the same page as Notre Dame on this issue.

From what I understand, there's an unofficial voting block of Purdue, Wisconsin, Northwester, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota that guarantees that those 6 will be on the same side of this issue. Nebraska & Ohio State will oppose them, probably joined by Iowa & Penn State.

So in the Big Ten, Michigan & Michigan State (or maybe Rutgers & Maryland?) will cast the deciding votes.


I suspect you'll see most of the voting on this align along the same axis as shutting down the FBS season in summer 2020. Except with Notre Dame on the side of the Big Ten & Pac this time.

Why is Wisconsin, with a football stadium roughly the same size as South Carolina's, in a voting block with Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, etc., who all have stadium sizes the equivalent of ACC & PAC12 teams?? And not with Ohio State, Michigan, & Penn State who have SEC style capacity stadiums???? I don't get that. 01-wingedeagle
05-12-2022 12:17 AM
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TerryD Offline
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Post: #31
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 11:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 07:50 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business.

Out of curiosity, I looked up info about Davidson's reported cost of attendance and number of athletes. It was eye-opening for me in many ways.

The average Davidson undergrad (including athletes) receives about $54K a year in grants and scholarships, lowering their cost of attendance to about $19K per year (tuition is $55K a year). At $20 an hour for all students participating on athletic teams (including student managers, band members, cheerleaders, etc.), that would cost the school about $7K per student (not just per athlete) per year. The athletes wouldn't net the roughly $10K a year they would earn, as this would increase their household income and reduce their financial aid.

The athletic department would run a deficit of about $10 million a year, with $23 million expenses against $13 million in revenue. That "cost of doing business" may be enough to put them out of the athletics business.

No doubt for a school like Alabama an extra $10 million in wages plus the anticipated reduction in donations to the athletic department due to NIL payments made by former donors is easily absorbed. That's true for many P5 schools and maybe a few G5 schools as well. But for most schools, somebody -- whether it's students or taxpayers -- will have to pay more than they do now. That's the cost of entertainment, which is the business college sports are in.

I don’t think that it would be correct to start assuming band members, cheerleaders and other non-athletes would start getting paid as employees. They aren’t the ones where schools are legally in danger of having them being deemed as employees because the control over the schedules of athletes and the negative repercussions if they don’t fulfill their athletic obligations are on a completely different level that’s employee-like in a way that isn’t the case for other activities. Even if those activities take a lot of time (and I know all about it since I’m married to a Marching Illini alum), they don’t hand over their schedules to coaches/directors or lose scholarships if they leave the group.

In any event, Davidson has 547 student-athletes. If they were paid $7000 per year, that would be $3,829,000 total. That’s not chump change, but it’s also not some type of outlandish figure for a high major basketball conference member like Davidson. I don’t find that to be a cost prohibitive amount that would make me think any critical mass of Division I schools are going to suddenly downgrade their sports programs.

That figure is honestly a speed bump for a P5 or even Big East school. Even a larger athletic department would be in the $5 million per year range for total direct pay-for-play for athletes, which certainly wouldn’t be an amount that would make schools like ND and Stanford (or even Wake Forest) to start shuddering about student-athlete payments. Heck - lots of schools are paying more than that amount to *fired* coaches to *not* coach, much less the people that are still their employees.

The potential amounts involved for direct student payments from schools are total red herrings. The sanctimonious people like Jack Swarbrick are still trying to prey on the minority of sports fans that still have a warped view that these athletes are still amateurs. Once everyone gets all of that sanctimonious crap out of their systems, they’ll sober up and realize that paying all of their athletes would effectively be the same cost as a few assistant coaches or a month of having Nick Saban on the sidelines (in which case it would be asinine that anyone at the top level of college sports would unilaterally disengage).


The bigger overall point here is that the college sports student-athlete "business model" has been a sham and a walking, talking, illegal anti-trust violation for decades.

It just took the big money TV contracts and the large payments to coaches and for everything else but player compensation to motivate a plaintiff to file a lawsuit to challenge it and take it up to the Supreme Court.

But, it was always an illegal business model. Keep that in mind.

