Good NCAA related read...

[royalfan5]

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7177921/the-beginning-end-ncaa

I agree with the premise that the pretense of amateurism is getting harder to maintain.

[hornswaggled]

"For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes—not that you won or lost—but how (much you were paid when) you played the Game."

I wonder what the namesake of this rag would have said about the subversion of amateurism in collegiate sports. It's not a pretense if the athlete truly is an amateur and a student.

If tuition, room and board, books, and the leg up in life that most college graduates receive is not enough payment for high school athletes, then they should petition the NFL for entry. The lucky few players that have the god-given talent to qualify for the varsity team are pretty well compensated. They are given access to an excellent preparation for adulthood. They also receive training for their future professional career whether that future is in sports or another profession.

Should the band, and cheerleaders also get paid? How about the women's soccer team and intramural squads? How about paying students who are on scholarship for scholastic acheivement? Then Boren's claim to having the most National Merit Scholars can become a competition with a national title. Real amateurs play the game because they want to play the game.

The schools that renege on scholarship agreements in order to acquire better talent are obviously mercenaries, and their victims should be allowed to sue for compensatory damages for breach of contract. More schools would probably junk their recruits if they had to pay for performance. In a salaried role a player's poor performance would be a valid reason for the school to void the contract without recourse to the student. Sure, schools make money on sporting events, but it is the demand for entertainment by the fanbase that requires ever higher coaches salaries, bigger stadiums, better facilities and Title IX sharing of revenues. Your and my eyes on the TeeVee screen is what creates the cash flow and the mercenary motive.

Amateur student athletes played college football long before there was an 11:00 a.m. kickoff on abc. Not too long ago a fan was allowed to watch his favorite team on tv only two times a year, unless the team made it to a bowl game. The rest of the games, if the fan could not go to the stadium, he had to be satisfied with a staticy radio transmission and read about the game in the newspaper. It would be fine with me if, in the preservation of amateurism, college football reverted to its primitive past. I know it won't revert to that, but it doesn't follow that revenue created by fans' demand for entertainment requires the sacrifice of amateurism. The argument for paying student athletes seems to be that the ones who are providing us access to entertainment are making a lot of money, and that's not fair. Well, as Don Corleone said "We aren't communists", yet.

There is a system where athletes play for money. It's called the NFL. It is the professional leagues that have historically barred entry to their profession, as illustrated by the story's baseball analogy. Bradley and the lawyers should go to the league offices with their petitions and break down those barriers.

[royalfan5]

In a communist system, the ones in charge rarely wanted for anything, while the laborers were told to be happy with what they had.

[badger]

The system will crash soon. Revenue sports have long subsidized non-revenue areas of athletics, like non-revenue sports. As an end result, even with the millions generated via college basketball and college football, many athletic departments lose money...and the ones that make money are expected to subsidize the academic side of the universities.

If these athletes were really soooooo abused, then why do they line the sidelines of spring scrimmages and home games and appear in promo videos? If these athletes are worth more than a scholarship, then why aren't there more pro leagues to accommodate and pay them?

I don't really care. The college money pit needs to end so that prices all around can be brought back in scale with what most can consider affordable. No more scalping big game tickets for several hundred, no more taking out six-figure tuition and fee loans from the federal government, no more paying a coach's salary a competitive rate of $5 million dollars annually.

This will happen to the NBA via the lockout and this rough economy. The payouts might just price enough institutions outta the college game that something might be done to end the madness.