No just thought an interesting counter argument would be to be for the NCAA to try and force the leagues to remove their age restrictions. It would allow the NCAA to make the argument that if they want to benefit from their likeness then they can just turn pro. If they aren’t ready to turn pro then they can play by the NCAA rules. For the record I am pro paying players. Just don’t love all the unintended consequences that will follow. The other half of me is wishful thinking wanting it to be true amateur athletics. That ship has sailed.
In the 1930's the University of Chicago disbanded their football team because they believed college football and commitment to academics did not mesh
1 million for the best quarterback prospect in a decade is a steal. Just like guys like Saban are underpaid for the value they bring to their universities.
Look at sports basically everywhere outside of North America. You have 16-18 year olds signing huge deals to play soccer all over the world. The idea these kids can only profit if there's somewhere to exploit their labor is laughable.
you just took it into a weird spot where you admitted players are there to earn the school money and can't negotiate their compensation (playing by the NCAA's rules), it's a very libertarian mindset of zero labor rights for labor.
College athletics doesn't exist because the institutions are providing the platform for athletes to play out of the goodness of their hearts. It's about making money, plain and simple. And restricting an individual who is making you that money from being able to pocket some cash from it as well is awful. A dude can't take a fucking penny for signing HIS OWN NAME on a football. I can listen to arguments about scholarship value as compensation and how the academic aspect should be considered. I don't necessarily like it, but I can understand where that argument comes from, but the ability for an individual to make money off their own likeness to not be there is baffling to me.
Softball was one people had wanted for a while from what I understood even in undergrad. Part of the problem was lack of space for the softball fields. I don't think they got the memo that not every stadium and practice field needed to be right next to campus.
I guess I see the institutional value being higher than the individual value for all but the best college football players. Allow those players to move on and provide an environment where the remaining players are compensated. I also believe that not all compensation has to be monetary. Some of it should but there is value in being a college athlete outside of money.
The scholarship argument is so disingenuous for a few reasons. First, the cost of the tuition is completely made up by the school. Its a price they set where they think they can maximize profits, not the actual value of what they are providing. Essentially they're saying the value of the degree a football player is getting to teach high school gym is worth $120,000....its not. Second, it doesn't actually cost them anything. If a class has 28 kids without the scholarship athlete or 29 with him, that doesn't cost the school anything.
could not disagree with this more but agree that a system where the potential pro players go to a minor league system and college is left for actual amateurism is a scenario I could see happening, especially since the NCAA continues to be stupid
college athletes unionize, then schools can actually negotiate their case for all the ancillary benefits being worth so much, open the books
True story, people in Clemson hats used to come to SC softball games. They were Clemson fans in everything else but liked softball so went for Gamecocks in that
I'm pro minor league type system. Maybe I'm wrong in this thinking, but an 18/19 years old probably shouldn't be on the same field as a professional football player who has been in a training system for a number of years. Maybe a U-21 type system where guys earn a living playing football for a few years and when their time is up a pro team can claim them. Not sure what the right answer is, at least for football.
i mean if it was a truly amateur model there wouldn't be any athletic scholarships, right? tbf i'm fine if nothing changes and the kids don't get paid.
That makes as much sense as creating an exception within Title IX for chemistry departments. The whole purpose of the law is requiring equal access to educational opportunities regardless of perceptions of return on investment to the school.
If that template was applied to our major revenue sports I wonder what age we'd be tapping kids into professional academies. With soccer you can start that process very early, before physical development. It's harder to project for basketball and football where you're way more concerned about how big someone will get.
Anyway I've pretty much accepted that the only good thing about major college athletics are that they are "fun" They pretty much shouldn't exist. :]
That’s a reflection of college budgetary priorities, not the legislation. Schools have chosen not to throw money away at unprofitable men’s programs instead of giving equivalent access to women’s programs. And it probably hasn’t even had that impact in decades - cuts are now 100% budgetary in purpose - unless you’re going to say that schools only started caring about Title IX compliance 40 years after it went into effect.