It didn't deserve to survive. It will not. Everyone needs to adapt to that new legal reality.
05-12-2022 06:17 AM
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ken d Offline
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Post: #32
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-12-2022 06:17 AM)TerryD Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 11:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 07:50 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business.

Out of curiosity, I looked up info about Davidson's reported cost of attendance and number of athletes. It was eye-opening for me in many ways.

The average Davidson undergrad (including athletes) receives about $54K a year in grants and scholarships, lowering their cost of attendance to about $19K per year (tuition is $55K a year). At $20 an hour for all students participating on athletic teams (including student managers, band members, cheerleaders, etc.), that would cost the school about $7K per student (not just per athlete) per year. The athletes wouldn't net the roughly $10K a year they would earn, as this would increase their household income and reduce their financial aid.

The athletic department would run a deficit of about $10 million a year, with $23 million expenses against $13 million in revenue. That "cost of doing business" may be enough to put them out of the athletics business.

No doubt for a school like Alabama an extra $10 million in wages plus the anticipated reduction in donations to the athletic department due to NIL payments made by former donors is easily absorbed. That's true for many P5 schools and maybe a few G5 schools as well. But for most schools, somebody -- whether it's students or taxpayers -- will have to pay more than they do now. That's the cost of entertainment, which is the business college sports are in.

I don’t think that it would be correct to start assuming band members, cheerleaders and other non-athletes would start getting paid as employees. They aren’t the ones where schools are legally in danger of having them being deemed as employees because the control over the schedules of athletes and the negative repercussions if they don’t fulfill their athletic obligations are on a completely different level that’s employee-like in a way that isn’t the case for other activities. Even if those activities take a lot of time (and I know all about it since I’m married to a Marching Illini alum), they don’t hand over their schedules to coaches/directors or lose scholarships if they leave the group.

In any event, Davidson has 547 student-athletes. If they were paid $7000 per year, that would be $3,829,000 total. That’s not chump change, but it’s also not some type of outlandish figure for a high major basketball conference member like Davidson. I don’t find that to be a cost prohibitive amount that would make me think any critical mass of Division I schools are going to suddenly downgrade their sports programs.

That figure is honestly a speed bump for a P5 or even Big East school. Even a larger athletic department would be in the $5 million per year range for total direct pay-for-play for athletes, which certainly wouldn’t be an amount that would make schools like ND and Stanford (or even Wake Forest) to start shuddering about student-athlete payments. Heck - lots of schools are paying more than that amount to *fired* coaches to *not* coach, much less the people that are still their employees.

The potential amounts involved for direct student payments from schools are total red herrings. The sanctimonious people like Jack Swarbrick are still trying to prey on the minority of sports fans that still have a warped view that these athletes are still amateurs. Once everyone gets all of that sanctimonious crap out of their systems, they’ll sober up and realize that paying all of their athletes would effectively be the same cost as a few assistant coaches or a month of having Nick Saban on the sidelines (in which case it would be asinine that anyone at the top level of college sports would unilaterally disengage).


The bigger overall point here is that the college sports student-athlete "business model" has been a sham and a walking, talking, illegal anti-trust violation for decades.

It just took the big money TV contracts and the large payments to coaches and for everything else but player compensation to motivate a plaintiff to file a lawsuit to challenge it and take it up to the Supreme Court.

But, it was always an illegal business model. Keep that in mind.

It didn't deserve to survive. It will not. Everyone needs to adapt to that new legal reality.

Agreed. That being said, to answer the question posed in the OP -- which schools would opt out of a model where sports teams are divorced from the schools except for the use of their name -- I'd say all of them. We need a new business model, but that isn't it.
05-12-2022 06:27 AM
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TerryD Offline
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Post: #33
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-12-2022 06:27 AM)ken d Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 06:17 AM)TerryD Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 11:16 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 07:50 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:29 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Even for a school like Davidson, if they want to compete at a high level in basketball, then this is simply the cost of doing business.

Out of curiosity, I looked up info about Davidson's reported cost of attendance and number of athletes. It was eye-opening for me in many ways.

