John Oliver: March Madness and the Student Athlete

The big-revenue athletes are entering academically out-of-reach programs, probably with the unrealistic intent and skewed primary focus of playing pro ball. The colleges could probably guarantee six or eight years of tuition and fees or fully subsidized post-eligibility loans to account for the missing study time and increase the graduation rate to match that of non-athletes.

They could probably also force all programs to limit their signings to athletes whose grades and test scores reflect a realistic chance of success in their specific academic program, with a cushion to account for the disparity in average scores between all athlete and non-athlete students nationwide.

 

It's interesting that once the talk of forming unions was making the rounds the NCAA started giving more concessions almost immediately. They know their goose is cooked as soon as any type of organizing takes place.

 

Last Week Tonight is consistently great and this is no exception. The NCAA is an enormous scam on the athletes.

 

Wait for a hardline conservative to come in and say the athletes are paid in education, despite what the video actually shows. It's sad.

 

love it.

 

Why is the solution only to pay the athletes?

I'd rather limit the pay on everything else and use the money to fund the universities. That is limit coaching pay, etc. use program profits to fund the university.

That's never going to happen of course. If it did, then if/when the popularity of the college sport decreased drastically we might get real minor leagues of some interest across other sports.

or...

Alternatively eliminate the student component entirely and just create some kind of economic tieback between the sports teams and the schools. Something to keep the school and team tied together but just loosely.

Of course that won't work either

Keeping the current structure while somehow paying the athletes more is the inevitable solution... but I don't like it.

 

What's there to not like? No reason for college athletes not to be paid. They bring in millions upon millions.

 

The problem is that while athletes as a whole are necessary to make money, the specific athletes are not. The vast majority of NCAA athletes are completely replacable and no one would notice. If Javan Felix was replaced by some other basketball player, UT would be no more or less popular as a basketball team.

Its sort of like employees of any other organization. Walmart needs all their store clerks in aggregate, but any given one is easily replacable. With college football and basketball, there is an endless supply of replacements if someone doesn't want to play.

In addition, I think the NCAA's position has been strengthened by the lack of interest in players going to play in Europe for a year despite it now being a viable option and paying pretty decently. That suggests that kids are finding more total value in the college option than whatever an international team is willing to offer in cash. As long as athletes are choosing the NCAA, they have little reason to change the model.

 

That's already how it is. No one is choosing the D-League or Europe.


How old are D-League players?

The minimum age to play in the D-League is 18, unlike the NBA, which requires players to be 19 years old and one year out of high school in order to sign an NBA contract or be eligible for the draft. There is no maximum age and a recent trend has seen NBA veterans attempt to return to the NBA via the D-League.

 

I think here are some things that they should do.

Limit practice+training+film session to <2 hrs a day.
If you're injured from any of the above activities or actual game, your scholarship stays with you
Students can switch schools at ANY time and do not have to sit out that seasons (however, you must be enrolled for at least 3 months before playing a game).

 

If D-league was a true minor league system more would make that choice as they do in baseball.

College sports will eventually change, only a matter of time. You are already starting to see it on the high school level. When we grew up all the talent was at the top high schools. Now all the talent is with private clubs. Soccer, Baseball, Basketball (AAU), and others are all hoarding the talent in their Select Teams. Many of these Select Teams are year round now and encourage kids to not participate in High School as it is a waste of time. I don't see select clubs shrinking, they'll keep growing and spread to the over 18 players as well. MLS has already started this with many clubs have 18+ academies including the USL-Pro partnership which means really good players now have a professional option instead of college. Football will be the tricky one because currently high school feeds the colleges and colleges feed the pros. Clubs aren't yet in the picture.

Me personally, I think sports at schools is stupid. In elementary, if we played we played at our city or county leagues. Then for some strange reason at jr high and high school it gets integrated with school. School should be for academics and let the sports stay with city/county/club leagues.

 

Top baseball players still get million dollar salaries. Maybe something like the system where as long as the player is under the age of 21 and never player in the league, he'll get paid the year 1 rookie contract salary.

For example, based on your draft spot, your rookie salary pays you $2M in year 1, you get paid $2M for your first two years in NBDL, then you come over to the NBA and your rookie contracts starts. If you get called up earlier then your contracts starts earlier. So you develop a player for 2 to 3 years before he needs to be on the rookie scale.

 

The owners don't want this, the players don't want this, and the NBA D-league teams can't afford this. There's simply no one to push for a change like this. Developmental leagues work in baseball because it takes years for rookies to be ready to play at the MLB level. That's simply not the case in basketball. A player can come in and immediately contribute.

At the end of the day, the market price for young non-NBA players has been set. They can go to the D-League or abroad. They are choosing college over that because they consider the total value of what is provided (a degree for all the non-NBA-bound players, the college experience, national exposure, the opportunity to play in college venues, etc) more valuable than whatever those other options are paying.

 

You know the entire system is bullsh1t when the kids can't even get enough food because the NCAA is scared that their meal ticket will be exposed. It's obvious that it's never been about the kids.

 

Ironically enough the flaw here is that top-shelf athletes will not limit themselves to two hours of practice, training, film study or even conditioning.

 

Both of those sentences are totally spot-on.

 

As much of a time and talent suck as I think it is for backup and bench players; the teamwork, leadership, self-discipline and self-study development gains for unmotivated males and any and all females is immeasurable. The additional incentive of expressive and wide-scale peer, authority and parent approval and celebration makes it the more instinctive option than advanced academics, arts or vocational options which would provide the same benefits.

 

Collegiate sports popularity needs to be dialed back. As does professional sports popularity. Interestimg comment on this board, no?