Hard?
This:
is hard to swallow. Though some states mix it up and it is a basketball coach. Last I checked only one state had its highest paid employee that wasn’t a coach at a state university.
Jimbo getting 100 mil is obscene.
This is a quick summary I found useful
The NCAA maintains that notwithstanding antitrust law, the amateur sports governing body may impose certain limits on athlete compensation in order to preserve relative parity of play, and to maintain what the NCAA contends is the essence of college sports’ popularity — namely, amateurism.
The players, on the other hand, say the NCAA is operating a system that is a classic restraint of competition in business, and there is little doubt that big-time college sports is a business.
Sure. A combo of some money now / more money later would probably work. And it would create more incentive for them to finish their degree if you had some kind of a vesting strategy that was based on that.
It’s a really tough answer, because for every Texas or Alabama that are literally rolling in money, there are a lot more schools that barely generate any positive revenue.
There’s a reason why all those little sisters of the poor schedule an annual beating at a big school every football season. The payout is the only way they can balance their budgets.
Perhaps, but the current system is clearly broken and indefensible. Either colleges will have to share revenues with the students they’re currently exploiting, or that exploitation will have to be sharply constrained by law. Or both.
Student athletes are adults, and we should treat them as such. That means paying them whatever they can successfully negotiate, and allowing them to make their own decisions regarding finishing their degree.
If that has the result of concentrating athletic talent at rich schools, then so be it. And if small schools can no longer compete with the big ones, then they can form a less competitive league.
The current system is exploitative at every level.
Steal from the NBA: pool revenues and split evenly across participating teams in the league :)
Paying student athletes will make programs that are already net revenue losers even more of a burden to their host institutions. In a sensible world, the result would be that most institutions would cut their athletic programs. In reality, I expect they’ll take a wrecking ball to academics to continue to fund their athletic boondoggles. Considering the justices quoted above, it really wouldn’t surprise me if that was the end goal.
High schools are capable of fielding a wide variety of teams, both men’s and women’s. If they can do it, then so can any college.
Paying a superstar millions does not destroy college sports, any more than it destroys high school sports. It might make smaller teams less interesting to watch, but college sports should not revolve around maximizing audiences. And it is fundamentally unfair to demand that a superstar college athlete support athletes at other schools.
Probably there is some kind of solution like this. On the other hand, it’s fair to ask why public institutions (at least) are even in this business. Why is a state university spending millions to run a football team, paying a coach 7 or 8 figures a year, and so on? Of course the answer is because they can, but maybe the answer ought to be they can’t.
Not to worry, they’re funded and regulated by the states, so SCOTUS probably isn’t going to arrive there. But the economics of treating athletes fairly might very well end up there.
I’m scratching my head about this. Are there high school sports that pay students millions? Do we think there should be?
If you pay the football and men’s basketball players money, does that also mean you have to pay all the female athletes the same amount? When football and men’s basketball are the only programs that actually make money.
No, that’s my point. A small college can field multiple student teams, both men’s and women’s, on a relatively small budget. Just like high schools do now.
Sure, they won’t sell thousands of tickets, but that should not necessarily be their goal. Their goal can be simply to provide recreational outlets to their students, same as high schools.
And if a big school really wants to spend millions on athletic salaries for whatever reason, they should have that option.
High schools do it by…not paying the players. If colleges have to pay, I don’t really see the comparison.
If a big public hospital wants to field a professional sports team, ‘should’ they have that option? I think no, that’s not what you’re for is a reasonable answer.
Nobody has to pay student athletes. And by extension, paying some college athletes does not necessarily mean that other college athletes won’t be able to play.
You must live in a well-off area. There are plenty of high schools that can’t, or if they do the facilities are completely inadequate or in disrepair because they simply can’t afford it even after asking the students to pay a participation fee and work in endless fundraisers. And don’t even think about sports that aren’t football or basketball. Maybe wrestling, track, and cross country due to the minimal equipment and facility needs.
The endpoint here is that the rich schools will get richer with better athletes that they can parley into more insane media contracts and the schools that can’t afford it will close up shop so yes, there will be athletes that won’t be able to play. The current system is bad, but this alternative limits organized college football to a few dozen schools and basketball to a few dozen more.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but so what? If the rest of the schools can’t compete in what is effectively a professional sports league, then they can’t compete in what is effectively a professional sports league, and they’ll stop trying.
Yeah I don’t know why we’re lamenting that some college might not be able to field a football team. Who cares?
I find that hard to believe. First of all, most college athletes played their sport in high school, which suggests that there are indeed lots of high school teams other than football or basketball.
Secondly, colleges are generally much better funded even than well-off high schools. Not just athletics, but all campus activities (e.g. music, theater, etc). Which makes sense, given their high tuition and large endowments. So I would be quite surprised to find that only a “couple dozen” colleges can offer the same support to students as even a well off high school.
Especially since adults are perfectly capable of organizing athletic events without any academic support at all. My city has various independent adult soccer leagues, softball leagues, etc. How can a bunch of middle-aged office drones possibly be better at organizing sports than a university athletic department?
What I genuinely expect to happen? The big-money schools ('d estimate that is maybe 40 football and maybe 80-90 mens basketball) will end up in what amount to semi-pro sports leagues where the players are paid at basically NFL or NBA junior league levels, and the players aren’t even students any longer unless they choose to be. It will just be branding: the Notre Damn Fighting Irish will be a team sponsored by the college, but otherwise has no real relationship.
And for everyone else? An Ivy League model: the students can participate in college sports if they choose to do so, but no scholarships, no compensation, and very little attention outside of their regional conferences.
And honestly, this is what I have advocated for for years. Genuine amateur athletics, and then semi-pro leagues that are feeders to the professional level.