The average Davidson undergrad (including athletes) receives about $54K a year in grants and scholarships, lowering their cost of attendance to about $19K per year (tuition is $55K a year). At $20 an hour for all students participating on athletic teams (including student managers, band members, cheerleaders, etc.), that would cost the school about $7K per student (not just per athlete) per year. The athletes wouldn't net the roughly $10K a year they would earn, as this would increase their household income and reduce their financial aid.

The athletic department would run a deficit of about $10 million a year, with $23 million expenses against $13 million in revenue. That "cost of doing business" may be enough to put them out of the athletics business.

No doubt for a school like Alabama an extra $10 million in wages plus the anticipated reduction in donations to the athletic department due to NIL payments made by former donors is easily absorbed. That's true for many P5 schools and maybe a few G5 schools as well. But for most schools, somebody -- whether it's students or taxpayers -- will have to pay more than they do now. That's the cost of entertainment, which is the business college sports are in.

I don’t think that it would be correct to start assuming band members, cheerleaders and other non-athletes would start getting paid as employees. They aren’t the ones where schools are legally in danger of having them being deemed as employees because the control over the schedules of athletes and the negative repercussions if they don’t fulfill their athletic obligations are on a completely different level that’s employee-like in a way that isn’t the case for other activities. Even if those activities take a lot of time (and I know all about it since I’m married to a Marching Illini alum), they don’t hand over their schedules to coaches/directors or lose scholarships if they leave the group.

In any event, Davidson has 547 student-athletes. If they were paid $7000 per year, that would be $3,829,000 total. That’s not chump change, but it’s also not some type of outlandish figure for a high major basketball conference member like Davidson. I don’t find that to be a cost prohibitive amount that would make me think any critical mass of Division I schools are going to suddenly downgrade their sports programs.

That figure is honestly a speed bump for a P5 or even Big East school. Even a larger athletic department would be in the $5 million per year range for total direct pay-for-play for athletes, which certainly wouldn’t be an amount that would make schools like ND and Stanford (or even Wake Forest) to start shuddering about student-athlete payments. Heck - lots of schools are paying more than that amount to *fired* coaches to *not* coach, much less the people that are still their employees.

The potential amounts involved for direct student payments from schools are total red herrings. The sanctimonious people like Jack Swarbrick are still trying to prey on the minority of sports fans that still have a warped view that these athletes are still amateurs. Once everyone gets all of that sanctimonious crap out of their systems, they’ll sober up and realize that paying all of their athletes would effectively be the same cost as a few assistant coaches or a month of having Nick Saban on the sidelines (in which case it would be asinine that anyone at the top level of college sports would unilaterally disengage).


The bigger overall point here is that the college sports student-athlete "business model" has been a sham and a walking, talking, illegal anti-trust violation for decades.

It just took the big money TV contracts and the large payments to coaches and for everything else but player compensation to motivate a plaintiff to file a lawsuit to challenge it and take it up to the Supreme Court.

But, it was always an illegal business model. Keep that in mind.

It didn't deserve to survive. It will not. Everyone needs to adapt to that new legal reality.

Agreed. That being said, to answer the question posed in the OP -- which schools would opt out of a model where sports teams are divorced from the schools except for the use of their name -- I'd say all of them. We need a new business model, but that isn't it.

No idea. That remains to be seen.
05-12-2022 06:32 AM
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #34
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-12-2022 12:17 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 03:13 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(05-10-2022 12:33 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  According to Forde, the examples of the schools that will not professionalize include:

ND, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, USC, UCLA, Cal, Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Michigan.

I wouldn't put Michigan in that group.

Purdue, Northwestern, and Wisconsin have long been considered to be on the same page as Notre Dame on this issue.

From what I understand, there's an unofficial voting block of Purdue, Wisconsin, Northwester, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota that guarantees that those 6 will be on the same side of this issue. Nebraska & Ohio State will oppose them, probably joined by Iowa & Penn State.

So in the Big Ten, Michigan & Michigan State (or maybe Rutgers & Maryland?) will cast the deciding votes.


I suspect you'll see most of the voting on this align along the same axis as shutting down the FBS season in summer 2020. Except with Notre Dame on the side of the Big Ten & Pac this time.

