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Anti-trust lawsuit against NCAA

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Onebuckfan said:
Is it confined to those 11 issues or will everything be bargained.
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Those are the 11 specific issues the union has outlined. None of which deals with 'pay for play.' That isn't to say that couldn't happen down the line, but for several reasons, the schools can't negotiate on that. And the players know that. People talk about 'pay for play' but it's not practical in college athletics because of Title XI. It will never happen, but that won't stop people from irrationally worrying about it.
 
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OH10 said:
Those are the 11 specific issues the union has outlined. None of which deals with 'pay for play.' That isn't to say that couldn't happen down the line, but for several reasons, the schools can't negotiate on that. And the players know that. People talk about 'pay for play' but it's not practical in college athletics because of Title XI. It will never happen, but that won't stop people from irrationally worrying about it.
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MY question is why is NW, Cal, etc. against unions for football players? It only seems fair to give players a say in an endeavor that could destroy their health, etc.t,etc.
 
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OH10 said:
That's hilarious. "Here, have this one year of education and go get a job. Or take out a loan like every other student. But don't do it here at Alabama because we don't really want you here anymore now that we see you aren't very good at football even though you've spent the last year banging your head around for the program. And good luck getting into another school because you should know that we had to bend our admission requirements just to get you in. But, hey, you got one year of general education so there's, um, that. Peace!"
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Nothing is stopping them from taking out student loans, like a majority of folks, and completing their education where they are. They can work hard to get an academic scholarship, or learn how to take the ACT and SAT to get money. They make the choice to go play for this college or that one, no one is holding a gun to their head.
 
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buckeyebri said:
My take on this, and I am not putting words in his mouth, is that this is along the lines of long term injury care beyond their career at the school. So, thinking about long term concussion issues and impacts.
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And long-term injury care, or really lifetime paid health insurance - which is what would be required to cover largely untraceable events like long-term concussion effects - is a form of compensation, or "pay-for-play".

To me, the issue here is that the phrase "pay-for-play" is bandied around a lot but is generally poorly defined or not defined at all. By any reasonable definition, scholarship athletes, particularly in the money sports, are already "paid-to-play". Not just because they receive scholarships, and not just because they receive stipends to cover various living expenses. But also because they are given exclusive access to facilities and various amenities that range from pretty-nice to awe-inspiringly luxurious.

So, to me, the relevant question isn't whether college football players should be "paid-to-play". The questions are, i) should they be paid more than they currently are, ii) if so, how much more, and iii) how should those decisions be made?
 
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OH10 said:
So now cutting players who do everything in the classroom and in practice that they're asked to do just because you scouted their talent incorrectly is ok?

Wow, that scholarship is really worth a whole lot when you give it to someone for one year and then tell them good luck paying for the rest of your degree somewhere else. Awesome value!
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It is routine for continuation of academic scholarships to be predicated on performance, such as on maintenance of a certain GPA. I would argue that is not appreciably different, in basic principle, from continuation of an athletic scholarship being based on athletic performance. There is one significant difference however. Maintenance of a particular GPA is a relatively objective criterion, whereas maintenance of sufficient athletic performance is probably typically much more subjective.

But the idea that, "we're pulling your scholarship because you're not who we thought you were when we offered it" is not unique to athletics.
 
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buckeyebri said:
Nothing is stopping them from taking out student loans, like a majority of folks, and completing their education where they are. They can work hard to get an academic scholarship, or learn how to take the ACT and SAT to get money. They make the choice to go play for this college or that one, no one is holding a gun to their head.
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but but but they're jocks, they're not really there for the education anyway so screw them....


Do I need to turn on the sarcasm font for that?
 
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Quite frankly, I think a lot of this would have gone away had the NCAA/schools agreed to give players a cut of the royalties from video game and jersey sales, which I think is something that should be done. That could be after they graduate/go pro (I would stipulate graduation, personally), or yearly as an addition to their stipend. However, that's the only clear-cut issue I see here.

The other issues like long term healthcare to me are much more shaky. Do I think they should have it? Probably, yeah, it does make sense. But concussions don't magically start at the college level, and most players probably got one or more during their HS careers and we know they happen at earlier levels of play as well. So does this cover only concussions that occur during your college years? If you already had a concussion(s) before you got to college, how do you differentiate the new concussions and symptoms from earlier ones? I think there's a very real possibility of creep back down the line when it comes to covering long-term health issues, so where do you draw the line?

We've already seen more research coming out on the topic of concussions, and as a result better immediate care at all levels of the game, and I would hope that deciding that long-term care for such issues would be a natural conclusion at some point down the line. I think that if the schools/NCAA can see that it would be good for everyone, they would implement it without the need for collective bargaining and the pandora's box that would likely open (although, it has probably already been opened by this ruling).
 
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I think that OH10 sees things like I do. Football and, to a lesser extent, basketball, provide the financial foundation for all college sports. Pay for play or providing these benefits is going to cut into Title XI.

