I enjoyed college sports while it lasted.

The same way they figure into it when the millionaire coaches and AD's and senior NCAA admins get paid. Why should it be any different with the people who are actually playing the games?

 

Careful with this scare tactic. As it is right now, the school can yank a players scholarship for no reason at all at anytime. There is no guarantee. There are no mult-year scholarships. And a school, and the NCAA, restrict student athletes from working other jobs so they are concentrating on the $port$, for obviou$ rea$on$. And they can wipe out a students eligibility in a heartbeat, even doing so before they qualify for the NFL (3 years out of high school). So if you want to throw the kicked-to-the-curb scare tactic at them, sorry, the schools and NCAA have already beat you to the punch. In fact, I think this scare tactic is one of the ways they control these athletes, by threatening to wipe out their education and any hope of the pros.

Right now, as an employee in a free nation, I can leave my job when I want and find another where I want, without any restriction placed on me by any organization or any law as to seeking work or being compensated for that work. That is freedom, and it goes both ways. Indeed by definition, it must. It's not just the schools and the coaches and athletic administrators who have rights.

 

They are receiving goods and services already. With cash being added to the pot, you can bet that the IRS will want a slice.

 

a new stream of revenue for the lawyers. It'll be swell!

 

The existence of unions is a giant leap over paying the student-athletes more than just the football scholarship. That leap did indeed take it into Pandora's Box.

Few things screw up a business/industry/institution like collective bargaining.

 

I agree with what you say but I differ as to seeing this as some type of problem. These student athletes can do what they want. The NCAA member organizations have rules. If you don't like the rules do something else. Simple as that.

 

When I was a college intern, I made next to nothing. It took me a long time to get to a point of making real money. Why is it any different for college players? Bob Stoops didn't just luck into a big contract, he's worked his entire adult life to get there. Same for Joe Castiglione.

Players are receiving a full education, room, board, extra study assistance, etc. in exchange for playing the game. Why should they automatically get paid more? It doesn't work that way anywhere else in life.

Should players be able to make it through school without having to "go without" or worrying about living costs (extra portion of pasta, etc.)? Yes. Which is why I am completely in favor of a system that gives the players enough to live with some extra left over (the same as if a kid were going to school on any scholarship and working). Anything above that is just a money grab.

 

I haven't had a job (or hired anyone) in many years that did not include a non-compete clause. I know there are folks that work in industries that don't have those, but a lot do. I don't have a problem with the transfer rule the NCAA has in place. A player is free to leave whenever he wants, but will have to wait a year if he wants to play D1. If he doesn't want to wait, he's free to transfer to a lower division and play anytime. Seems fair to me.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, because it's far from it (look at Baker Mayfield as an example of a broken system). However, I don't think the players are as taken advantage of as some lead us to believe.

 

I've never asked too deeply, but I've heard of multiple players talking doing things with the scholarship money they saved up. Are they not given a little extra to do what they want with? Perhaps it was extra money labeled as "food" or "housing" money that they didn't end up needing to spend.

I talked to a former OU player who went on to play a few years in the NFL. He had some injuries that ended his career, and he came back to OU to finish up his degree. While he was at OU, he felt like he was being taken advantage of. When he came back to school he realized just how expensive everything was, and he admitted that he didn't know how blessed he truly was. I kinda feel like that story is typical.

Also, people like Bob Stoops SHOULD be getting paid way more than the players. There are very few people who can do what he does. The players are easily replaced. You can replace Williams with Clay, Clay with Finch, Finch with Ford, etc. We proved that this year.

 

I talked to a Big 12 assistant whose name you would know and he said if they were considered employees they would cut them for bad play or bad attitudes just like the pros.

 

The idea that the worker (player) should be paid as much as the CEO (coach) is the sort of absurd claptrap that is indicative of the socialist agenda that most unions have.

 

At the very least, this opens up doors for much-needed reform. It might not result in very much money paid to student athletes, but perhaps it can open the door to:
1- Multiple year scholarships. Right now, they have to be renewed every year, even in sports like football where a player can't turn pro till 3 years removed from high school.
2- Relaxed transfer rules. The only non-penalty-year transfer is to a grad program that your current school doesn't have.
3- Weekend meals. Why do the rulemakers think that athletes don't need to eat on weekends?
4- More years of eligibility. If certain programs require more than 120 credit hours/4 years (30 credits per year), shouldn't players be given more than 4 years to play?
5- Extended health insurance. It doesn't have to be forever, but perhaps at least as long as they played at a school. For example, play football for four years, get an additional four years of health insurance afterward (unless preferred coverage is coming from another source, such as the NFL).

It's a start.

 

I had to sign a non-compete. If leave my company I am barred from doing certain types of work for 12 months. Depending on the industry/type of job these are common.

 

Except when the courts rule the NCAA is an illegal cartel.

The whole cartel label for sports is absurd. Clearly there needs to be some uniform rules in all leagues (professional and amateur) to maintain a level playing field and some level of parity. This has no analog in normal business but is an absolute necessity for any viable sports league. Taken another way, in some respects a sports league is a single entity and should be viewed as such.

 

And almost unenforceable.

 

depends on the industry....if you are on the teevee, it's a little hard to hide the fact you broke a non-compete in the same market.

 

Or design, or specialized legal fields, or a whole bunch of other things. I'd send you over an NDA I had to sign when I did some work with XXXXX (a large computer chip firm). While it might not be enforceable, I know that they are completely willing to spend me into banruptcy attempting to enforce it. So, you just stay out of their corner of the industry thereafter.

 

Yeah. I remember Sony threw up a big stink when their infamous actor for PS3 was suddenly on a different company's ad playing Nintendo Wii

 

What I want to see is an extra year of "free" schooling given to those players who never sign an NFL contract (if OU gets you an NFL contract, they've probably provided you with more than you provided them). Getting a meaningful degree in 4 years is pretty tough for the average student. Now, part of that is due to the adviser telling you a different story every semester you go in for your appointment as well as the fact that you're often unable to enroll in the upper division classes you want. I doubt football players have those issues, but it's still insane to expect them to do everything a normal student does on top of playing football. I don't know if it's true (heard it from an iffy source), but I recently heard football players are required to be "full-time" students, and thus have to take 12 hours in the fall. Do you want to be a microbiology major and take 12 hours of classes like Microbial Physiology, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Organic Chemistry? Of course not. Even if you're very intelligent (...trying to bite my tongue), you want to take multi-disciplinary studies and cram a bunch of easy classes into your already insane schedule. The NCAA needs to stop pushing for graduation. It's better to end your football career with 3 years of a useful major (that you can finish up later) than having graduated with a useless degree.

 

It may be insurance purposes, and if so, it's nothing new. In the early aughts I was required to be enrolled in at least 12 to be considered a full time student and therefore, on my parents' health insurance.

I remember talking to one football player who said that he always did more credits in the spring and cut down to 12 during football season because football takes a lot of time... not just practice, but flying to places like Alabama, UCLA, Oregon, etc.

Football players also, in order to maintain eligibility, must have passed 30 credits per year. That's what got the former Michigan quarterback Tate Forcier. He didn't pass enough of his classes (and played as a true freshmen) or something.

It would not surprise me if schools worked with athletes to help them get degrees after their pro aspirations are over via scholarships or something else NCAA-rules-approved. There are already NCAA scholarships for athletes that don't go pro in sports that want to pursue grad degrees