Why is Wisconsin, with a football stadium roughly the same size as South Carolina's, in a voting block with Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, etc., who all have stadium sizes the equivalent of ACC & PAC12 teams?? And not with Ohio State, Michigan, & Penn State who have SEC style capacity stadiums???? I don't get that. 01-wingedeagle

Let me preface this by saying once again that I fully and completely believe that all Big Ten schools will be participating in whatever form the top level of college athletics will be going forward. I'll repeat that 100 times - none of the Big Ten schools are unilaterally downgrading themselves.

Now, if we're entertaining the argument that the most academically-focused schools are going to unilaterally disarm (once again, something that I personally don't believe at all, but I'll engage in the discussion for hypothetical purposes), it would make perfect sense that Wisconsin is in that group.

I always tell people this: the most academically snobby school in the Big Ten is NOT Northwestern. It's *Michigan*. Michigan doesn't have the "lay person" academic prestige as Harvard and Stanford, but they truly in their heart of hearts believe that Harvard and Stanford are their academic rivals every bit as much as Ohio State is their athletic rival. In fact, the practical reality that Michigan doesn't have same lay person prestige is why they're way more outwardly bombastic about their academic credentials than a place like Northwestern.

What does this have to do with Wisconsin? Well, Wisconsin is really the next level of the Michigan mindset of where they stand in the academic pecking order. If you look at graduate research rankings, Wisconsin is actually sneakily really high across the board in nearly every department ranging from STEM to liberal arts. They might not have a mega-star department like Illinois and Purdue have with engineering, but Wisconsin is one of those schools that is performing at a really high level in virtually every facet of academia. To your point about Wisconsin having a stadium like South Carolina, note that at the graduate research level, Wisconsin has more in common with the Ivy League schools than it does with most of the SEC schools. Yet, among public schools, they don't have the same "lay person" academic prestige as places like Berkeley, UCLA, or... Michigan. So, just as Michigan has a sort of complex of wanting to be seen as a Harvard-level academic institution, Wisconsin similarly has a complex of wanting to be seen as a Michigan-level public university. (This isn't a criticism of Wisconsin. My alma mater of Illinois thinks exactly the same way.)

This is further evidenced by the AAU vote to remove Nebraska from its membership. Michigan and Wisconsin take the academic requirements of the AAU so seriously that they were the only two Big Ten schools that voted to remove Nebraska. (Note that Northwestern supported Nebraska.) This was even after Michigan and Wisconsin have been two of the schools that have been most stringent on wanting only AAU schools (with an exception for Notre Dame) in for Big Ten expansion.

So, if we're going to end up with a line of demarcation of schools that separates the more prestigious academic schools from other schools for sports, then Wisconsin would be the type that would want to be in the prestigious academic group.

That being said, I'll repeat again that I don't believe that believe that any of that will happen. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue et. al all love their Big Ten money and exposure just as much as Ohio State and Penn State (even if the former schools try to play it off otherwise).
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 07:44 AM by Frank the Tank.)
05-12-2022 07:38 AM
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random asian guy Offline
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Post: #35
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 08:58 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 06:18 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Yes they are not college sports teams but professional teams. And that’s the point. Look at the thread title.

I don’t know how many fans will care about whether the players are actually students or not. We certainly don’t care much about their admission stats or GPA.

There are many college sports fans who actually didn’t go to particular colleges that they root for. If my understanding is correct, there are many of these fans in South. For them, University of Alabama, LSU, or WVU are not just schools, they are the teams that represent their states. In some sense, that’s similar to pro teams like NFL. If this NFL lite actually happens, the SEC will lead.

Who wants this? The NFL does not want it. The Alumni is not going to like it. Most of the players want and need the degree. If the fans want to watch professional football, they can watch the NFL. I don't see the attraction. I don't see the point.

How many bluechip recruits would want the education if not mandotary? If they want, the kids would be able to still get free education even in the pro model. It’s just not going to be mandatory.

We all know what fans like. They like winning and they like good talent joining their teams.

And let’s be honest. The college football today is already 99 percent like professional football. The players just don’t get paid instead they have the mandatory academic requirement. Do you really believe we are watching amateur games?
05-12-2022 12:22 PM
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #36
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-12-2022 12:22 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 08:58 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 06:18 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Yes they are not college sports teams but professional teams. And that’s the point. Look at the thread title.

