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Should Colleges Pay Players?

BUCKYLE;1482939; said:
Um...what the fuck is a "career ending industry"? :lol:



:lol:
Sorry, I was typing with a bit of steam this morning since my son was bugging me to get out and go to the park, and spell check does not highlight stupid errors such as this.

EDIT: I guess this is a good lesson to re-read my posts before I post them.
 
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Of course players should not be paid. They are getting an education.

My problem is that this principle needs to be extended.

Anyone who takes an entry level position in private industry where they are learning marketable skills should do so for free until they become proficient. Why should someone get this valuable training AND a paycheck.

To be sure, the company benefits from our labors, but I can't imagine it is anything like the millions of dollars the 85 scholarship athletes will generate for OSU this season.

I also think OSU should quit paying TAs, research assistants, and others who help generate income for the university while still getting an education.

(However, I would agree that this principle should not extend to career ending industries like, say, pickle slicing.)
 
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My problem with paying players is that it would widen the gap between the teams that have all the talent, and the teams that don't. Currently, many schools don't have football programs that make money for the university. Others make money, but the entire athletic department loses money for the university. I don't know the numbers, but I'd imagine that very few schools have athletic departments that make money for the schools.

The teams that make money for the university can obviously pay their players something and still be OK, as long as the university wasn't counting on that money for something else. (Of course, they probably were).

The teams that don't make money for the university would have a lot of trouble finding the money to pay their players.

At one time, high school players had the choice: go to big-time school so-and-so, and see limited playing time for a couple of years, but be part of a great team, or go to other school so-and-so, probably start within a couple of years, but get whooped by a bunch of the power-house teams. Scholarship restrictions made it so that the big-time schools were more reluctant to take some of these players, making them go to the smaller schools, narrowing the gap in skill level between the teams. Paying players would introduce another factor. "Should I go to big-time school so-and-so, and get paid to go there and see limited playing time, or go to other school so-and-so, not get paid anything, and get beat every week?" I think it's going to make more players go to the bigger schools, and the smaller schools, who already have trouble competing, are going to be diminished.

Maybe they'll drift into Division I-AA, or FCS, or whatever. 30 teams in Division I-A, and 220 in Division I-AA.
 
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My $.02...

I worked with student athletes at UK during my master's degree and again at Pepperdine as a part of my job. And, yes, they are 'paid' with opportunities that other students don't have. In fact, some athletes are given the opportunity in spite of their ability to do college level academic work (shocking, I know).

However, especially for basketball (and with the expansion of the bowl season football may be moving this way as well), students whose number one focus is their varsity scholarship may be challenged to meet the classroom requirements. With bball starting in October and running through April, and with the amount of time spent traveling, most of the students that I knew would do most of their "challenging" academic work during the summers and "coast" during fall and spring.

Granted, UK and Pepp were on semesters- things on the quarter system like at tOSU might be different.

My solution- ensure that they get free degrees (even after they've left to go pro, the get to come and finish on the University's dime). I'd even go as far as to say if they graduate while playing their sport, they should be elligible for another (another BA, a Masters, whatever).

Again, this would only work for the "revenue" sports- Football, Men's/Women's basketball, but it would go a long way toward 1) creating equity regarding the money athletics brings in, 2) creating a vibrant alumni base, and 3) empowering athletes with opportunities to impact society beyond what they can do on the field/court.

Again, just my $.02.
 
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Tom Brady?s agent: NCAA must privatize college football

Donald H. Yee, a sports lawyer whose firm represents Patriots star Tom Brady and Super Bowl winning New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, makes a case to the WASHINGTON POST for privatizing college football and paying the players.
What needs to change is the entire attitude toward college football. This is the perfect time to implement an honest approach to the combination of big-time football and higher education, an approach that eliminates the NCAA?s notion of amateurism. College football generates huge revenues, and there is plenty of money to create a win-win business model for players, coaches and universities. A big business deserves market-driven reform, absent of hypocrisy. Here are 10 steps to accomplish that.
1. All of the major football-playing universities should lease the rights to operate a commercial football program on behalf of the university to an independent, outside company. For example, the University of Southern California would contract with USC Football Inc. Such leases would be open to bidding ? schools such as Notre Dame, USC and Texas could generate massive revenue. USC football could look exactly as it does now, except USC Football Inc. would have paid for the right to operate it. The university and the company would share net profits from all revenue streams at a negotiated level. Can you imagine how much more revenue schools could garner if, for instance, they were allowed to sell more ad space on uniforms?
This would not be a new business structure for major universities; many already use similar arrangements for other ventures. For example, many major athletic departments now sell their marketing rights to outside companies, and the majority of schools (and the NCAA) contract with the Collegiate Licensing Company to market and license their trademarks.
Some universities would find that the marketplace doesn?t have any interest in their programs. This means that business people think football is a money-loser for those schools. So those schools should drop football and allocate the money to their core objective: educating students.
2. Each university?s football corporation could create leagues, whether long- or short-term, with other corporations. There wouldn?t have to be any allegiance to geography, fan loyalties or tradition. For example, some of these leagues could be premised on budget size. To a large degree, this is already being done; it?s called the BCS. A group of conferences formed the BCS, or Bowl Championship Series, and decided to exclude other conferences.
Or the football corporations could decide to avoid joining a league, simply scheduling games as a free agent. Again, this is hardly novel ? Notre Dame has done it for years, and Brigham Young University is contemplating it now ? so this arrangement would simply formalize and spread the practice.
3. All of the players would be paid a salary, whatever the market would bear. Players would no longer receive scholarships. Just as in the pros, they would be paid based on their perceived value to their program. If an outstanding high school player is coveted, he should be allowed to experience the fruits of American capitalism. Prominent high school players entering college are no different than prominent college players entering the NFL ? they can bring excitement and new revenue to a program. No one, for instance, can deny the excitement, revenue and attention that Bush brought to USC. The players would pay income taxes; the football corporations would pay Social Security taxes; 401(k) plans could be established.
USC Football Inc. would be free to recruit a player any way it wants, with anything it wants, say, an iPhone and plane tickets for his parents. If a player feels misled in the recruiting process, he could sue for fraud. Each program would be reliant on the business acumen of its operators and subject to whatever profit-margin goal it chooses.
4. The corporations could offer a range of educational opportunities. Academically gifted players could take regular university courses, if they could have gained admission on their own merit. Others may be more interested in vocational training or other specialty classes. Either way, average students would no longer lose a chance at admission because the university made an exception for an academically less qualified athlete. And athletes would have a broader array of course offerings, should they choose to receive education. Some may even choose not to attend classes and simply focus on honing their football skills.
5. The NCAA can be eliminated, at least as it relates to football. Many of its rules are archaic and frankly gibberish. The NCAA itself states that it does not have subpoena power, which is one way of admitting that enforcement of its rules is difficult.

Read more: A pro agent's case for paying college football players
 
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