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University Presidents can fix this
I know many will disagree with this….and some that will disagree won’t even read my entire point.
University presidents should make a stance that college athletics, regardless of sport, should be about educating young men and women.
Regardless of what many believe, college football is NOT a minor league system for the NFL. The NFL, not the NCAA, has the rule of players being out of high school 3 yrs before draft eligibility….
There are 11,000 scholarship football players in FBS and another 8,000 scholarship players in FCS. 19,000 Div 1 scholarship football players. Of those, approximately 270 each year get an opportunity for the NFL. If you stop and think about that, there is no way you can view college football as a minor league for the NFL.
If a college player hit the lottery and made it to the NFL, he has an avg career of 3.3 years. Now he’s 25-26 and without a job.
More importantly there are about 18,730 scholarship players that won’t be playing in the NFL.
Certainly a coach or university should do all they can to help their athletes, that want to pursue professional sports, prepare them for that opportunity. While also focusing and preparing for the reality it won’t happen.
So again, college football isn’t a farm system. It is a university designed to educated.
College football isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.
College presidents should view it as a privilege and stop catering to “rights” of athletes.
obviously, these football and basketball teams make the universities a lot of money. How much is far from clear. But that shouldn’t give a player the right to demand compensation or the right to break an agreement.
If a high school athlete decides he wants to play football in college, which is 100% his choice, and he is good enough to earn a scholarship… then the University should be obligated to….
- pay athletes tuition
- provide tutors and guidance to help player earn degree.
- Provide adequate housing
- Provide food and adequate nutrition designed for elite athletes
- top medical and training and continuous medical and support for those suffering catastrophic injury
- any other support needed to help athletes that are doing so much for the university
- allow athletes to “earn” money with their NIL. Signing autographs, social media presence, doing commercials or whatever the athlete can generate because of the demand for their NIL.
The University should be obligated to do everything it can to prepare the young athlete for a career after sports.
The University is giving high school students the opportunity to attend a university they may otherwise not be able to attend.
If college football and basketball are making so much money, as many are suggesting, then all the better.
Help athletes from Olympic sports, baseball, softball, etc receive higher % of scholarship money or possibly full scholarships. Which helps educate and provide opportunities for even more high school athletes.
Instead, whoever is responsible, I honestly have no idea, is allowing about 270 athletes dictate what should happen for the VAST majority and actually killing education opportunities for many.
College sports are a privilege, not a right. If a young man doesn’t like the rules the college presidents decide upon….then he shouldn’t play college football. And instead find another way to fund college or go ahead and get a job doing something else.
Come on University Presidents, grow some cajones and do what is right.
Comments
Very logical and thought out post.
^^^This^^^ sums up my collective thoughts on the subject.
Based on Dabo's Wednesday's comments I suspect he would also align with many of these bullet points, along with other coaches, ADs, administrators, educators and those close to this sport. For me the main takeaway is the impact of NIL on the primary charter of all colleges and universities - EDUCATION. National Signing Day was illustrative of the types of unintended consequences I've been warning about for a while. Schools wishing to be competitive must look beyond the traditional selling points of academics, facilities, coaches, tradition etc. and develop actionable NIL plans or they'll continue to lose out on top talent.
Tex: I have for a long time thought that one fix would be that the scholarship should be until the player graduates. I am not talking about eligibility, just the scholarship as long as the player is working toward a degree.
It is difficult to graduate on four years even if you are not a athlete. I can not even imagine how hard it is with the demands on a players time.
Back in 1981 one of the Washington Redskins drafted a defensive linemen who was illiterate after 3 years of college. I do not care that he was given a scholarship. Just that the college did not even try and educate him, something the Redskins did.
100% agree. Start a g league for football. Let’s do what we can to keep it college football.
Some very good points but so much has changed over the last 10-15 yrs.
It is now very difficult to not graduate in 4 yrs as a college athlete. That was not the case years ago.
The student athlete academic centers at schools like Georgia, Clemson, TAMU, UT, OU and most others is very impressive. Georgia’s is actually right across the street from the outdoor practice field goal posts.