I don’t know how many fans will care about whether the players are actually students or not. We certainly don’t care much about their admission stats or GPA.

There are many college sports fans who actually didn’t go to particular colleges that they root for. If my understanding is correct, there are many of these fans in South. For them, University of Alabama, LSU, or WVU are not just schools, they are the teams that represent their states. In some sense, that’s similar to pro teams like NFL. If this NFL lite actually happens, the SEC will lead.

Who wants this? The NFL does not want it. The Alumni is not going to like it. Most of the players want and need the degree. If the fans want to watch professional football, they can watch the NFL. I don't see the attraction. I don't see the point.

How many bluechip recruits would want the education if not mandotary? If they want, the kids would be able to still get free education even in the pro model. It’s just not going to be mandatory.

We all know what fans like. They like winning and they like good talent joining their teams.

And let’s be honest. The college football today is already 99 percent like professional football. The players just don’t get paid instead they have the mandatory academic requirement. Do you really believe we are watching amateur games?

Look - as you can tell by my posts, I can be pretty cynical when it comes to money and college sports. I'm a pretty firm champion of players getting paid as much as the market allows.

However, I also firmly believe that there's a bright-line between a team with actual students versus a team with non-students that just happens to have a school's label slapped on it. You can feel free to disagree with me on that one, but even I'm not cynical enough to think that pure non-student ringers would create the unique bond that we see in college sports.

Maybe it's a *really* tenuous relationship between the academic and athletic experiences for student-athletes in reality (e.g. athletes being sent to different courses), but that relationship is still key to the entire allure of college sports nonetheless just as we care whether an Olympic athlete that wins a gold medal is actually from that country (something that can sometimes be in dispute), a high school team that wins a state championship actually consists of players from that high school, or a neighborhood baseball team that wins the Little League World Series actually consists of players from that neighborhood. That's a key distinction that all of the aforementioned examples have compared to, say, minor league baseball or the G-League (which is essentially what you're arguing a portion of college sports would turn into here).

My life experience might be totally different than Deron Williams or Ayo Dosunmu, but the one thing that I have in common with them that I don't have with the other pro sports athletes that I watch is that we all were once students at the University of Illinois. Other non-alums might look at it as the students that came to their home state university. That's a completely powerful bond that isn't replicated in many other areas of life. As corny as that might be, it's the root of a massive part of college fandom.

The fact that college teams feature student-athletes that actually attend that college IS completely symbiotic with why college sports draw way more viewers than the minor leagues (even though the minor leagues are played at a higher level). I find that to be much different than whether fans care about those student-athletes are getting paid (which I don't think is the case in general).
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 12:56 PM by Frank the Tank.)
05-12-2022 12:50 PM
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HawaiiMongoose Offline
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Post: #37
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 12:36 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 12:28 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 11:37 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I'll stand by what I've stated elsewhere repeatedly: absolutely no one in the P5 is going to unilaterally disarm.

I don't care if it's Stanford, Duke, ND, Michigan, Alabama or Clemson.

No one is unilaterally disarming. Absolutely no one.

Oh sure - they will whine and moan about the changes for the time being and talk about how their respective academic missions are being threatened. They'd all love to find some way to reign in potential student-athlete costs and keep on making their drug cartel-level profits in sports. However, when push comes to shove, absolutely no one (ESPECIALLY the wealthiest and most prestigious universities) are going to unilaterally both downgrade their athletic revenue or prestige (e.g. P5 membership or whatever the future equivalent might be). Academia is a prestige and branding-driven business and schools with actual choices don't choose to unilaterally downgrade on any front (including but not limited to athletics).

So, the answer is that EVERYONE will be in. I completely and 100% believe this and no one can convince me otherwise.

Frank, just to be sure I understand your position on this, you are convinced that EVERYONE will accept professionalizing their football programs with players who are NON-STUDENT EMPLOYEES if that is how today’s college football bluebloods choose to evolve the sport. In other words, they will all buy in to sponsoring minor-league pro football franchises with players who wear the university’s brand but have no obligations on campus other than practicing, playing, showing up for publicity events and drawing their paychecks. Is that correct?

