• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Anti-trust lawsuit against NCAA

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
ORD_Buckeye said:
Simply stop allowing the illiterates onto college campuses. The NFL would have to start up a minor league rather than see all that talent wasted. That's the "In A Perfect World" answer.

Putting it into practice would sadly be very difficult, for there's too many vested interests to fight against it. The college coaches and athletic complex want those kids on campus. The race hustlers would cry racial bias over any attempt to make fball and bball admissions anywhere close to normal student admissions or even non-revenue athlete admissions. And as you point out, the NFL and NFLPA like the current system just as it is.

I am hoping that, just maybe, the unionization thing causes the university Presidents to realize that such a separation's time has come. They can see their universities turned into sponsoring semi-pro teams or they can maintain some shred of integrity in college programs by allowing and forcing an alternate route for those who don't want to be on a college campus and often shouldn't be on one. I doubt it will happen, and it would be amazingly messy if it did. How do you tell an open admission university that they can't take the 4th grade reader? In a lot of cases, you might literally have to institute higher admissions standards for athletes than for normal students. Is that right? legal? I don't know. And God knows how the SEC and ESPN would fight it tooth and nail?

I think the greatest factor in making it work would simply be demand on the part of many athletes. Do you think that football player with the 3rd grade reading level, really wanted to come to Ohio State and struggle through the facade of maintaining his elibility in a sports management or phys ed major? A lot of these kids (not all by any means) would jump at the chance to "major in football" for 50K a year playing for the Reno Renegades or Tulsa Tornadoes. The league has to exist in the first place though.
Click to expand...


While I agree that the universities can make admissions standard higher and thereby generate a pool of talented football players who need a bridge to their NFL aspirations, they cannot force the NFL to pay the players who go to college (hence my response to the original post). If you're suggesting that the NFL may find paying for a college-based farm system is more appealing than creating a D-league, I'm sure there are pros and cons to each so I'm not sure what would drive the NFL's preference.
 
Upvote 0
DiamondBuck said:
While I agree that the universities can make admissions standard higher and thereby generate a pool of talented football players who need a bridge to their NFL aspirations, they cannot force the NFL to pay the players who go to college (hence my response to the original post). If you're suggesting that the NFL may find paying for a college-based farm system is more appealing than creating a D-league, I'm sure there are pros and cons to each so I'm not sure what would drive the NFL's preference.
Click to expand...
I don't think ORD was saying that Universities can or should force the NFL to pay college players. I think what he is saying is that if Universities uniformly refused to admit players with substandard academic credentials (which he admits is probably unfeasible), that would probably force the NFL to fund a minor-league farm system, analogous to the minor-league farm system in baseball, that paid guys who couldn't or didn't want to attend college to play and develop their football skills.
 
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
I'm not sure if this was just a rhetorical point, but how would you implement a system in which only "generic numbers" are printed on jerseys? Should Universities be required to put out a list of star players every year whose numbers can't be printed on jerseys? Or should fans be forced to walk around with jerseys that have square-root-of-negative-one on the front (which would actually be kind of cool, so long as you didn't mind getting your ass kicked)?
Click to expand...
Double zero. Only retired numbers. Hell, pretty much just the opposite of what they do now, which is figure out which players are most likely to win awards then pretend it's not a Braxton Miller jersey. It's just tOSU#5.
 
Upvote 0
BUCKYLE said:
Double zero. Only retired numbers. Hell, pretty much just the opposite of what they do now, which is figure out which players are most likely to win awards then pretend it's not a Braxton Miller jersey. It's just tOSU#5.
Click to expand...
I think one and two are good points. There might be some issues such as if some schools have few or no retired numbers, but those are good points and would come much closer to a "pure" amateur system. At least as regards what I suspect is the economically minor point of University revenues derived from Jersey sales. Of course, one could argue that if Universities went that route they would be throwing away revenues without particularly benefiting athletes or anyone else, but that's a separate argument.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
I don't think ORD was saying that Universities can or should force the NFL to pay college players. I think what he is saying is that if Universities uniformly refused to admit players with substandard academic credentials (which he admits is probably unfeasible), that would probably force the NFL to fund a minor-league farm system, analogous to the minor-league farm system in baseball, that paid guys who couldn't or didn't want to attend college to play and develop their football skills.
Click to expand...

I agree with ORD. My first post that was in response to OH1O:"put it on the NFL to draft them and pay them while they go to school".
 
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
I think one and
zincfinger said:
I would disagree with you there.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, or what your point is there. But quite a few people who bring money to the university academically do so outside the classroom, e.g. from a laboratory.

If your view is that Universities shouldn't derive income from athletes, I suppose that is true. But that's not my view nor is that the point I was addressing. I was addressing the question of why profits from jersey sales should more obviously be redirected to athletes' pockets than should, say, profits from ticket sales or from tv contracts.
Click to expand...
Well, to be fair, it's not like grad students are risking their ability to walk after 40, or the very significant brain injury even one concussion can produce
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
BUCKYLE said:
Well, to be fair, it's not like grad students are risking their ability to walk after 40, or the very significant brain injury even one concussion can produce
Click to expand...

I agree that football is generally more dangerous than other student activities. But is that the point here: that students should be financially compensated in proportion to the physical dangers of their typical activities? Should student researchers who work with radioactive materials, for example, be compensated more than researchers who don't? Would it make sense for a University to have a Rodeo Department, and pay those students stipends/salaries that greatly exceed those paid to students in the Physics Department working on femtosecond laser studies of molecular interactions? Because, after all, a grad student in physics isn't going to get gored in the ass by a bull.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
I don't think ORD was saying that Universities can or should force the NFL to pay college players. I think what he is saying is that if Universities uniformly refused to admit players with substandard academic credentials (which he admits is probably unfeasible), that would probably force the NFL to fund a minor-league farm system, analogous to the minor-league farm system in baseball, that paid guys who couldn't or didn't want to attend college to play and develop their football skills.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't mind seeing a farm system similar to the MLB. It's also a good spot for injured players to heal up, and for high NFL draft picks that turn out to need work to land. Salaries should be similar to the MLB minor leagues, where they basically make just enough to live. A complex system to set up, but I ask why would the NFL teams want to make the investment of setting up a minor league when they have the best farm system in sports and pay nothing for it? In the MLB teams have spring training facilities that the minor league team can use, the NFL teams have no such facilities. So it's either build more stadiums or play Thursday night games. The only way I see this working is if the college system collapses entirely, or football becomes such a drain on the university that most of the schools have to drop it.
 
Upvote 0
zincfinger said:
I'm not sure that's necessarily a problem, at least from a purely financial/legal standpoint. As I understand it, an Athletic Department faced with budget shortfalls and a consequent need to cut varsity sports can always comply with Title IX by cutting men's sports only.
Click to expand...

Which then limits opportunities for these kids and is therefore a shitty law with an over-stated legacy.
 
Upvote 0
Mike80 said:
I am shocked (shocked I tell you) that ESPiN pegged to the whole tax thing within a day of the NLRB's decision.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10683398/tax-implications-create-hurdle-players-union
Click to expand...
I don't understand why unionizing would matter to taxation. Twice in the article, they say the schollies would become taxable if they unionize. But if they are ruled to be employees, and the schollies are compensation, wouldn't that make that income taxable immediately (maybe even retroactively)? Employees are taxed; employees can unionize; aren't those separate issues?

Basically they are asserting that the act of unionization itself would make the players into employees per IRS rules... which is a very odd stance, since they have to be employees in the first place in order to unionize.

Guess I ought to read the ruling at some point...
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top