The universities employ a significant amount of tutors and academic advisors to help all athletes. Some players are assigned their very own tutor.
Athletes get preferential class scheduling.
Many football players are put on tracks to graduate in 3 years. They encourage players to take 15-18 hrs in case they have to drop a class and players usually attend both summer sessions.
schools do a great job of making sure athletes are placed in appropriate majors. Kids like N Dean and N Smith are encouraged to be engineering majors while some players are encouraged to accept more appropriate areas of study
And finally, coaches are now very limited at how much time they can spend with their athletes. That used to not be monitored.
I don’t care if anyone DVs me. But if you are going to do so in a subject matter such as this, DV and then explain your position.
Maybe we can all learn something. I’m certainly open to hearing other viewpoints.
Unless you DVed because the subject was over your head.
College? What about elementary school, middle school and high school. College wasn’t the problem. How did he ever make it out of all of those grades?
I knkw it is off topic but I do believe the level of education coming into college is horribly behind. People can disagree with me if they like but I feel like some of what they teach now is to advanced for what most people need. Where I work I train a lot of our new hires. We require just a high school diploma for laborers and you would not believe how many people I have trained that could explain calc and or trig but could not read a tape measure. I feel like more basic skills need to be brought back into the curriculum and go back to "opting in" to college prep around 9th/10th grade depending on your goals and ability.
I'm sure the points are offered sincerely, but you have the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court taking the other side of this argument. The presidents collectively already tried to fix the system and the SCOTUS told them they were breaking the law in the ruling.
>>To be sure, the NCAA and its member colleges maintain important traditions that have become part of the fabric of America.....But those traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.<<
Get what you are saying, and I totally understand the SCOTUS quote, but I do not think that “fairly compensated” should or does entail boosters pooling money to pay players to play.
As stated before by me and others here in this forum, how is this process related to the Name, Image and Likeness of the players being paid? Are they being compensated for their NIL? Are they using their NIL to endorse products of the Payors? Are they selling their NIL (autographs, memorabilia, etc.) for a profit?
I think not!
I have no problem with the compensation dependent on the individual’s NIL, but the schools are allowing the players to become employees in a system which in no way is associated with NIL and this is a very slippery slope to travel.
As stated by @texdawg, the University presidents can and should fix this and soon!
I hear ya. Don’t disagree a bit
You’re referring to Dexter Manley, and I understand your point.
I’m sure this will be unpopular; react how you wish. I’ve got 4 kids in college simultaneously, so my wife and I are intimately familiar with the costs for higher education.
For everyone who thinks that a “full ride” scholarship is menial in scope when taking into account the additional nutritional, medical, academic and financial stipend benefits that an athlete receives, combined with the actual cost of tuition, room and board for an academic institution, I would say they are confused to the true value of the scholarship. Contingent on the school itself, at minimum, the value is at least $150k to $200k over 4 years. Considering this is probably the first professional “job” for many of these young people, an average annual “income” of $35k to $50k is pretty lucrative.
Regarding the argument that the players are being unfairly exploited by a multi-billion dollar business, how many of us had our first jobs with a company (McDonalds, Starbucks etc.) that paid minimum wage but was a multi-billion dollar enterprise? What we earned in those jobs wasn’t close to $35-50k/year, but we understood it was a (hopefully) precursor to a better livelihood as we gained education and experience. It helped to form the foundation that was relied on to achieve further success in a professional career.
Why would an athletic scholarship be looked at any differently? I realize the physical toll and risk of injury is much higher for an athlete than a standard student, but when examining the statistics @texdawg cited regarding the number of college football players vs. the number of available positions annually in the NFL, it appears that the education is worth infinitely more than the athletic experience. With that in mind, and I may be wrong, but I’m fairly confident that the scholarship awarded to an athlete stays in effect if they are catastrophically injured during their tenure at the school.
I’m not opposed to NIL, but am opposed to anything that contributes to the degradation of college football. I also don’t pretend to have any or all of the answers regarding college athletics; I’m not that intelligent. I do know that I’ve loved college football (athletics) for a long time, and do not want to see it ruined by unscrupulous people and profiteering individuals. Hopefully, the people in charge will have the intestinal fortitude to challenge anyone trying to destroy the system, and keep the best interests of the scholar athletes at heart.