NO. That is a complete misinterpretation. I have said nothing of the sort that these would be non-student employees. In fact, I have pushed back completely on the notion of a school licensing its name to a third party sports team as totally illusory on many levels. I understand that the OP has referred to this notion of non-students playing and completely do NOT believe that will occur.

I'm talking about student-athletes getting paid. Period. NOT a team of non-students that try to slap on an Ohio State or Alabama logo.

Thanks for the clarification. Your post was a little confusing because it was in a thread asking for comments on the third party pro sports team model. But I was about 90% sure I'd seen you make previous comments in other threads saying that your position on pay-for-play only applied to student-athletes.
05-12-2022 02:32 PM
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Fighting Muskie Offline
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Post: #38
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 03:48 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

“Dropping down” to a lower level or “giving up” highest level athletics is a misleading term in my opinion.

Many schools including UVa will continue the current model while trying to improve it by adopting the NIL and pay for play as necessary.

But what if the SEC schools decide to professionalize their football programs by 1) exiting the NCAA, 2) paying the players directly without a cap, and 3) requiring the players of no school activities? I guess the SEC programs will have huge advantages over collegiate schools in terms of recruiting. Almost all blue chip recruits would take the SEC programs. Why won’t they? Much more money and no school work. And if some players desire the college education, the SEC teams will be able to offer the free education as a fringe benefit.

I don’t know about VT but I don’t see UVa or Duke would follow that professionalization. So it’s not like UVa is dropping down or giving up. It’s more like UVa is being left out as certain schools are “breaking away”.

This is the only scenario where I see a real “breakaway” can actually happen.

What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Honestly, what he’s proposing isn’t really all that far removed from what we already have. Can you really say that your superstar basketball and football athletes at the biggest programs are really all that intricately woven into the academic life of the universities? Are Kentucky’s 1 and done basketball players really that invested in the university? Are the 9 months that they lived off the taxpayers going to be any more than a pit stop on their way to their NBA careers?

What he’s proposing here is simply not pretending that your top level athletes are really there to get an education that they plan on using later in life. Ohio St football pretty much is the Columbus Clippers, just with a lot more fanfare.
05-12-2022 05:22 PM
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esayem Offline
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Post: #39
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-11-2022 01:55 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote:  UVa spent 50 years blocking Virginia Tech’s admission into the ACC. UVa wanted to have the exclusive prestige of being the best athletics brand in the commonwealth. Athletics is a differentiator amongst universities. Now you are asking UVa to completely give-up high-level athletics?

Besides, UVa has been somewhat influential within the NCAA. Dick Schultz was UVa’s athletics director in the 1980s, who would subsequently become president of the NCAA and USOC throughout the 1990s. Most likely, UVa will be trying to transform collegiate athletics…trying to fashion a business model were student-athletes equitably benefit.

That’s not what I read from the time. At least in the beginning, UVa was hesitant to join the ACC because they wanted another Virginia school. W&M deemphasized due to scandals and VaTech was hard to get to.

Carolina actually sponsored both VaTech and WVU for inclusion in the original line-up. VaTech was voted on and WVU never received a second motion for a vote.

*Sorry, not sure if you’re including the early days.
(This post was last modified: 05-12-2022 05:44 PM by esayem.)
05-12-2022 05:43 PM
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random asian guy Offline
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Post: #40
RE: Complete professionalization - who is in and who is out?
(05-12-2022 12:50 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(05-12-2022 12:22 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 08:58 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 06:18 PM)random asian guy Wrote:  
(05-11-2022 04:19 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  What you're proposing isn't college sports.

What you're proposing is that a school owns a separate minor league team and then slaps its school name on it.

I don't see the appeal of that here. There's a symbiotic value when you combine a school with top student-athletes, which is why the top level of college sports have been more valuable compared to minor league sports. Removing the "student" portion of it turns the Ohio State Buckeyes into the football/basketball equivalent of the Columbus Clippers. I see a MASSIVE difference between paying student-athletes and simply setting up a team with non-athletes that has a school label slapped onto it. As I alluded to before, people might be stupid in general, but they're not THAT stupid to believe that a college team that doesn't actually have college students has anything to do with their favorite university (even with the most cynical view of how many classes current student-athletes might be taking).

