"amateur athlete" - we're not talking about 5yr old gymnasts, what does that term mean at this level? A scam right? Sounds like a scam. We'll put your face on a billboard in Time Square, here's some money for books. Hmm, scam. Is it an MLM where you recruit a bunch of bozos to generate money for the few? What makes college sports "special" wouldn't matter to me if I was Johnny Manziel. 'm out on this debate, I really don't care as much as it might seem. It's not fair, it wont ever be fair, it's kind of stupid, needs restructuring. You have coaches forbidding transfers from player at random schools to make a point meanwhile coaches jump ship all of the time. Restructure. Now. Thanks.
I think it's important to remember that the colleges are the ones treating college athletes differently than students, and have been for years. Mostly out of necessity, because they're worth being treated differently. This is why forcing kids to go to college to learn how to play football is beyond stupid and needs to stop. If you let the career athletes go be career athletes, suddenly, most of the special treatment will stop. Pretending that they're amateurs by choice is what is wrong here.
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So they make the change you ask for and they're "running scared?" :grin: They did the right thing here...credit where it's due.
Considering how the NCAA has scoffed at stuff like this for a long time, and recently the flood gates have opened up on them (O'Bannon, etc.), yeah, I'd say they're running scared.
The vast majority ARE amateurs by choice. At best, about 220 players will get drafted each year, and of those, maybe 100-150 will make an NFL roster, with even less actually having an NFL career of any sort. If you have 80ish players per team and 120 college teams, that's nearly 10,000 players on college rosters, the vast majority of whom have no realistic expectation of making the NFL. But that said, keeping them in college is entirely out of the NCAA's hands - its an NFL rule because that league doesn't want them there.
I should have been clear that I'm speaking about the P5. Since they're the ones splitting off, talking about paying players, etc.
18 year olds in the NBA didn't work for the most part, with few exceptions. If kids aren't generally physically easy for the NBA at 18, I can only imagine that it would be even worse in the NFL.
Yeah, they're not ready to go, except maybe 1-2 every few years, but it would go a long ways to fix the money issue. What I don't get is baseball. You can get drafted out of HS, get paid, and still play college sports? Someone enlighten me on that whole setup. I'm obviously missing something but I do remember hearing a story about a football player at Tech that had an awesome car and apartment because he signed a baseball contract, got paid, but it didn't work out long term. Scam right? Another NCAA scam?
no, not at all. You can get drafted, sure, but once you sign that contract (and many people who get drafted don't sign) you're forfeiting your eligibility and typically you will go straight to the minors once that happens to begin development. As for the NFL I think college ball is an extremely important developmental stepping stone for players to go into as it will introduce them to better competition, conditioning programs, and coaches, etc. I have a hard time seeing players declaring for the NFL draft straight out of high school
There's been some young washouts in the NBA, yes. But tell me, is that a bad thing? They got drafted, made a crapton of money, and turned out not to be as talented or capable as originally thought. How is this a bad thing? If the kid wanted, they could take that money they made and go to college, no? Whether it "works out" for them is not the issue. It's about having the freedom to try without artificial barriers and being forced into an exploitative situation with unequal return for value added. MLB and Soccer have their developmental systems down to a science and accommodate young players quite well. The NBA is now investing in the same system and gaining a lot of steam. As I said before, the NFL could pull it off, but has chosen not to so far because it was seen as a money pit until the BCS era rolled into town.
In most businesses, there are profit centers and cost centers. The profit centers make money and e cost centers lose money. Businesses are not going to pay employees in the profit centers salaries that cause the overall organization to operate at a loss. Athletic departments would be no different. To that extent, the players share in that issue.
A lot of football programs generate a huge profit each year. In real business, there's no cap on what an employer can offer a potential employee nor any cap on what an employee can earn. College has a built in cap, the value of a scholarship regardless of the actual value of the player they're "hiring" so to speak which could be many times more (or less) than the value of that scholarship. Tim Tebow for example, gets the same scholarship that the punter gets but Tebow's value is probably a 100 times that of any punter. MOST-PROFITABLE FOOTBALL PROGRAMS http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/dollars/post/_/id/2556/texas-tops-in-football-profit-revenue The University of Texas football program in 2011-12 generated the most revenue and highest profit among all programs, according to NCAA data. The numbers, in millions: School Profit Texas $77.9 Michigan $61.6 Georgia $52.3 Florida $51.1 Alabama $45.1 LSU $44.8 Auburn $43.8 Notre Dame $43.2 Arkansas $39.9 Nebraska $36.4
This, of course, completely ignores my analysis regarding profit centers and cost centers in the larger organization. If these guys want to be paid a salary dependent upon their perceived value to the organization, they can go play arena ball or in Canada. College football is just that COLLEGE football. These are not pro sports ventures. I am all for paying a stipend, because I think it is fair. Having players negotiate salaries based upon perceived market value in a collegiate setting is absurd.