Sorry for the extended rant…please carry on.
Great post.
Are universities not offering the 7 bullet points you listed?
Pretty sure the schools are making sure the players have everything they need to get their education. Whether the players want to put in the effort is up to them.
Also, I see “minor leagues” as the leagues that feed pro ball their players. Therefore, NCAA football is definitely the minor leagues if you look at it that way.
So, I see universities offering all the help they can academically and athletically, as well as being the minor leagues of the NFL.
I hear ya Tex...all suggestions based in fairness and common sense. But man, if we have to rely on the group of College Presidents to save us, we're in deep doo-doo. An old Buckley quote comes to mind: 'I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.'
Go DAWGS, Beat Michigan !!!
A lot of good points, 3184. I long to go back to the way things used to be in a lot of areas because what we have now is a lot worse. However, this cat was let out of the bag a long time ago when they decided to make CFB a multibillion dollar business. It wasn't the players who made those decisions. Contracts were negotiated with networks, tickets were jacked at stadiums, merchandising companies were formed and deals were struck to sell everything marketable from the game, including NIL for players. Etc. & Etc.
What the ruling tells us is that the players are key producers in the business and they can't be denied compensation. As I pointed out last year, this has a lot of potential to be abused and it may become an arms race. UGA had better hire some really good legal consultants because other teams will exploit this. It's a market. It's competition. It's American capitalism. The strong and the smart will win. The genie isn't going back in the bottle imo.
The players can money from anybody that wants to pay them. It is a legal matter. The presidents and nobody else can stop that.
Great argument. I see the control in the hands of the conferences. They made the mandates for a pandemic year.
Sorry for the coming rant!
I don’t think I have argued that players don’t produce and should not be fairly compensated. Or that their scholarship is payment enough. I think the Supreme Court ruling ALLOWS them to be compensated and I understand that. I have no problem with JD being paid by a law firm for his image and likeness being used on a billboard that says “Size Matters”; I have no problem with JTD being paid by a restaurant in a commercial for his NIL to hawk the food produced by the restaurant.
My problem is not that they are being or should be compensated but HOW they might be compensated, by WHAT METHOD they might be compensated and FOR WHAT purpose the compensation is made?
Boosters pooling money to pay players $50,000 each to come play for their school is not compensation based on the name, image or likeness of the player involved. These schools are not denying compensation to players based on their NIL, the group of boosters are paying players in spite of, and with no reference to, their NIL. And this method of payment could be the start of something ****.
Several states have passes laws governing NIL compensation but I bet ALL are couched in terms of allowing players to be paid for, and not be denied payment for, the use of their name, image or likeness in the production of a product that makes money for the school involved. I would wager that there is no reference in any of these laws which state that players are employees of the school and should be compensated as such, which is what “booster pooling “ is—-pay to play.
My feelings are- Where does this end? Is it the purpose of NIL legislation to create a minor league system for the NFL? Will other “larger organizations “ than boosters become involved in the payment of players which might or could affect the outcome of games played? Is that what the Supreme Court decision envisioned?
It has been argued by some in this forum that the players can take money from anybody that wants to pay them, that it is a legal matter and that the University Presidents have no power to stop that. If that is so , then why do the Universities need “legal compliance” staff? To make sure that exactly “What” is being complied with and exactly “What” needs to be enforced? If the”genie is out of the bottle “, then who cares anymore? Pay them direct and be done with it! Then we will have a “market system” where the one’s that can pay will weed out those that can’t and we can all watch only 16-24 teams compete every year.
If the Presidents can’t oversee and fix what may happen, then maybe the Conference Commissioners can. The NCAA has backed out for sure. Maybe it is time for the federal government to step in with regulations that will unify, and give direction to, the NIL compensation matter.
I really don’t have all the final answers but I can see the crumbling of the game that I enjoy for the same reasons that I don’t watch pro football anymore and it saddens and concerns me deeply.
I am off my soapbox now!
Go Dawgs! Hate on Michigan!
Best post yet on this topic. Couldn’t agree more