Yes they are not college sports teams but professional teams. And that’s the point. Look at the thread title.

I don’t know how many fans will care about whether the players are actually students or not. We certainly don’t care much about their admission stats or GPA.

There are many college sports fans who actually didn’t go to particular colleges that they root for. If my understanding is correct, there are many of these fans in South. For them, University of Alabama, LSU, or WVU are not just schools, they are the teams that represent their states. In some sense, that’s similar to pro teams like NFL. If this NFL lite actually happens, the SEC will lead.

Who wants this? The NFL does not want it. The Alumni is not going to like it. Most of the players want and need the degree. If the fans want to watch professional football, they can watch the NFL. I don't see the attraction. I don't see the point.

How many bluechip recruits would want the education if not mandotary? If they want, the kids would be able to still get free education even in the pro model. It’s just not going to be mandatory.

We all know what fans like. They like winning and they like good talent joining their teams.

And let’s be honest. The college football today is already 99 percent like professional football. The players just don’t get paid instead they have the mandatory academic requirement. Do you really believe we are watching amateur games?

Look - as you can tell by my posts, I can be pretty cynical when it comes to money and college sports. I'm a pretty firm champion of players getting paid as much as the market allows.

However, I also firmly believe that there's a bright-line between a team with actual students versus a team with non-students that just happens to have a school's label slapped on it. You can feel free to disagree with me on that one, but even I'm not cynical enough to think that pure non-student ringers would create the unique bond that we see in college sports.

Maybe it's a *really* tenuous relationship between the academic and athletic experiences for student-athletes in reality (e.g. athletes being sent to different courses), but that relationship is still key to the entire allure of college sports nonetheless just as we care whether an Olympic athlete that wins a gold medal is actually from that country (something that can sometimes be in dispute), a high school team that wins a state championship actually consists of players from that high school, or a neighborhood baseball team that wins the Little League World Series actually consists of players from that neighborhood. That's a key distinction that all of the aforementioned examples have compared to, say, minor league baseball or the G-League (which is essentially what you're arguing a portion of college sports would turn into here).

My life experience might be totally different than Deron Williams or Ayo Dosunmu, but the one thing that I have in common with them that I don't have with the other pro sports athletes that I watch is that we all were once students at the University of Illinois. Other non-alums might look at it as the students that came to their home state university. That's a completely powerful bond that isn't replicated in many other areas of life. As corny as that might be, it's the root of a massive part of college fandom.

The fact that college teams feature student-athletes that actually attend that college IS completely symbiotic with why college sports draw way more viewers than the minor leagues (even though the minor leagues are played at a higher level). I find that to be much different than whether fans care about those student-athletes are getting paid (which I don't think is the case in general).

Frank, I respect your opinion. I, like you, do not want to see the colleges cross the “bright line”.

But you will also have to respect others’ desires (or greed). If I understand correctly, your position is:

1. Every school in P5 will stay in the highest level
2. Every school in P5 will not accept non student players

I don’t know whether this position is tenable. What if some schools decide to go for a complete professionalization? What would the rest of P5 do other than complaining and whining? As you said, college football is a huge business and nobody wants to get left behind. But the public relationship damage by going “pro” is way too bigger for elite schools that they cannot really pursue the pro model.

I also think some people on this board tend to overestimate the value of college education. For a first generation Asian immigrant like me, sure the college education was really importan. I won’t survive without it. But for some athletes they have enough talent to live and prosper without a college degree. And I don’t know whether it’s “fair” to force them to take SAT or other exams, go to classes, and maintain GPAs. And maybe some colleges start thinking in this direction.

I usually don’t see the point for “breakaway” but this philosophical difference and the financial motiviation is something that may cause an actual breakaway. It’s just going to be a little different from the models that are discussed here (P2 or P5 breakaway).

It might be the SEC and many other schools breaking away first while the Alliance stay put. Even if the SEC and the BIG are the ones breaking away, each individual school has to make its own decision. For example maybe Vandy doesn’t want to go pro while FSU does. Then we would see a swap.
05-14-2022 12:16 PM
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