14 is pretty standard in the US. Freshman year of high school. For hockey that’s when kids are going off to prep schools like Shattucks, Cushing, Culver, Choate, etc. Even if they flame out in hockey they are still getting a top tier education.
european football teams will start recruiting 6 year olds. most of them don't sign actual formal professional under the equivalent of their high school years though.
honestly the thing i dread most about having a kid is traveling to watch him or her play sports every weekend. sounds fucking miserable.
it’s actually pretty great. The travel can be a grind but you’ll make a ton of great friends unless you are a big asshole
I remember playing 75+ hockey games a season at age 14. We were lucky to have one day off a month. Our typical weekend travel schedule was drive 6 hours to Anchorage on Friday. Play a game that night. Play 3 games Saturday. Play 2 games Sunday and drive home that evening. Fortunately nowadays the people in charge have realized that giving kids a break is a good thing. Not making the sport 12 months a year is a good thing. Encouraging them to play other sports in the off season is a good thing. Not emphasizing winning until they are older is a good thing. Not emphasizing physical contact until their bodies are ready is a good thing.
If you removed the top 100 college football players the game wouldn’t be as good but would the fans care? What about the top 500? People root for their team that they either have a personal or geographical attachment for. They would still support that school if the quality of the game wasn’t as good. Would the team as a whole be worth less with a bunch of scrubs? Yes but it would still have a significant value. The school is a brand that has value. Players use that value to enhance their own value. It is a symbiotic relationship. We just disagree how how much value one side of the equation brings. The really hard part is it differs for different t sports and different players the equation shifts. Pro sports compensate people differently as a solution to that problem. I don’t know if college sports can do that.
Ehhh it’s alright, I don’t miss it. You’ve left out the fact that overbearing parents suck a lot of fun out of what should be an enjoyable weekend. 60% of the parents there think their kid is going to get a full ride to college and 90% think their kid is the best on the team.
I watched a bit of a documentary where Gretzky talked about how he only touched a hockey stick during season. He loved baseball and would play baseball during the summer and not even think about hockey until the season came around.
yeah my brother in law does shit on 40 weekends a year and his kid is the "best" at every sport. doing shit with someone like him every weekend and the working all week sounds awful
imagine driving your kid 6 hours each way on fridays and sundays almost every single weekend to play hockey and he ends up like the rest of us shitposting on the internet.
i feel like college basketball is the test case here, it seems like it's a shell of its former self once early entries to the NBA became the norm cfb would be follow a similar pattern imo
I think it is a good litmus test but it isn’t a completely balanced comparison. Basketball as a sport can be impacted much more by an individual than football. If you cut out the top 10 basketball players it has a bigger effect on the game than the top 50 football players.
The quality of play matters though. It's why you get MAC games on Wednesday nights and no other non NFL professional league can keep the doors open.
In the 1970’s and early 80’s, the Big Ten played a junior varsity schedule of younger guys and mostly walk ons. Basically, it was the redshirts and walk ons competing against each other.
A couple of things here: 1. The NFL collective bargaining agreement sets the age limit restriction for athletes, not the NCAA. Collective bargaining is largely exempt from antitrust. Maurice Clarett and Mike Williams challenged the age restrictions in 2003 on antitrust grounds and lost. Nothing in this court case affects the NFL. The NFL and NFLPA have no interest in drafting 18 year olds or creating a developmental league. 2. My prediction is that the NCAA is going to win on pay-to-play. The lower courts found the schools have a valid basis to use revenue sports to fund nonrevenue sports. If players were to unionize, we have a whole different set of issues, but there are different cases involving graduate TA union efforts across the country. The NLRB has gone back and forth upon whether grad students are employees. 3. The Court is going to hammer the NCAA on income from third party sources. If the shoe companies want to start cutting deals with individuals, it’s open season. Many other examples. This puts the NCAA and conferences in a tough spot because state laws vary and it’s going to be wild until folks figure this out. My sense is that the NCAA and conferences aren’t going to be left with any meaningful way to cap third party income. Athletes will be required to license school trademarks if they use anything affiliated with the school in advertising. The pro sports leagues regulate jersey royalties and acceptable ads through their CBA. The CBA’s are exempt from antitrust, so they can do that. My sense is colleges let things go nuts, because they are even more terrified of unions.
Yeah they ignored the hell out of a study by the Knight Commission years ago warning about the road they chose to go down