If we ignore the argument about whether or not that is the right thing to do, and consider what happens if they extract these benefits, then the discussion quickly changes to a market forces/market returns argument.

So, what gives? Goodbye women's sports in general? Hardly likely to get that through at state schools. University supports athletics from the budget, because they now run at a loss? Given pressures on rising costs of education, hardly likely. Goodbye small sports with little fan support? Probably the first kill and then a war over the rest.

Not saying that the players should or should not get more, just that this is a game changer of note. Things are most likely going to change in college athletics...big time.
 
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Onebuckfan said:
I know but NW is Pro Union, Cal Is Pro union,Why not for College football players?
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I'm not sure what you mean by "pro union" here. I would suspect that there are a lot of individuals and a lot of groups who support a freedom to organize unions in some situations, but do not believe that anyone who engages in any activity that results in income for someone else should be unionized.

scarletmike said:
Quite frankly, I think a lot of this would have gone away had the NCAA/schools agreed to give players a cut of the royalties from video game and jersey sales, which I think is something that should be done.
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Why limit it to video games and jersey sales? I don't know, but would strongly suspect, that the NCAA and member institutions make far more from tv contracts and ticket sales than they do from video game and jersey royalties. And if you're going to have EA Sports pay a portion of their sales royalties directly to participating players, are you going to pay the third-string LG as much as the starting QB? Are you going to pay San Jose State players as much as Ohio State players? And are you going to be comfortable with all of the consequences, such as the loss of Ohio State Athletic Department revenue resulting in the elimination of a number of non-revenue varsity sports? (largely echoing Steve19 there)
 
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zincfinger said:
Why limit it to video games and jersey sales? I don't know, but would strongly suspect, that the NCAA and member institutions make far more from tv contracts and ticket sales than they do from video game and jersey royalties. And if you're going to have EA Sports pay a portion of their sales royalties directly to participating players, are you going to pay the third-string LG as much as the starting QB? Are you going to pay San Jose State players as much as Ohio State players? And are you going to be comfortable with all of the consequences, such as the loss of Ohio State Athletic Department revenue resulting in the elimination of a number of non-revenue varsity sports? (largely echoing Steve19 there)
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Those are some good questions, and I don't have answers (or adequate ones) to all of them, it was more thinking out loud. Of course the NCAA and schools make more money from ticket sales and TV contracts, however I think getting royalties from that would be a much harder (and more significant) argument than things that directly use player likenesses (video games) and popularity (jerseys) to sell things. I think in those instances there's a clear-cut issue of entities profiting from someone else's likeness who probably didn't consent to that arrangement (maybe there's wording in their scholarship agreement that covers it, but I doubt it) and have no recourse to recover a royalty. Regarding how much everyone gets, while there would be an argument that the star players are the reason the games are sold, I don't think that is a very strong argument and you would find that the customers purchase the game to play with "their team" instead of individual players. As such, it would be an even split across the board for all players featured on the game's roster list (decided by player #, obviously). Some players sharing a number could be problematic, but I'm sure it would be worked out. As for paying certain schools more...that is a bit trickier, but maybe could be done via the game's online profile where you choose your favorite team. Of course, I suspect the licensing agreement is mostly with the NCAA and not the individual schools (except maybe for the school logos, especially private schools), and the NCAA is responsible for distributing any royalties from the game(s) that go to the schools, if any actually goes to the schools.

I don't see a reason why distributing royalties for games from 3rd parties should affect the non-revenue sports (possibly Title IX implications, which I don't know that much about, admittedly). The 3rd party doesn't feel they can make a profit on a game based on collegiate lacrosse/baseball/track, so they don't. If the argument is that it cuts into the profit of the overall athletic department, the only royalty payment I can see really cutting profit from would be jersey sales (as again, I think the NCAA receives the majority or all of the payments for the video games), and I don't think that would be enough to adversely effect the athletic department as a whole.
 
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scarletmike said:
...I think getting royalties from that would be a much harder (and more significant) argument than things that directly use player likenesses (video games) and popularity (jerseys) to sell things. I think in those instances there's a clear-cut issue of entities profiting from someone else's likeness who probably didn't consent to that arrangement (maybe there's wording in their scholarship agreement that covers it, but I doubt it) and have no recourse to recover a royalty...
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I'm not sure even this clear cut example is quite as clear cut as you present it to be. When stores around Ohio and across the country sell a lot of OSU #5 jerseys, that is certainly due in part to Braxton Miller's performance. But isn't it also due to a significant extent to the Ohio State name brand? If Miller played instead for an AFL team (or some hypothetical developmental league that served as a legitimate alternative to CFB, which incidentally I support), would sales of jerseys with his name and number on them come anywhere close to the sales of OSU #5 jerseys? You could make a legitimate case that players should get a <100% percentage of sales of jerseys bearing their number. But I'm not sure it is clear cut how that should work. And I'd further argue that those players already get a benefit from playing in a league and for a team that has a unique market popularity. And I suspect that benefit could be lost to them if the factors which make the marketability of the product unique are trifled with.
 
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